London

Two weeks ago I went to London for 3 days, and I've been too busy to update this blog until now! London was a really great time, and I'm so glad I went. After spending 8 straight weeks in a Spanish speaking country, we figured it would be super easy to travel in an English speaking country. We were actually quite wrong. There were a lot of things that just didn't make sense about traveling there and that were so inconvenient, but we were definitely grateful to be able to ask for help in English instead of Spanish. There was a point where we asked 5 different people the same question about where to catch a bus to the airport and we got 5 completely different answers, none of them actually leading us to the bus stop we needed. We also ended up looking like complete idiots when we tried to operate the metro and train systems for the first time, but in the end we figured it all out and learned a lot about traveling in Europe outside of Spain. We also had our first hostel experience, which was indeed an experience. We ended up having a 10 person room, which was 7 boys and the three of us girls. Totally unexpected.

As far as sightseeing goes, I pretty much walked around the entire city gasping at everything. Our first morning there, we walked to see the Parliament Building, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, and the Queen's Collection Museum. All of these buildings were absolutely breathtaking. I took over 30 pictures of Parliament alone. That afternoon we decided to take a trip out to Windsor to see the Windsor Castle, where the Royal Family actually lives. This was my favorite part of the weekend- what an amazing castle/town!! I wish I could've taken more pictures, but a lot of it prohibited photography. That night we took a ride on the London Eye, which was a giant ferris wheel on the river overlooking the whole city. This was beautiful and breathtaking as well.

Day 2 was also full of sightseeing. We saw the Tower Bridge, the Tower of London (complete with a tour from a real Beefeater), the HMS Belfast (a WWII ship), St Paul's Cathedral (the most beautiful church I've ever seen), Shakespeare's Globe Theater, Abbey Road, and the Tate Modern Art Museum. By the end of the day, we were so worn out from walking for two days straight that we went to bed super early.

Overall, I loved London. The people were all very friendly and all of the history was so interesting. It couldn't even imagine living around all of those monuments and castles. I realized that I cannot understand the English accent AT ALL. I felt like everyone was speaking a different language! It was so weird to see all of the sights that I've seen in pictures and movies my whole life and never thought I'd ever see close up. I'm glad I got to test the waters of traveling out of the country before my 10 day spring break trip to Italy next week. The picture above is of me in front of Big Ben!