Weekend in London

2.05.09

Hello all.

Just as a forewarning, bare with the confusing picture placement... blogs are harder to organize than you might think...

This past weekend I made my first trip out of Scotland, although not off the island, and spent the weekend with friends in London! It was a great weekend filled with sight seeing, people meeting and SNOW!

Thursday night (January 29th) I took the night bus down to Victoria Coach Station in London from Glasgow. It was a long trip. 9 hours on a stuffy bus is not the ideal way I'd like to travel, but to say that I got to London on 12 pounds is something I'm pretty proud of. At 7:30am the next morning I rolled into London ready to see the city that I had only experienced through TV, movies and books since I was a kid. My friend from high school, Claire, met me at the bus station and it was only about a 5 minute walk back to her dorm. She's studying at the University of Westminster, and really I can't imagine a better location for a college in London. We got up to the room where my other friend from high school, Brett, was just getting up. He had just flown over from the states en route to Budapest for the semester and decided to stop in for a weekend in London.

After catching up for a bit, Brett and I decided to go exploring while Clarie got ready for our first full day in London. Within 3 minutes of walking out the front door of Claire's room this was our sight....



Westminster Abbey and Big Ben, all within the first ten minutes of walking through the city.... I have to admit that was pretty cool. (It was also good to get out the baby head for it's first appearance in Europe in 2009... for anyone who doesn't know the story behind the baby head, just don't worry about it).





From here we walked across Westminster Bridge to the South Bank which gave us an even more incredible view of the Parliament building to which Big Ben is attached. We made our way down the river to Millennium Bridge, passing on our way the London Eye, the Tate Modern and the Globe theater. From this side of the river we could also see the Tower Bridge and the Tower of London off in the distance. It was on this walk that I realized just how big London is.













After crossing Millennium Bridge made our way past St. Paul's Cathedral, which reminded me a lot of the Capitol Building in Washington, and down to Trafalgar Square. Trafalgar Square was full of people, many tourists and school groups, milling about among the flocks of pigeons. On one side of the square is the National Gallery which unfortunately we didn't get a chance to make it into. On the other side is Admirality Arch which leads to the Mall and Buckingham Palace. We decided to pass through the arch and see if we could catch a glimpse of the Queen. The Mall is lined with trees and huge buildings dedicated to the Royal Family. This led us right to the front gate of Buckingham Palace, but at this point it had been about 3 hours and we were tired so instead of sticking around we headed back to the dorm to rest up before some exploring later in the afternoon.










Later in the afternoon we decided to go for a tour of the Tower Bridge, arguably the most well known landmark in the city of London next to Big Ben. It was awesome getting to climb up inside the tower, learn about it's history, and then get some pretty amazing panoramic views of the city. This was definitely one of my favorite spots in London.


That night we met up with two of my friends from school, Caitlin and Casey, for dinner on Brick Lane, an area known for it's Indian food. Coincidentally it turned out that Casey and Claire are living in the same building for the semester which was funny to find out. After dinner we ended up at a "flat party" which was even more coincidentally being held by a kid from BC who is in London for the semester as well. Weird how small the world is.

Saturday was filled with more sight seeing, specifically a tour of Westminster Abbey and then a trip over to the National Portrait Gallery which had a huge collection of paintings from over the years. Saturday night we met up with another friend from high school for dinner and then a night out in the city.







Sunday we decided to wake up early so we could get a good spot at Buckingham Palace for the changing of the guard. We were there about 45 minutes before the start of the ceremony and were generally unprepared for how cold it was going to be. However, once the ceremony got going and the sun broke through the clouds, it was definitely worth the cold wait. By the time the procession was making it's way up the road to the palace, the crowd had multiplied to huge numbers to watch what was really just a glorified marching band. Still a very cool thing to say that I've seen!







After the changing of the guard we went to the British Museum to check out what the British Empire has plundered over the past couple centuries from all over the world. One of the cooler things they had on display was the Rosetta Stone which helped unlock the mystery behind hieroglyphics from Ancient Egypt. One other item they had on display was the ENTIRE front and back sections of the statues which used to adorn the Parthenon in Athens. As cool as this was, I still can't believe that to see something SO Greek you have to go to London to see it! Wild.










After the museum we decided to take it easy for the afternoon and rest up for the Superbowl! We met up with another friend from high school, Jake, at his university which was pretty close to Westminster. At the union where we watched the game I ended up seeing another two kids I know from BC.... Again, very very small world. At about 2am we decided to head out, and much to our dismay discovered that the 4 inches of snow which had been piling up had caused the entire bus system in the city of London to shut down. This led to a two mile walk back to Westminster. On any other occasion I would have been annoyed at this point. However, to be able to walk down the middle of some of the busiest roads in London without encountering a single car was pretty cool. Aside from this, the whole city was covered in a blanket of snow which was definitely a sight to see. When we woke up the next morning there was about 7 inches of snow on the ground, the most that London had seen since 1991.







While Claire and Brett slept in a bit, I decided to embrace the cold and wander the city covered in snow. It was crazy. London had called all its buses off for the day, and many of the train lines were also shutdown. Compared to the previous three days the city was so quite, with the exception of all the Londoners who had strapped on their snowpants and boots and were out enjoying the snow. I swear I have never seen so many snowmen and snowball fights in one day in my entire life. The day in the snow was really a great way to cap off my weekend in London. Instead of worrying which sights were left to see and what I might have missed out on, we just got to relax and have fun in the snow with the rest of the city.