A Night on the Town

The infamous Harrod's!

Well the past couple days were 100% fantastic!! Yesterday we had our first class at the Hyde Park Chapel, which will be dedicated this Sunday because its new Visitors Center just got finished, and we get to go to it! Yesterday we also got to go to Harrod’s, where I basically felt like a Peasant because of how expensive everything was! However, it was most definitely the most incredible department store I have ever seen because it had everything, EVERYTHING! I think one of the highlights was the pet area because they had all sorts of outfits and a spa type place where they would groom your dog that even included a dog treadmill with a TV in front of it. Only semi ridiculous! Anyways the store was absolutely gargantuan and had such incredible architecture. That’s my favorite part about London…everywhere you go is some sort of beautiful architecture and I constantly find myself just looking around at everything like I’m Arial the mermaid walking on land for the first time!

"Pet Fashion"

A small sample of the architecture in Harrod's

That night me and four others from my group decided to explore London because the rest of the group went to some obscure movie I had never heard of…they are film majors after all. So we went to tower bridge and it was beautiful!! The view was incredible, especially being able to see a lot of the big sites from it. It was dark so everything was lit up which was way cool! So after doing a bunch of picture taking I really needed to go to the bathroom. Well bathrooms are one of the things that are few and far between! So we wandered around for a while trying to find a bathroom, but along that way getting to se lots of cool little places along the river. At this point it was also pouring rain and getting windy so when we finally asked a policeman where the bathroom was he directed us not too far away! Our next mission was to locate an Underground Station to take the tube home so we did more wandering. It started down pouring so we stepped inside a little restaurant to get out for a few minutes because few places were still open at 11:00. Well we found ourselves in the middle of a Medieval Banquet where all the workers were dressed up and your dinner was medieval style. It was the coolest thing ever, except that we weren’t part of it. We looked up the pricing later and it was rather spendy but it looked like a blast and a half! We eventually made our way home, tired and drenched but at least a little more familiar with the city!

The Medieval Banquet

My roommate Rachel and I outside the natural History Museum

Coolest seats ever! You got to spin around in them.

The beautiful British Museum!

The next day we got the privilege of going to the British Museum! The first thing you see, besides the beautiful building and architecture, is the statue of the discus thrower. The thing I loved about this museum is that I got to see so many things I have studied! As much as I may or may not have enjoyed my humanities classes, they turned out to be helpful in me appreciating all the artifacts that were here! My favorite exhibit was the ancient Egypt because they had so many real mummies and famous sculptures and it was a very powerful experience to really see the way people used to live thousands of years ago! I also loved the Greek architecture because I am just so amazed at how life-like everything looked. I also got to see the Rosetta Stone, which was probably the most packed area of the entire museum! This same day we got to try the famous Fish and Chips at Goat’s Tavern! They were way better than I thought they were going to be, although I don’t know if I’d get them again. There are so so so many different restaurants to try! So, my goal is to not repeat a restaurant and to try different culture’s food such as French and Indian because I’ve heard great reviews. Restaurants are not the cheapest way to go though so you have to pick and choose wisely! That night we went to a movie called “Kid on a Bicycle” at National Film Theatre, which was hands down the coolest movie theater I’ve been to! The movie was about a little boy who’s dad leaves him and he ends up finding a woman to live with, but gets into trouble. In the end he turns good again (This is a description for a five year old haha). Anyway, it was a very touching and realistic movie and I really enjoyed it! After the show we decided to go exploring yet again! We ran into a random circus group who was rather…passionate? They were kind of different but they had a few good stunts! We walked around for a while and saw Parliament and Big Ben and a lot of random artsy stuff! I just love that all of London is one giant museum!

Fish and Chip!

Never a dull moment at Portobello Road!

Yesterday we went to Portobello Road and I LOVED it! They had so many cool little knick knacks that were cheap (relatively speaking). I found lots of souvenirs to bring home to people and was able to find a watch (Apparently Big Ben is the only clock in London). The salesman tried to sell me a more expensive watch and told me I had soft, pretty hands (this is why I am not a fan of salesman) but I insisted on the cheaper one and I think I rained on his parade. They also had the most delicious fruit that was all fresh! I was so excited and already made an executive decision that I am going back! I got separated from the group I was with and ended up with a couple guys from my group and we were able to take our time going around. There was a musical group called the Robbie Boyd Band performing and they were super good. So good, in fact, that the guys in my group broke out their high tech video equipment to film them and I got to help, even though I had no idea what I was doing! I just loved the exciting atmosphere of it.

First ride on a double decker bus!

The Robbie Boyd Band

The inside of Novella Theatre.

After Portobello Road a couple of us were going to go to Buckingham Palace but we had a show at 7:30 and didn’t end up leaving early enough, so instead we got to the area where our show was, which was the equivalent of Broadway and grabbed a bite to eat at a little Café then went to the show Noises Off at Novella Theatre. The theater was beautiful and the show was pretty funny! I will say this much for the British…they use the f word much more frequently than us Americans! It was a good experience though and I hope to make to at least one other show (crossing my fingers for Les Miserables)!

Went down Drury Land on the way to
 the show!

On A Scale of 1 to American!

Well today was quite the emotional day filled with exhaustion and delusion, nerves, excitement, awe, and top it off with quite a bit of pure confusion! Kick started the day at 4:15 this morning and am running now on approximately 35 hours without sleep, like I said delusional. We had a four hour flight from SLC to New York and I was planning on getting to know everyone in the group. Too bad for me I was shafted 10 rows in front of the group by myself. The perk was it was quiet and I got a lot of my unfinished reading done! We then had a 4 hour layover in New York so I got to know a lot more people because as exciting as airports are, we all wanted to start our group bonding session so I got to know a few more people. Then, we had literally the longest flight of my life from New York to London, being 7 hours and this time I was near the group. I got to sit by a retired little New Yorker man (unfortunately no Brooklyn accent) and he had been all over the world, but mostly to London. He showed me his passport and you couldn’t even count how many times he’d been there. He gave me lots of tips and gave me his son’s business card that lived in London and told me to call if I ever needed anything. He was a sweet little guy and as we left his final advice was to party it up in the pubs because it’s quite a bit of fun. Well, so much for that idea!

On the flight I got more reading, what you could call an attempt at sleeping, although the little man next to me had his feet sticking straight up in the air while he was trying to sleep, AND I got to watch movies for free so I watched just one. I’ve been dying to see the Artist and I was finally able to see it! How I stayed awake will forever remain a miracle to me, but I loved the movie. When we landed we had to go through Customs where they stamp your passport and you have to let them know why you’re there. Our customs officer had the coolest British accent and for all I know I had drool coming out the side of my mouth. Then I noticed he had a ring on it and that put a kibosh on that one!

Once everyone was through Customs our teacher took off with his wife and daughter and said he’d meet us at the end of the tube. Unfortunately he didn’t give us any instructions and so we all wandered for a while and after about an hour we found where we were supposed to go. The tube was quite the interesting place, prime people watching! I heard very few speaking English and well there just weren’t a whole lot of white people in general! We met a Slovakian family and they were so cute and nice! When we got off the tube there was no one there to greet us like they had said, so someone decided we find our flat on our own. Well, apparently someone knew where they were going because 5 or 6 blocks later we finally made it, luggage and all. We had some down time for a while, yet still no one knew where any of our professors were.

We went to the grocery store, which completely lost me. They have very little of your typical American brands and so I basically had no idea what to buy (Plus, everything is SO expensive!). I ended up buying the basics along with crumpets because I felt like that was a necessity. They basically taste like squishy pancakes except you’re supposed to toast them, which I can’t say I did.

After a while we were all getting pretty tired but we were told to try hard to stay awake so that we could adjust to the time change faster. So, to stay awake by taking a walk around Hyde Park. We are literally right across the street from Hyde Park in a flat that apparently used to be a mansion. I have three roommates and we share a bathroom with a shower that has either scalding or ice cold water. The molding is all old style English and it is really neat! Hyde Park was the coolest place ever! It runs into Kensington Palace and Gardens which is currently being prepared for Prince William and Princess Kate, so basically we’re neighbors with royalty! We also found our Madonna is giving a concert in Hyde Park so we’ll get to jam from our flat! We also ran into some missionaries there and one of them had a fantastic Irish accent! Anyways, we walked around the garden and the park for a while because it is HUGE. It’s probably going to be one of the main study places we have. Anyway we had to be back for meeting with the flat owner to go over rules and such. This is when the tired spell hit everyone and there were lots of heads bobbing to try to stay awake. After that we went to a restaurant called Wagamama, which was a pasta place and I got some noodle stuff, which was mediocre tasting, kind of bland though. The waiter took forever to get us our To-Go box and bills so we were there for quite a while. After that we came home and that was the first adventure in London!