So, we landed a little south of London Thursday early afternoon and took the Gatwick express to city.
I love taking trains. I think I get my best naps on trains. So so so much better than buses.
Then on our way to our hostel we got to see Westminster Abbey, Parliament, Big Ben, The London Eye, etc. Don't worry...it was only 3pm, and the sun was setting. It gets dark SO early!
(these two pictures are from Alex...every other picture is a google image)
After finding our hostel (which by the way...i am SO over hostels. I hate them. I just want a room to myself and maybe one other person! I want my own bathroom. ughhhh) we got to go to an Anglican evensong service at Westminster Abbey. It was incredible! The choir sounded like angels. It was mixed with boys under the age of 10 and adult men. The second they started singing I had chills. It was beautiful.
After that we spent about an hour trying to figure out the easiest/economical way to get around London with a group of 5. FINALLY...we made the decision to take a cab to Soho where we had great touristy trap Indian food. Luckily we were given plenty of money for meals.
We then tried to go to the British Museum, but they closed early. We had heard that they stayed open until 11pm, but...no such thing. After that we went up to Camden Town. omg...it was like Austin on speed. It was so cool. It's one of the centers of the old London punk rock scene and Dr.Martins.
We didn't know where to go once we got there, so we just walked into some bar, and it turned out to be awesome. They were having Nashville night! So this dried up rockstar looking guy in his 40s was singing old country that they definitely didn't play on KDXE. He was so sweaty. It was disgusting but really funny and great. We got to talk to a lot of cool people too. David and Galen, yall would have loved it. I could just picture Galen yelling, "this is so awesome!"
The next day we went to Oxford. I don't know enough about Oxford, and it's really hard to navigate yourself around it. It's not like there's an entrance to the campus. The campus is the city and the city is the campus. There aren't really any signs explaining what is significant and what isn't. I had the same problem when I went a few years ago.
When we got back a few of us went out to Chinatown and Soho.
Saturday was the best! After only about 5 hours of sleep, my friend Jeran and I got up around 8 to go to Tower Bridge, have coffee on the River Thames, walk along the river, and go to the Tate Modern. The whole morning was spent dreaming that we could actually live there. We even looked at apartment listings in the window at a real estate office. Turns out a normal flat is about 700 pounds a week! That about $1500 a week! I probably won't be living in London unless a Mr.Rich English Husband comes along to love me forever.
Right before we got to the Tate we witnessed a high fashion photo shoot on the Millennium Bridge in front of the museum! It was awesome! so coooool! Jeran has some pictures of it, but she hasn't uploaded them yet. I'll share them soon. The bad news is that it was for a Japanese magazine. boo. We were so hoping that we were seeing the cover shoot for Vogue or Elle or something...but no such luck.
The Tate was amazing! I got to see like 5 Picassos and Jackson Pollack's. I even got to see Monet's Waterlillies! Everything in there was so cool. It was really neat to see this art after taking an art history class this semester. Yeah, the class was primarily Irish art, but I definitely gained a better understanding of art to help me appreciate this art more.
We only had about 3 hours to spare before we had to meet the group to go to the airport, so we rushed about town trying to get to Brick Lane. Brick Lane is known for being India in the middle of London. The whole street is full of competing curry houses. Brick Lane is also the name of a highly publicized new movie out in the UK. It will be out in the US in March, so we really wanted to see and eat on this street before we see the movie. Jeran also went to India a couple summers ago and is really obsessed with all things India, so this was perfect to go to. By the time we got there and got our takeout(after waiting for like half an hour) we had about 45 minutes to navigate our way across London to our meeting spot. It was hilarious. We were both running with backpacks and full cups of coke(with no lid) and me with a big leaking bag of a 3 course curry meal. We got on two wrong subway lines. I was starting to panic, but we made it to our group only 1 minute late!
My goodness. I love London. Rome and London are incredible. If I could live anywhere in Europe, it'd probably be London just because I don't know Italian. Please go visit it yourself.
Keep in mind...I had on my cowboy boots the whole time. I don't even want to talk about how bad my feet hated me.
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