London Fog

It seems like these past few days have been an entire week. I'm sore, kinda tired and definitely glad to be back in my flat. The weekend isn't even over yet and I have so much homework to do in the next couple of days. But I'll do a recap of the past few days, and you guys can follow my flickr starting here! These are NOT all of my pictures and I will gladly share the rest when I get home. I can only upload so many onto flickr a month and since it's only been about a week into the month, I want to preserve a bit of it.

We got up early and left campus at about 8:30 to head into London by coach bus, where we met up with our tour guides. Our tour guide was fantastic and showed us all these small literary references, mainly with Charles Dickens. It was just... it was amazing and we walked around for nearly three hours before even going into St. Paul's cathedral! Now, we couldn't take any pictures inside the cathedral, but I wish we could have. It was... amazing. Breathtaking and so huge! So you guys will just have to take my word for it or see if there are any pictures on google. But it was gorgeous and we spent about 45 minutes or so in there before heading to the Museum of London. That was a big history of London through neanderthal times up until about the fire or so, and the plague. Interesting stuff.

After that, the group of us headed off to our hostel, getting a bit lost but eventually finding the place relatively easy enough. It was a pretty cool place, honestly, and I have a few pictures of the beds which weren't bad. There were so many different nationalities in there. People from France, Spain, New Zealand, and of course America. It just insane! We had dinner at a nice pub. It was one of the girl's birthdays, so we ended up going out to a place called Zoo Bar that was a bar/club. You all know me and what I'm about... so clubbing wasn't the highlight of my weekend, really. Sorta fun, but not the best. Didn't get back to the hostel until about 3:15 in the morning. Bleh.

But the next day was amazing! And I hung around with people that just made my day that much more fantastic.

You guys can see most of it from my pictures and we did so much walking and riding the underground! First we went to King's Cross and found Platform 9 3/4 from the HP movies, which was awesome. Then we went over to the London Eye and Big Ben... and I swear... hearing and seeing Big Ben and the clock tower... it was insane. Most of us were just so stunned by the sight. It's not even that big! Not compared to the sky scrapers back home. But I nearly cried at the sound of the bell... it was just amazing. We decided to save the London Eye for the next time we're in London, which will be in a few weeks.

Then we went past Westminster Abbey... it was about 12 pounds for us to get in, so we decided to skip it for the day and come back. Then it was about lunchtime so we ate at another amazing pub before heading off to Buckingham Palace, which was just... huge and awesome. After that, we went to Victoria Coach station for bus tickets before heading off to Abbey Road!

And yeah, we found it!

It was a bit of a hike, but we eventually got there from the underground station and it was just... we got to see Apple Studios and it was just this pilgrimage of Beatles Fans everywhere! The wall that surrounds the studio was covered in signatures and messages and we wrote on it before recreating the Abbey Road album cover. Needless to say, most of the traffic wasn't pleased about all the tourists doing so... but we managed to get it. I don't have a copy of the girls doing it yet, but when I do, I'll post it.

After that, we booked it back to Victoria coach and got on the bus to head home. My final sight of the night was Big Ben and Parliament all it up... and just made my day complete. When we got back it was epically foggy and cold in Canterbury, but I got back and pretty much crashed!

Overall... an amazing time in London and I can't wait to go back!
Love you all and miss you! Time for homework!
-Sam