I will be coming back to London again one day! There is something about this city that I
love but I cannot quite decide what it is.
Maybe it is because they actually speak my language; better yet they can
speak it with an awesome accent. It could
be too that everyone is really nice.
London is one of the few cities that I remember having a successful
integration of modern architecture into a historically rich city, and because
of this the culture is hard to match.
We arrived in London on a high speed train; the train took
the Chunnel through the English Channel which sounded really awesome. The experience ended up just being a really
long dark tunnel. I did not even get to
see any water, which I guess is a good thing in this case. We got off the train around mid-morning to
discover that ridiculously cold winds and snow showers were dominating London. Thankfully most of the tour took place on the
bus, but we did our fair share of walking through the city, and yes we
froze. I do not think I will ever get used
to walking tours in this kind of weather.
The guide gave us a crash course about everything London and
then led us to our hotel. By this time
it was mid-afternoon and none of us had eaten lunch. So we basically dropped off our luggage and
headed out to find something to eat.
Luckily, the coolest little pub was across the street so we just went
there. If I thought food was expensive
in Paris, it is even worse here. It is
at least $20 just for a decent meal.
Thank goodness the end of the trip is nearing. The rest of the evening was filled with
laundry and homework. I think I have
reached an all-time low in personal productivity. It seems I have to work twice as long as I
usually do just to accomplish the simplest tasks. It is the worst!
Yesterday we split up with Les and Rod again and went on
separate tours of the city. Rod and the
rest of my group walked pretty much the entire day seeing almost every point of
interest within reason. If you were to
pull out a map and point to a famous building or place, I guarantee we went there. It was a great day, but also exhausting in
every way. I love when we split up as a
group because Rod is able to take us to a lot more buildings, and I am sure the
landscape architects feel the same way because they are able to spend more time
in gardens and public spaces. I was a
bit disappointed throughout the day because for some reason all I wanted to do
was shop. I do not know why because I
certainly did not need to spend the money, but we did not have any time at all
to shop. I barely had time to get a
sticker. We were on the move the entire
day!
I got about 10 minutes to rest at the hotel before we had to
leave again. I was excited to leave
though because Les was able to get us last minute tickets to Phantom of the
Opera at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London.
It was so awesome! To see Phantom
of the Opera live has been on my bucket list since 6th grade when we
read it in music class. It was even
better than I could have imagined it. I
could not have dreamed of seeing it here in London in its original theatre, and
somehow it happened. Like I have said
before, you never know what you are going to wake up to on this trip.
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