London Calling

Here I am, back from my last trip! I’m here in Dublin for 10 more days and then I fly home. Time has really flown by fast. I’m excited to go home and see my family over Christmas, but I’ll be sad not to be coming back right away.
I’ve got my cup of tea and a story, so now I’m going to tell you all about my weekend in London, England.
We arrived late at night on Friday because Kristyn has an afternoon class that she didn’t want to miss. I think we should have just flown in early on Saturday, but she was not into the whole morning flight thing. It was midnight by the time the bus got us into the city from the airport and we had to try and figure out how to get to our hostel, which is way outside of the city centre. First we took the bus the wrong way, so we got off and hopped on the right bus, went to the end of its line and had to take another (this hostel was about a 40 minute bus ride out) to the stop the hostel told us to get off at. Then we start walking towards the hostel using the house numbers to guide us, and after about 10 minutes of walking next to this enormous cemetery we figure we’re going the wrong way because it didn’t end any time soon. By this time it was about 4am, so we just called the hostel and want to know what their directions for us were? “Up the road.”
-“Which direction up the road? We’re across from a street called Waverly and a gas station.”
-“Yeah, just go up the road there.”
-“Do we pass Waverly Rd. or go back the way we came towards Kilburn?”
-“Just keep walking up the road until you see a white building.”
We both had thought up some very colorful and unacceptably violent things we wanted to do to the people running this hostel, but I’ll leave that part out.
We hung up and decided to continue going past the cemetery to see what was up there just in case that was the direction “up the road” she meant. Turns out it was, so we dragged our tired selves in. We got our room and headed upstairs only to find that the beds we were supposed to stay in had no bedding on them. More violent thoughts. We went downstairs, told them and ended up, thankfully, getting a room to ourselves. We couldn’t believe that we had to come back to stay here on Sunday evening. We knew it was going to be a nightmare.

On Saturday morning we woke up as late as we possibly could and still get breakfast, which gave us only about 4 ½ hours of sleep. We took the London Underground, which is extremely easy to get around on (and kind of expensive), to our next hostel on the complete opposite side of town in Greenwich to drop off our stuff. After we finally figured out how to get into the hostel/bar/playhouse, we dropped off our stuff, freshened up, and went into the city to see Billy Elliot, my first West End show! It was fantastic. The kid who played Billy was a phenomenal dancer, especially for a child, could sing beautifully, and was quite comical. After the show, Kristyn and I went back to the hostel to drop stuff off, get changed, and went out to a pub-crawl. It was the best 14 pounds we spent. They took us to 5 clubs and gave us some good drinks. Strangely enough we met 2 American girls studying right outside of Dublin, the one was from Williamsport, PA (about 30 minutes from Lock Haven) and the other was from L.A. (just like Kristyn). We also met 4 Aussies who were all really fun. At the last club we all stayed until it closed because we were having such a great time. The music was about 15 years behind, which made it so much fun to dance to!
The next morning when we got up, again we only had about 4 ½ hours of sleep. We were going to take a walking tour of London, but that would have required us to get up a couple of hours earlier, and we weren’t having it.

First we used the break in miserable weather to go to Kensington Gardens to see the Peter Pan statue for Kristyn who is obsessed with all things Peter Pan. Kensington Gardens was gorgeous. We saw the Princess Diana garden memorial, Royal Albert Hall (across the street from the park), the Peter Pan statue, and much more. After that we headed to Westminster Abbey. While going there we saw Parliament and Big Ben because they’re so close and took tons of pictures. The abbey closes on Sundays for worship, so we decided we’d wait for the service to start, we’d go in to see and take pictures and then leave. Then we find out that the Westminster Abbey Choir was singing and there was a candlelight service for Advent Sunday, so we stayed and ended up getting these great seats where high commissioners sit. How we pulled this off, I have no idea. It really is a beautiful Abbey. Then we took the tube to King’s Cross to see PLATFORM 9 ¾!!! They had a plaque set up and a trolley that looks like it’s gone halfway through the wall. We had quite the little photo shoot and I think we were more excited than the little kids who were there. We went to that craptastic hostel we stayed in the first night for our first full night’s sleep since we arrived in London. We both fell asleep around 8pm.

The next morning we woke up to go on the London Eye (big ferris wheel on the Thames). We ended up arriving late for our scheduled time to go on because the shuttle our hostel was supposed to have running from 8am-8pm was not running until 10am and the buses take forever. It turned out that they didn’t care, which was good. The sights up there were amazing! It was definitely worth the money we paid, I think. We then got off the Eye and headed to Buckingham Palace. We didn’t quite know when the changing of the guards was, so we figured we’d just go and mess with them, take some pictures and leave. It so happened that we arrived just as they started changing! It was cool to see, but the fuzzy hat guys didn’t come back! There were just two guys with flat cop-type hats behind the gates. It was kind of disappointing, but at least we saw them change and got lots of pictures. After we saw Buckingham Palace we had seen pretty much everything we wanted to see, so we went hunting for souvenirs and found the best postcards ever (Mom, Dad, and Christopher will know what I mean)! When the time came to call for the shuttle (like we were told we’d be able to do) so that we could get our bags back from our hostel and head to the airport, they said that the shuttle wasn’t running. We gave them a piece of our mind and ended up getting our bags and getting back to Victoria Station on time to catch the bus back to the airport. I absolutely loved London and can’t wait to go back someday!
I guess I’ll see all of you who read fairly soon! Until then…

Cheers,
Katelyn