London Adventures!

The following is a log of my journeys in london, starting the 15th of February, Friday.

Well, I missed two buses and a Euro bus while waiting for Martha and Amanda, but we made it to the bus station fine. Finished the last half of Translations (a book for school) on the way to the airport. Got to the airport, had to wait to check in - no one was there. Checked in, Amanda got food at the airport, looked around a bit, and boarded the plane. Slept for a bit, then started "reading in the dark", also for class. Plane got in, and we were in London! We were very excited. We took the direct train into the city. Right outside was the Gherkin, it's a big cylindrical building that looks like a cucumber, apparently, so they call it the gherkin. Within 10 minutes someone came up to us and joked about the Gherkin. Very nice guy, sounded Australian. We decided to look around, maybe find a pub. I guess we looked lost, so some other lady asked if we needed directions. That's two nice people in 20 minutes. We found a sushi place, and i had some very good sushi. Eventually we found a sandwich shop: burger and fries (take away) for 2.50 pounds. cheap! They have all the food take away or eat in. Eat in is a few pence more, i think it has something to do with the Value Added Tax, I'm not sure. Needless to say, I would take away every time, usually eating it right outside the store while we waited for a bus or something.
I found my hostel easily enough, and luckily I didnt' get locked out! Apparently it closes at 10, which could have been problematic. Very clean room, very nice. A bit cold, but all in all not bad. I had a 16 person room, but there were only 4 in it, which was cool
The next morning, I got to our meeting place early (we had to use meeting places because our phones didn't' work over there) and got a muffin and started reading. The girls were late, so i started to get worried. Turns out they were doing construction on the tube. But we flagged down one of our buses (we got the Big Bus Tour, which was awesome, You could hop on or off, and it took to you all the touristy stuff and told you a little about the city, Very handy) We crossed London Bridge (which wasn't falling down, contrary to the children's song. That's just misinformation, as far as I am concerned) It took us to London Castle, which is actually a palace, one of the 4. It was really cool! We listened to the tour guy for a while, then the girls got cold and bored (It was really cold there...even for me) so we went of on our own. We saw the crown jewels, which were beautiful! Then we hopped back on the bus, got to see the eye and big ben, took lots of pictures from the bus. We then went to Westminster Abby, which was really cool. We saw Darwen's Grave/Monument (I couldn't really tell who was buried there, and who was just memorialised), Newton's, Shakespeare, Browning, Shelly, Byron, a bunch of famous people. Other than that, it was just pretty cool. Very intricate. Then we had lunch at a nice sandwich shop, and went to the place for the ghosts of London tour. The guy was pretty good, but it was FREEZING. We went to lots of pubs, and i had whiskey to keep me warm. Bad idea. Disgusting. We saw Ben Franklin's house (when he was the ambassador to London), The Curiosity Shop (which is a novel from Dickins), and where sweeny todd would have lived, if he actually did, by Front Street. Finally, we ate a pub, Shakespeare's head, which took forever, but was overall good. Then i went back to the hostel.
Oh, also points of interest: they had the Sherlock Holmes bar, which was mentioned in Hounds of the Baskervilles, so they renamed it the Sherlock Holmes. And we saw the Australian War memorial.

Day the Third

Got up today, once again made it to the meetign place before them. We were supposed to make the tour for the changing of the guard, but they were late so we had to run to catch up. I got really mixed up at Trafalger's square, but they had these cool lion statues, kinda looked like Aslan. And there was this really neat chalk artist that did a cool classical picture. Anyway, we made it to the walking tour. They took us on "the mall" which is the area infront of Buckingham that the queen rides up in. It's 2/3rds of a mile. We saw the horses go by, the Blues and Reds, which is WIlliam and Harry's Regiment. We went to St. James (one of the other palaces, with London Castle, Buckingham, and Kensington). We saw the old guard, they did there thing, and came down to head to buckingham for changing of the guard. There was a marching band, but they couldn't play for a bit because there was a mass going on at St. James. So we ran to the mall, and watched as they all came down and marched to Buckingham. (the band played then. It was rather melancholy.) we moved to where the new guard was coming in. They all wore the bearskin hats, and the bearskins come from Canda. Depedning on the ornimentations/feathers, you can tell what group they are in. Another band played. We didnt' actually see the chaning of the guard, but it would have been boring and taken forever anyway. The tour guide did a little reinactment..kinda lame. Then we went to the Big Bus Terminal to get a bonus card. We were going to go to Camden Market, but it burned down last week. Go figure. So we walked back (it was cold) to a cheap pub we had seen, but it was closed. So we had pizza, which was pretty good. Then we went to the brittish museum! REally cool. We saw the Rosetta stone, bunch of mummies, greek and roman stuff, and chineese tapistreis. Those were cool. They had stuff on them, but the words in chinese for 'butterfly' sounds like 'long life', so when they painted a butterfly, it also meant long life, so lots of puns. it was cool, i remember that from when i went to China. Speaking of that, they also had an exhibit of Terra Cotta warriors, haha. Then we went to Kensignton castle, but it was dark, and we couldn't really see it. Then we went to the Underground, and to King's Cross, and we went to platform 9 3/4! we took lots of pictures, haha. (harry potter, for all of you who didnt' get it).
Then we went to find Hard Rock Cafe, the original, which was founded in London. But we realized the last train to get us to the airport left at 11:30, and didn't start until 5:30 in the morning, but our plane was at 6, so we would have had to get there earlier than that. So we decided to sleep in the airport. So we had to get a quick bite at some sandwich shop, hustle and bustle and get to the hostel where we were supposed to say and try to get our money back. We did, and i only lost the 2 pound booking fee, which wasn't bad. We made the last shuttle at 11:30. We stayed at the airport until 5:30. I found a fairly comfortable spot under a kiosk, and my bag made a nice pillow, since it was mostly clothes. We got up, had breakfast. Security took forever, and they took my toothpaste (jerks). We made it, but it was foggy at the airport, and we're delayed. A bunch of other planes were cancelled, so we got really worried. We finally made it on, but they didn't' have a pilot, so by the time everything was said and done, we left 3 hours after we were supposed to. Thankfully it was on the way back!

This concludes the London Adventure. Thank you for reading. Tune in next time, same inconsistent blog time, same blog channel, for my Paris Adventure!