I am in love with London.

I am alive! My biggest fears about this weekend were not arriving in London and not making it back to Barcelona. GOOD NEWS! I did both successfully! Our flight left at 8:55pm at the Barcelona Airport on Thursday, and we arrived in London at about 10:55pm. We flew into Gatwick which is about an hour and twenty minute drive outside of London. We decided we were gonna take a train into Victoria Station, which is in the center of London, and then take the tube to our hostel. The train ticket cost 16 pounds...that should have been a good indicator of how expensive our weekend would be.

We arrived at our hostel at about 12:45. By the time we checked in and got to our room it was about 1:15am. We had originally booked for a 6 person mixed dorm. Luckily, they moved us to a four person mixed dorm, so we were only with one person we didn't know; Pablo. Our dear friend Pablo, from Argentina, had quite the snoring problem. I don't mean like a little snore-snore here and there. I mean a snoring problem of EPIC proportions. The poor guy sounded like he couldn't breathe. My bunk was on top of his bed and whenever he would snore the whole bed would shake. I wish I was exaggerating. Let's just say I slept 2 hours the first night. I am sad to say my first purchase in London was a set of ear plugs...

Everyone else "woke" up...I sat up, around 9am. We got a free breakfast. Breakfast meaning...toast and juice. I had 8 slices. Hah! Then we showered in the hostel locker room where I proceeded to scald my skin for the sake of hygiene. There was no adjustment for the temperature of the shower. It's safe to say it was probably 2,000 degrees. After we finished getting ready we made plans for the day. We decided it would be a good idea to pay for a bus tour. We found this tour group called "The Big Bus Company" and they offered a hop-on & hop-off bus tour. It cost 22 pounds but we thought that that was a reasonable price because the tube prices are through the ROOF! One single trip costs 4 pounds. With the distance between all the sights we wanted to see, we figure that would cost us a ridiculous amount of money. Not to mention, the bus tour ticket was valid for 48 hours, so we got to use it all weekend. The ticket also included a free river cruise on the Thames. In retrospect, it was definitely a good decision. There was no getting lost and we saved ourselves a LOT of money that would have been spent on transportation.

I was only expecting to see a few things in the city. It's a huge city and everything is spread out. I was so wrong! It was me, Carly, Jessica, and Rachel on the first day, and we were on a MISSION! We knocked almost everything off of our "Must-See" list on the first day. Day 1, we saw: The Somerset House, Trafalgar Square, Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, St. Margarets Church, St. Paul's Cathedral, London Eye, Tower Bridge, and the Tower of London. I may be forgetting something...I don't think so though. Anyway, everything was so BEAUTIFUL! It sounds cheesy but it was surreal walking around and looking at these things you've only seen in pictures your entire life. My personal favorite was Big Ben. It is so...regal, for lack of a better word. The whole design of it is intricate and so beautiful, I was just in awe of it the entire time. I probably took ten million pictures of it. Connected to it is the House of Parliament and together they were just absolutely beautiful. I also enjoyed the London Eye, which is one of the highest observation tower/ride thingers in the world. It was great because you just got to see all of London. Not to mention it is right next to Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament and you get to see a great view of them from hundreds of feet in the air.

We walked around for about 6 hours the first day. We got back to the hostel and decided to go grab some dinner. London is supposed to have some of the best Indian and Thai food so we really wanted to find a place to have some. We found this little restaurant that served Indian food we decided to eat there. I had never had Indian food before and I am game to try anything, so I was pretty excited. I got Lamb Passanda and this egg and rice mixture. SO SO SO GOOD! One of the best meals I have had in a long time. The fact we're making our own meals here probably doesn't help any...but honestly, the meal was SO delicious! We ordered this little desert that was a ball of vanilla ice cream coated in toasted nuts with raspberry sauce on top. I was in heaven. Definitely one of the best deserts I've ever had...and I'm usually not a huge desert fan. After the meal we decided to head back to the hostel and get a good nights sleep. Earphones in hand (actually, ear), I had a solid nights sleep. Except for the occasional stir of Pablo, I didn't wake up too many times.

The next morning I had my 8 slices of toast an apple juice, showered, and we were OFF! We wanted to go to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guards but they didn't do it that day. Apparently in their winter season, or off season, they only do the change every other day. Oh well! Buckingham Palace was AWESOME! The decorations were so elaborate; everything was covered in gold-leaf paint. I also really enjoyed seeing the guards with their huge FUZZY hats. Buckingham Palace was our last stop on our list of things to do. We decided to head over to Oxford Street which is known for its great shopping. First store, Primark, was heaven on earth. One of the cheapest stores I've ever been in...with GREAT clothes! I could have easily spent $100-$200 in there. Unfortuneately, I had to hold back. I got a sweater, a dress, and a shirt for 24 pounds. A GREAT DEAL!...or so I thought. A few stores later I saw a sign that said the current exchange rates. For every pound I spent in London, I was actually paying $1.57 in U.S money. SERIOUSLY?!?! I wanted to vomit. Everyone else continued shopping but I decided it would probably be best to stop, for my debit cards sake.

We headed back to our hostel around 4 to try to find some tickets for a show. We decided we wanted to see the show "Dirty Dancing". We asked the box office for the cheapest ones and the guy said, "62 pounds!". Haha, that's a funny joke. Let's just say the show didn't happen. Then we walked around London trying to find a place to eat. After some walking around and looking we found this little Thai restaurant. Again, I've never tried Thai food so I was pretty excited. This was hands down my favorite meal of my study abroad experience. Carly and I shared this appetizer platter. It had chicken wings filled with Thai pork, fish cakes, spring rolls, chicken wrapped and seasons in this leaf thinger, and some salad concoction. It also came with all of these Thai dipping sauces. It was SO SO GOOD! I don't know exactly what I ordered for my main meal because I couldn't pronounce the name if I tried. I basically got this beef-egg-veggie-sauce noodle plate thinger-ma-jigger. It was so good, I DIDN'T WANT IT TO END! Those of you who know me, know I inhale my food like a vaccuum when I eat. This was so good, I literally tried to eat only 2 or 3 noodles at a time. It lasted me a solid 25 minutes and I seriously contemplated ordering another plate. I opted not to. I blame it on the pound to U.S dollar exchange rate.

After that we walked around and tried to find a little cafe to have some dessert and drinks at. While we were ordering Carly proceeded to accidently light her menu on fire with the candle on the table. When I say light on fire...I literally mean the menu was engulfed in flames. That was a rather embarassing/hilarious experience. HAH! New menus in hand, I ended up getting this ice cream dessert with hot chocolate. Sadly, both weren't very good. I don't think the person at the expresso machine knew how to make real hot chocolate. Mine just tasted like heated up water with a little chocolate powder in it. I should have gone back there and shown him my Mojoz skillzzz. Oh well! It was fun to just go out and sit at a cafe and talk for a bit. After that, we went back to the hostel, packed up our stuff for checkout in the morning, and went to sleep. Again, the ear plugs did their job nicely.

Check-out at the hostel was at 10am and our flight didn't leave til 4:55pm, so that was a slight problem. We checked out and decided to go find a "traditional English breakfast". After about a ten minute walk, we found a place that served them for relatively cheap. We ate there and it was delicious, but I must say my father's "Truck Driver Breakfasts" are better. We had to kill time so we sat in the cafe and talked for about an hour or so. Then we had to take the huge trek to Gatwick airport. We decided to take a bus this time because it was about 10 pounds cheaper. Random funny story: We were standing in line to get our tickets at the bus station. This random man who barely spoken any English kind of skipped everyone in the line to get to the window. He was quite obviously stressed out, like he was going to miss his bus or something, so no one was really mad that he had skipped everyone. Then there was this one lady who acted like he had literally robbed her for all she was worth. The line was still moving pretty swiftly and she was going to be at a counter in a matter of 2 or 3 minutes. Still, the crazy lady felt the need to be yelling at him. At one point she screamed, "There's a BLOODY QUEUE here! Get back there!". I almost peed my pants...they really do speak the way you think the would. Anyway, this woman provided some brief entertainment with her British tirade of this poor man. BLOODY BRITS! :)

We got to the airpot with time to spare. We decided to get some dinner and wait around for them to post our gate number. The flight ended up leaving early and we got back to Barcelona around 8:15. We took the train/metro back into the city and then walked back to our residencia. I was exhausted. I certainly need to rest up this week because I do this all again this weekend with Munich. Anyway, I had a fantastic time in London. I would definitely like to go back someday. I think it would be a great place to go during the spring and summer when it's a little bit warmer. After this trip, I can't help but think how incredibly I lucky am to be having this experience. Not many people are going to be able to see all the places I am in their lifetime. I really am blessed. I could say it again a million times, for the rest of my life, and it still wouldn't be enough: Thank you, thank you, thankkkk youuuu, to everyone who has helped me out with this trip. I love and miss you ALL! <3