London

If you haven't read the previous post, "Ireland", I suggest you do. It covers the first part of the trip I took over spring break, which includes both Ireland and London, London being second.

Day One
After departing from the Shannon Airport in Ireland, we made our short flight of about an hour over to Great Britain. Just my luck, I was sandwiched in between Helen and Samson so the flight was bound to be an interesting one. When the stewardess made her way down the aisle offering cokes or snacks (which on all previous flights had been free), Samson raised his hand for a Pepsi and she replied with "A Euro fifty, please." Samson, dumbstruck, searched his bag for some coins and handed them to her, receiving back a very unusually small can of Pepsi. After staring for a few seconds, he turned around to ask Kapela why we had to pay for drinks on this flight. At this point, Helen grabbed the Pepsi and hid it in her backpack, so that when Samson turned around the beloved Pepsi was gone. He looked around for a while- just under the seats and around us -before we convinced him to ask everyone else on the flight if they had seen his Pepsi. He even made a sign, and held it up to people who returned in fits of laughter (were they laughing at him or with him...?). After asking the flight attendant if she would make an announcement about it, we finally gave in and put the Pepsi back on his seat before he came to sit back down. Ha!

We landed in London and didn't have to fill out any paperwork since Great Britain and Ireland are tied together as far as those things go. Upon waiting for our bus, Kapela told our group to decide on what we were doing tonight. Megan had an idea of going on the Jack the Ripper Walking Tour, which interested everyone in the group, except me. I just wasn't keen on walking around late at night learning about the murder mystery of Jack. Eventually I gave in, not wanting to drag everyone else down. We once again quickly dropped our things off at the hotel and were off on our way to dinner and to exchange money. After George, our new tourguide, led us briskly to a shop just down the street from our hotel to get some Pounds, everyone was in shock. When you traded in one hundred US Dollars, you received fifty-six Pounds back! This was definitely an eye-opener for everyone. The Tube Station, which I was very excited about, was just a little further down and we took it all the way to dinner! Our three day passes cost us around fifteen to twenty Pounds, which meant that after paying that we could use the passes to ride the tube as often as we needed for the next few days.

Dinner was good... it was basically just salad with very real-looking leaves and hamburgers. After dinner we went to take the tour which started at the Tower of London. One woman led the whole tour, taking a group of at least fifty people all over a small area of London and educating everyone on the murders, where they took place, and the theories over Jack and why everything happened how it did. I was pretty tired so I wasn't focused the entire time or else I'd give a more in-depth explanation of where we went and what the woman told us. Lucky for me we went back to the hotel not too late and I actually got some decent sleep. For the rest of the trip I roomed with Helen and Claudia, which was nice, but our room was definitely a mess by the first night as seen below.

Pictures have been removed temporarily. They will be back up shortly.


Day Two
This was my favorite day of the entire trip. It was so packed with things to do along with tons of free time so our group got a lot of things done and had a great time overall... this part of the post will be long. With lots of pictures!

The day started off with a professionally led tour of the popular places of the city. With the first stop being St. Paul's Cathedral, I was obviously excited. I love old cathedrals from the outside to the inside; they're just so impressive! Our grop got off the charter bus and looked around the outside of the church, which was apparently all we were going to see. Although this sounds like a sad story, the experience was nothing short of interesting. The building was so massive that it took forever just to walk around it. Once we got to the front, I felt so incredibly small. Each time I tried to take a picture, my camera would only be able to fit in a tiny part of what I was actually trying to capture- it was that big. I even went all the way across the street and area in front of the church, and still couldn't fit it all in. As you can see on the picture of me on the steps (which only makes up half of the height of the building), I was just tiny. The architecture was amazing. In order to make up an excuse to go inside, I went to the bathroom and got a glimpse of one of the sanctuaries housed by the cathedral. It was just gorgeous. There was even a statue of John Wesley! Go Methodists!

Next up was the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace. We arrived about forty minutes before the ceremony started, so we split off into groups to explore around the pavillion and walkway in front of the palace. In the middle there's this huge statue of Queen Victoria that's just a beautiful gold and white. A group of us also took a picture with a "bobby", or British policeman. All of the security men were very on guard and yelling at people if they walked in specific places or went anywhere near the guards. About ten minutes before the ceremony started, which took place every day, our tour guide led us to a spot that wasn't very crowded at all, so I didn't expect to get a very good view of the guards marching past. But to my surprise, this lady knew what she was doing- the guards walked right past us on their way to the building where they slept in. Throughout the whole ceremony there was a band playing, and we even heard one of the songs that our honor band played this year at UIL!

After the Changing of the Guard, we completely had the rest of the day to ourselves. I went with a big group that was planning on going to the Tower of London before lunch in order to get a group discount. Once we got off the tube stop at the Tower, a few of us were exceptionally hungry so we just kind of unofficially decided to skip out on the Tower for now and go grab some food to energize us for the rest of the day. Unfortunately this led one of the chaperones to be a bit dissappointed in us for leaving without telling her but... oh well. Claudia, Helen, Samson, Esther, Joey and I walked around for a bit before realizing that we had no idea where to find a local pub. We kept on running into businesses and no restaurants. Eventually I just asked one of the locals where we could find a cheap place to eat and luckily he just pointed us across the Tower Bridge, saying that there were a lot of pubs in that direction. The walk across the bridge was breathtaking. The river went on forever and the bridge was so tall and beautiful. For lunch we found ourselves at a pub- much different from those in Ireland I might add -where we split two plates of fish and chips. Although the fish was a bit bland, it was still fun to have the good old fish and chips in the heart of London.

Being only a bridge away from the Tower of London with our stomachs full, my group headed back to the landmark and bought our tickets. We didn't go on a guided tour, but I think that we saw enough. There were lots of buildings, most of them almost like museums, just displaying important artifacts from the history of London. My favorite room was that of the Crown Jewels. The security doors into this building were honestly at least four feet thick, which was no surprise because there were thousands of precious jewels inside. Swords, crowns, jewelry, you name it. It took a while to get through everything. Our group took a picture with a Beefeater (or guard) since most of the regular red-coat fur-hat guards were all out of reach or inside of fences. From what I saw it wasn't like the movies where you could go up to the guards and try to make them laugh unfortunately, because we were all in a goofy mood and would've loved the challenge.

Once we left the Tower, the six of us made our way back to the nearest Tube station and attempted to make our way to the London Eye- a magnificent observation wheel in the heart of London that overlooks the city. Once we got there, I realized that this was indeed not a regular ferris wheel. Instead of sitting in the open air, about twenty people climbed into a little capsule with a round bench in the center. The capsule was obviously clear so everyone was able to look outside. At the top we reached nearly 443 feet. After attempting to get in line, we figured out that you had to go inside a nearby building first to buy tickets, then get in line for the actual ride. We waited nearly thirty minutes to purchase our twelve-euro tickets and then got in the line near the observation wheel. The "flight" was amazing (British Airways was involved in the design of the wheel) and took nearly twenty-five minutes to complete. There were lots of good picture opportunites, as you'll see below.

After getting off, we started walking back across one of the bridges towards Big Ben, which all of us wanted to see (and hear!). When it started chiming for four o'clock Esther got so excited. She proposed that we "stay until five to hear it again, please!!!" She's so funny. Once we were inside the Tube station, there was a man selling paintings for around ten euros. Each one of us bought a picture as a authentic London souvenier.

Meeting up with the whole group around dinner time, we all headed to dinner before going to the Dominion Theatre to see "We Will Rock You." The musical was based entirely on Queen songs and basically just made a story line out of their greatest hits. The rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody as the finale was to die for... it was just a blast. Everyone inside the theatre was jumping around and singing along. Samson stole a pair of the mini binoculars you could rent for fifty cents and the rest of us bought t-shirts with the musical's logo on the front. I would see it again in a heartbeat!

After this long day, all of us were exhausted. Helen, Claudia, and I went right to bed once we got back to the hotel and prepared ourselves for our final full day in London.

Pictures have been removed temporarily. They will be back up shortly.


Day Three
Stonehenge! I had been looking forward to this throughout the whole trip. It's just one of those places that everyone has to see once during their lifetime. Everyone was responsible for preparing a sack lunch after buying groceries from the store across the street from our hotel. For about three euros I got a sandwich and some chips which I would eat later on the bus ride home. After the long bus ride there, our group went out into the cold and windy weather with our headsets and found ourselves at the historical site. Unfortunately after listening to the commentary for no longer than two minutes, I was bored. I think the only thing that I was excited about previously was the fact that I was going to be at Stonehenge, and not learning all of the history behind it... oh well. Our group had fun looking at the "sheepy sheep" and going to the souvenier shop afterward. Overall it wasn't as fun as I had expected it to be, but I guess in the end looking at rocks can't be all that exciting.

Once we began coming back into the main parts of London, everyone got dropped off at different places. Some left at Abbey Road, then our group from yesterday got off at some random place near a tube station. We didn't really know what we wanted to do yet, so we just began walking around. Most of us needed to use the bathroom pretty badly, so we wandered over to Piccadilly Square to a Burger King, where the bathrooms were completely made out of stainless steel, which was just awkward. The restaurant was two stories though, so that was exciting! Next up we went and looked around a CD store, then finally found ourselves in China Town. All that there was to see here was restaurants and such, so not really anything for us teenage kids. In the end, we all bought a few shirts and souveniers and called it a day. (It was hard to out-do yesterday's events.)

Tonight was the special night that everyone had been looking forward to: Discotech Night! We all got dolled up at the hotel before we went out to a nice dinner at... another hotel? Nontheless, it was a very nice buffet-style dinner that left everyone full. It was a bit of a walk to dinner from the Tube station, so all the girls (especially Claudia) were already complaining about their high-heeled shoes on their feet. We lingered at the hotel for a while after dinner since we didn't want to get to the club before ten or eleven. Once the time came, our group began the search for the club.

It sounds easy, right? Just pick out one of the many clubs in London and there you go. No. Since no one in our group besides the chaperones was eighteen, we shouldn't be allowed in any of the clubs. Kapela was a bit surprised by this since last year, London didn't have an age restriction in their clubs so everyone got in on their last trip without a problem. This year, the law had changed and the bouncers were pretty strict when it came to this one in particular: No one under eighteen allowed. We all tried the "We're American and we left our passports at the hotel, but I swear I'm eighteen!!!", but that failed miserably at three locations. By this point everyone was exhausted from all the walking and was losing faith in getting everyone into a club. Finally, one of the natives took us to a small, two-story club called Sac and success! We all got in. For fifteen or something euros it was a bit of a splurge but it was definitely worth it. We all danced, even though half of us were scared to (including me- I can't dance at all!). When this weird stalker guy started hitting on some of the girls in our group, Bon-Jovi (also known as Juan and Joey) saved the day by guarding our group away from everyone else. I'll never forget that night! Well maybe I will... because I was pretty tired. Haha. It was a great way to end the trip overall.

Pictures have been removed temporarily. They will be back up shortly.


Day Four
Today was waking up and then going straight to the airport. The airport in London was more like a mall than an airport- there were tons of stores everywhere and you had to look long and hard to find your terminal. We spent a couple of hours there and then we were on our way back home on the long flight to America. Once I got off at Atlanta I immediately called my parents and Alex to let them know that I was still alive and almost home. I slept the entirety of the flight from Atlanta to Dallas, and once we arrived in Dallas I couldn't believe it. I tiredly followed our group from the terminal right across to the baggage claim area where everyone was waiting. It was definitely a sight to see. My mom ran up to me and grabbed me before I could say anything. Next was my dad and then finally, Alex. It was so great to see everyone and that woke me up for about an hour. Alex came over afterward and explained to me that he had a massive ear infection all week long! We were both tired so he came over for a bit and then my dad (upon my request) drove him home.

This trip was something I'll never forget! My first out-of-country experience was definitely something I owe to my parents and Kapela. She was a great teacher and really prepared me for what I would be experiencing. I can't wait to travel again!

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