The Luck of London

Welcome to lovely London Town!

All of us girls!

On the double-decker Bus tour!

I thought the cabs were so cute!

Off to Hogwarts!

Here comes the snow!

 This has been by far the craziest European weekend yet for me! Here's a little background music for you to listen to as you read this! "Woke up in London yesterday..." It fits my weekend perfectly!! Friday we woke up at the break of dawn and headed to the airport to catch our flight to London! The way there was great, easy as could be! We took a train from the airport into our part of town. I couldn't believe it, but I realized I've gotten so used to speaking in French! Whenever I went to say "thank you" merci came out with no thought at all! But I can't even explain how relieving it was to be where people spoke the same language as we did, and it sure came in handy later in the trip!  Once we arrived we took the tube, what they call their metro, to the area of our hostel "Monkeys in a Tree"! The hostel was really nice! It was above a bar (which is always a perk!) and very clean and friendly! My roommates for the night was from Sicily, Italy and a group of girls from a small school in New Jersey!  We got freshened up then hit the city! We spent the night exploring and of course had fish and chips for dinner! Yum yum yum! After a few drinks and a full tummy we headed back to the hostel because we knew it'd be a long day! Saturday was awesome! We took a bus tour of the city and got to see all the main spots; Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, the National Museum, the London Eye, the Aquarium (the biggest in Europe!) and the start of the construction of what is going to be the tallest building in Europe... You name it, we saw it! I even drove over the London Bridge (And it didn't fall down!) and the Tower Bridge! (Cool fact about the Financial District of London: It has more banks in the square mile than anywhere in Europe! Their money is so heavy no wonder why they need so many places to store it!) Of course the girls wanted to do a Harry Potter tour, but being a die-hard Twilight fan it wasn't my cup of tea (even though I did make a special trip to see platform 9 3/4!), so Korrie and I went exploring on our own and saw the China Town where they were celebrating the Chinese New Year and the theater district! And stopped for some eclairs too on our adventure! Then we hopped on the boat to take a short cut to the West Minister Abbey where we were meeting up with the HP fans. But with our luck it just so happened to be New Zealand's independence day! Talk about a party! Everyone was dressed up in crazy costumes and had been drinking since the break of dawn I'm assuming. Korrie and I were about to ask them what pub crawl they were apart of so we could join in! Thank goodness we were able to find our friends through the crowds of people! Then we explored a little bit more before getting ready for a night out! By the time we got back into the city it had started to snow! How pretty! We all started having a good time and admired the flurries outside the window of the pub.We liked it at first... until the tubes shut down. And everything began closing early. London isn't used to getting snow, so it was panic mode! But we still managed to find a club and have a great time! Someone even told me while we were out that I had a good British accent! We ice skated our way home to the hostel and finally made it home! This is where things get really interesting...

We got home at 4 AM (Aren't you proud of me Mom and Dad?) and woke up at 5:30 AM to get onto a train to Manchester to catch our flight home. We trudged through the slush and snow with our backpacks on and ready to just fall asleep ASAP. We finally arrived to the train station to have first our train delayed a half hour. But with our luck, the train was canceled. SCARIEST MOMENT EVER! How in the world were we supposed to get home if our three hour train was canceled and we had no way of getting to our flight?! Thank goodness there was a train coming in an hour, but that meant cutting the rest of the traveling pretty close. We ran to the platform as soon as it was called and I swear I was asleep before we even started moving. Once we arrived to Manchester (it's not a very pretty city; when I looked out the window on the train it looked like a mix of the sets from "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" in Charlie's town and Harry Potter from what I've seen of it) to find out we had to take yet another train to the airport. So we hopped on to that, just making it in the nick of time, and got to the airport. We literally ran through the airport to get through security and got to the terminal just ten minutes before the gate was closing. SO SCARY! But thank goodness we made it, or we would've been stuck in London until who knows when! (Not that I would've minded, but I was ready to get home and sleep!) But in the long run we got home safely! I think the 'Big Guy' was just trying to make sure we realized how lucky we are to have this experience and wanted to keep us on our toes. But hey, if we could make it through a snow storm in London I think we'll be pretty good at traveling by the end of all of this! Lets just hope it doesn't snow in Dublin next weekend!

In the end, snow ice and sleet didn't change my love for London! It was such a beautiful city! All of the buildings were amazing, it was so clean, and the people were so friendly! I had a great time with all of the girls I traveled with (nothing like a girls' weekend away!) Now it's back to school! I had a midterm paper to write tonight (hence the reason I'm still up at 1 AM... plus skype and facebook...) but tomorrow for my Theology class we are going to a Jewish History Museum. And do you know what that means? Falafel for lunch, ooooo yeahhhhh! I have lots to look forward to this week; I'm going back to the Centre Pompedui for class twice (my favorite museum!), we're going to the top of the Eiffel Tower one night this week, going to DUBLIN on Friday! (We already planned going to the Guinness Factory and Temple Bar!) and a bunch of things I have left on my to-do list before I leave for Rome in just ten days! The song couldn't say it any better.. "This has gotta be a good life"!