So we have been in London for 9 days now and I will say it has been hard to find time to sit down on a computer long enough to write something thoughtful - so yes, we've been having a great time!
Unfortunately, I fell sick just a day before our flight so the highlight of day 1 in London had to be the moment my head hit the pillow of my hostel bed, which then became my new best friend for the next 3 hours, or 4 - best nap of my life. That night we went for a quick bit to eat at a nearby hole in the wall restaurant. What did we eat?- Pho. Clearly diving into the British culture already ;) It gets better I promise.
Day 2 we met up with a friend of mine who I studied abroad with in Austalia, Alice. She and her sister Emily showed us around London for the day. We moseyed through Covent Garden watching street performers make fun of small children, witnesses (and walked through) a flash pillow fight in Trafalgar Square, from there - Westminster Abbey, the House of Parliament and Buckingham Palace - the flag was up so the queen was in! Our day ended at some Cider Pub with tons of other cider drinkers drinking lots of cider and getting louder and louder. The night ended with Alice announcing as we headed for the tube... "But I just want to daaaance!" - Welcome to London!
In between then and now my favorite places we have been are our trip to Stonehenge and a visit to the adorable little town of Bath, walking through the busy streets of Camden and the Stables Market with tons of cheap but delicious food, stumbling upon amazing places such as Highgate Park which we spent hours at and of course hanging out with friends! I'm starting to get British humor, or at least the concept of it ;)... And - this is not all that important, but the faces of Prince William and Kate are in every London Tourist shop you go into...shirts, mugs, mannequins, even flags have their faces printed on them. It's been tempting, but so far I will not be smuggling memorabilia of British Royalty back into the US ;)
Timing was great on this trip and we were fortunate enough to be able to see Emily and Alice, as well as 2 of my friends from college Anya - who lives in London with her husband and son and whose house we are staying at now :) - and Rachel and her boyfriend Mike who happened to be visiting London when we were. We all went to dinner last night and had a good traditional english pie, then Anya introduced Rachel and I to "Pimms" at the pub - YuMMY!
Although we have been here over a week there is so much to do in London alone so I am sure we have not yet seen everything, but we are very satisfied so far! We have found that wandering around has been the best way to find cool places or stumble upon things. We plan on ending the trip with a BBQ at Emily's house tomorrow night, then flying out Monday morning to go to our next stop - Dublin!
Important Words or Phrases:
Bloak, Rubbish, Buggie, Toilets, Pleasant, Quite, or Quite Pleasant, Lovely, Bin, Tube
Things to Remember that confused me at first:
Don't ask for the "Restroom" it's "Toilet", the Tube is the Underground and it can take you anywhere around London, to stand on an escalator go to the right to walk up it go to the left (it's this way in Australia, somehow I forgot), buy an Oyster card for the tube, Carlsberg Beer was not so bad and one of the cheaper options
shweeeeeeet
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