Adventures in London

Since we had no class on wednesday, Nov 11 (Armistice Day/Veterans Day), a couple friends and I left for London that tuesday after class and came back at the crack of dawn on friday. We had all traveled together in smaller groups, but this time all five of us were together. We wandered around a bit on tuesday night but were upset to find that things were pretty quiet. Except at the hostel, where we checked out the bar downstairs and met one of our roommates, a French guy who enjoyed hearing himself talk. We bailed on that as quickly as possible and went to bed so we could wake up bright and early.
We woke up at 7 and left at 8 each day, starting wednesday with a walk to the Tower of London. Liz, Kate, and Jill went on the tour while Molly and I crossed the Tower Bridge and walked up river a bit. She stopped for a tour of the Globe and I went next door to check out the Tate Modern. Of course, they had some bizarre modern art, but the collection also includes pieces by Monet, Picasso, Matisse, Lichtenstein, and quite a few by Andy Warhol, who I like a lot. I met Molly after her tour and we did some exploring as we made our way back to the Tower.


Recognize this from Harry Potter? The Millennium Bridge is right by the Tate Modern, so this is where we crossed back to the other side.


We were on a mission to find Indian food and passed a place just as it started to rain!


Next on our schedule was hiking it over to Piccadilly Square for a walking tour. The ground we covered in the walk over there alone could have made a good tour!

The parks were amazing.

We couldn't find the tour, which might have been cancelled to to rain or the holiday, but went again the next morning and found the group. Buckingham Palace was on the tour, but here's a photo from when we walked by wednesday night. The queen's flag was flying, meaning that she was home.

London is soooo ready for Christmas. All the restaurants had signs in the window about making Christmas reservations, a lot of places had decorations up, and we even heard Christmas music during one of our many coffee stops. Molly and I got a little excited and the server said we were the happiest people she'd seen all day.

After dinner at a pub, Molly and I headed next door for some cider while the others went to find Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross. I wish I'd gotten some Harry Potter style photos with them! We met back up at the hostel and prepared for another early morning, which started with a walk to Westminster Abbey. Then we went to Harrods, which was extravagance as I'd never seen it before. A guard told us we couldn't come in as a group of 5 and tried to make 2 or 3 of us go in a different entrance, but settled for letting us walk in different directions. We reconvened outside 20 minutes later to catch the walking tour.

Our tour guide, Smith, took us to "play with the guards." Molly and I got so excited about Kate posing for a photo that we each took several shots and she called us creepy.

After the tour, Molly, Liz, and I joined the tour guides and some other tourists for lunch because you get a discount after the tour and Molly and I were able to buy discounted tickets to the Grim Reaper tour of London later that evening. Between lunch and the tour, the three of us had time to walk to the British Museum. Liz left to meet the others at Westminster for a service or something (at which time it was free, rather than an expensive tour) but Molly and I had about an hour to look around and really liked their Egyptian collection. As well as seeing mummys and cool exhibits on how they were preserved, we also saw the Rosetta Stone, no big deal or anything.

The evening tour, on a dark rainy night, included executions gone wrong, ghosts in the Tower (here's the Tower Bridge, from the Tower of London), the plague, and an emphasis on the story of Jack the Ripper, including stops at where his victims were found.

London by night. After the eerie tour, we had an equally scary meal at an Indian restaurant. My vegetable curry was too spicy to even touch, not to mention was nothing like a curry dish I've ever seen and Molly's was on the other end of the spectrum, which she compared to baby food. We were exhausted by this point, so we asked for the check and left onto the cold, rainy streets, where a woman outside of a pub yelled something at us. We knew the direction of the closest metro station (pardon me, the tube) and hightailed it over there before anything crazier happened. I'm pretty sure the guy in the bunk above me actually had the plague, so between that and chatty/unthoughtful roommates, I barely slept before waking up at 4 to get to King's Cross. Despite our zombie-like demeanor and one skipped class, Molly and I still aced our tests that afternoon, proving there's nothing wrong with skipping class in the name of adventuring every now and then!