London

So we just got back from LONDON!!!! We left last Thursday bright and early!!! Caitlin and I got up at about 6:45 got everything together, ate breakfast, said our goodbyes to mama Carmen and flew out the door by 7! We caught a city bus outside our house to take us to the main bus station which took us to Madrid to the airport. While on the bus we coincidentally ran into Steph Brammer who was going to meet us at the bus station. All three of us got on a 9:00 am bus to Madrid, got on a plane and headed to the golden city of London!!! Naturally our flight was delayed, ryan air- once again the one with the stupid jingle with the congratulations for riding on the flight with the highest percentage of flight arrival times. So we were delayed and got into an airport outside of London at 7:15 pm- we pushed and shoved our way out of the plane and sprinted through the airport- and when I say sprinted I mean like 6^th grade 50 yard dash sprinting- I had a layer of sweat all through my body. We were going through customs by 7:25- our bus was set to leave at 7:30. We sprinted left, right, up and down and for some magical reason we made it to the bus by 7:30. We are notorious for giving ourselves a ton of time when planning ahead and then when actually traveling things go wrong and we always end up in a jog-a-thon. (And on occasion a sprint off). So as we were putting our bags in the bottom of the bus, Caitlin sadly realized that she had left her journal on the plane! That put a downer on the hour bus ride to London. But we bounced right back up when we got into London and smelled that sweet British air. We walked around trying to find the bus station – where our friend Kiley from college that was studying abroad there, would be picking us up get- because once again the bus we rode on dropped us off on some random street. It turns out that it’s a lot easier to ask for directions in English than in Spanish though. Fancy that. Any who, so we found the bus station and found Kiley!!!! Kiley worked us through the tube (metro) all the way to Vanden House- which originally is like 100 pounds to stay a night there, but we got to stay in Kiley’s room for fifteen pounds a night! Right when I got there I jumped right on kileys bed and proclaimed to her that I was sleeping with her that night! She realized later that night that I was serious, and we got to snuggle all night! We didn’t have enough beds in the room so two of us were going to have to anyway haha it wasn’t just because I wanted to… but really I did want to- I missed her! We got to Vanden House and went to see some other central kids that were studying there!!! We also met up with the boys from our program in Spain that were there in London that we usually travel with. All of us got ready and went to a club called Tiger Tiger. We all just kind of danced as a big group and watched Chris- our friend in our program in Spain and goes to central- go up to random girls and shimmy on them and watched the girls either get creeped out or was loving up on it haha. After Tiger Tiger we went back to the house and made grilled cheese sandwiches!!! We got to eat grilled cheese, oreo cookies, all you can drink milk and so many other things that aren’t available in Spain!!! We were loving it!!! The next day we woke up pretty early to go on our first day of touring. (PS in London, they drive on the right side of the car and the opposite side of the road as well!!! Sooo strange.) We really wanted to go see the changing of the guards at Buckingham palace so we started off our day with a little bit of guard watching. We got to the palace and it wasn’t as crowded as we thought it would be, which we thought was great because we could see better that way. Some Asian guy yelled at Chris, WHERE IS THE CHANGING OF THE GUARDS!?! And once we figured out what he was saying, he just pointed forward and smiled- it was pretty funny but it might have been one of those “you had to be there” kind of things. We watched the guards walk back and forth for about 45 minutes and finally someone pointed out the sign right in front of us that said, CHANGING OF THE GUARDS- TOMORROW AT 11:30. We had all seen the sign but subconsciously assumed they had just forgotten to take the sign down from yesterday since the changing of the guards is every other day. Well it turns out it was right and the changing of the guards was on Sat, not Friday. So we left Buckingham palace and headed to go get some hot chocolate because it was really cold outside! On our way to get the hot chocolate though we stopped at These HUGE lions in a plaza that we could climb on and take pictures. We had to hoist each other up- which was no easy task and the process was way funnier than we could have imagined. After the lion pics, we went and got delicious hot chocolate!!!! From there we went to some plaza where they were building sand volleyball courts for the 2012 olympics!!! We took pics there and moved on to take pictures with cool horses and guards near there. After we took pictures with the horses we read the sign next to us that said “HORSES MAY KICK OR BITE YOU- THANK YOU”. Good to know. So we then toured around the city, went to Big Ben- Ben, one of the kids with us, turned to us and said, “you know, when I was little they use to call me big ben.” We just bursted out laughing and took a pic with him and the clock. We also went and saw the London eye, which is the largest Ferris wheel in the world. From there we also went to Parliament, St. Margaret’s Abbey- (MARGARET!!! I took some pics), Westminster Abbey, and a couple random places. We walked through St. James park and there was a squirrel balancing on a fence, eating a peanut. There was also a bird man that would feed the birds and then when he would walk, all of the birds would follow and sometimes sit on his shoulder. Then we went and ate at McDonalds which we finally got use of our ISIC cards. When we went to Switzerland we asked everywhere if they took these for discounts and everyone just gave us a weird look and said no, in London we got to use them all over the place!!!!! It got us a free cheeseburger, thing of ice cream or there were some other choices. Later that night we made spaghetti and then got ready for……..Wicked the play!!! In the process of getting ready though I was blow drying my hair and I heard a fire alarm so I stopped only to learn that I had set off the fire alarm!!! My hair dryer was sparking and smoke was coming out of everywhere haha. I ran down stairs and I saw the whole group through a window in the kitchen and I pointed to myself and mouthed “that was me!” They all laughed and Kiley went and talked to the lady at the front. The lady told Kiley that the outlet shouldn’t have done that and that it was complete rubbish.

The play was absolutely amazing!!!!! The character, Alphaba- the wicked which was the best singer I have ever heard!!!! We all went back and stalked her on youtube. Later when we got back we all just hung out in Kiley’s room and watched youtube videos and chatted. We called my family on skype too and talked to all of them haha! We just ended up staying in because everyone was pretty tired and we wanted to get up early so that we for sure made it to the real changing of the guards!! So we got up pretty early and we actually had extra time, so we decided to hit up Knotting hill before the guard show. So we hopped on the tube and went to Knotting Hill, it turned out to be pretty lame so we hopped back on the tube and headed to see the Guards!!! There were different groups of guards that played different songs with instruments and marched around. There were tons of people this time!!!! After the changing for the guards we went to the London tower – where they use to keep a lot of prisoners- next to there was London Bridge, the tower bridge, and the millennium bridge (which happens to be in the latest Harry Potter movie). We also got to see the Globe theatre which was where Shakespeare’s first plays were performed-they still don’t have seats in it, it has basically kept its originality but is kept up. The next thing we saw was St. Pauls Cathedral. This is actually where Princess Diana got married! Then one of our last stops of the day was the British museum which was pretty cool but we were all so tired from walking by this point so everything started to become a little less cool as the day progressed. But one really cool thing we did get to see was platform 9 and ¾ which is in the Harry Potter movie as well.

Another cool thing that we got to go see was Abbey Street- this is the crosswalk where the beetles had one of their album cover pictures taken. And the studio where they recorded it was right next to it. What wasn’t so cool was the tsunami that we had to walk through to get there. Everything and everyone was completely soaked!!! But we did get a picture walking across the cross walk. We got everyone ready and all the traffic had stopped so that we could walk across and kiley could take a perfect picture of us… right when she was about to snap the perfect shot- some random guy walks right in front of her and across the front of us so that we couldn’t take the picture- it was really funny and really frustrating. That night all of us girls went out dancing while the guys bailed on us and went to bed. We did have to get up at 4 am but we just decided not to sleep. We couldn’t find the right bus the next morning, so we were basically running all around London at 4 am- trying to find a bus. But we found one and we made it back in one piece! Over all, the trip was a complete BLAST if you couldn’t tell already. Kiley did an amazing job at being tour guide Barbie and we all came back with a lot of memories!