London Trip!Oct 17, 2009
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Hey everyone! Sorry once again, it has taken me forever to update this... but now i’m finally getting around to writing about my trip to London 2 weekends ago. Last weekend I just hung around the house so there’s not much to report there. I was sick all that week, so literally i was really boring... so enough about that, on to my London adventure!
So my study abroad program, AIFS (American Institute for Foreign Study) takes us to London as part of the program. So there are 29 of us i think and we all got a bus to the airport on that friday morning (the day after Guinness Day) and it was about an hour and a half flight to London. When we got there they had a AIFS rep waiting for us and a bus to take us to our hotel. It should have been about an hour and a half bus ride, but there was major traffic and a car crash so i took us close to two and a half hours to get there, and by that time we were all getting really antsy and hungry. But we finally made it and got our rooms and such and the rep said that there would be a tour bus for us in the morning and she’d see us then.
I was surprised and excited about the amount of independence they gave us. They literally said, just go to the bus and do whatever you want between then and the bus to the airport on Sunday. I guess I'm still in the mindset of high school where a trip like that would be massively structured and have a curfew and that kind of thing, so i was excited by the independence. I was room mates with a girl named Maggie who i didn’t really know before, but it wasn’t really a big issue. She was asleep both nights when i got back and she was nice but we just didn’t really hang out.
So we got settled and i went with my friends Ali, Kelly, Ebony, and Loretta (who we call Lo) to find food. We ended up in a cool pub and i got the typical meat pie and mash and it was so good! Then we went back to the hotel (Ali and I stopped for some cheap wine... super classy i know... - and the pricing is much more reasonable in England. The pound is brutal compared to the dollar, but you can get so much more with the pound than you can with the euro in Ireland) and got ready. We went and sat at the bar and chatted with the bar tenders, trying to find the best place to go for the famous London night life (and I had my first Martini... i felt so classy!) Eventually a lot of people from the program came down to the bar too and we chilled there for a while and decided to head off in search of a good time.
Some of the guys got directions (there were like 4 guys and 20 girls in the group in the end) to somewhere and we all headed off looking like the mass group of obnoxious Americans we were. Ebony, Lo, and Kelly decided not to go with the crowd and went somewhere else, but Ali and i decided to see how it went. But after walking for about half hour and not finding anything and having to stop and wait for people and that kind of thing Ali and I were getting annoyed. We has passed a bar and decided to break off from the group and turn back to check it out. So we got to the bar and the bouncer checked our ID’s and then he looked at me and said, “just so you girls know, this is a gay bar.” then he looked at Ali (who is actually gay) and kind pegged her and said, “Oh, so its good for you” (or something along those lines). So i was thrilled, my first gay bar experience, and it was a really classy place filled with a bunch of men. There was a wide mix from old men in suits with brief cases drinking their whiskey and younger couples in their late 20’s. It was a bar not a club so everyone was just hanging around and talking, but it was way classier than any regular bar i’ve ever been to.
We grabbed a beer and a seat (Ali was like, “let’s just pretend we’re a couple for right now”... cuz we kinda stuck out lol) and eventually ended up talking to these 2 cute old ladies from Ireland who were “sisters” (they were obviously a couple who were just embarrassed or whatever). We were just thought it was funny that we managed to come across the one Irish couple in London in a gay bar we just accidentally found. It was pretty great. So after that we grabbed some good old McDonald’s and heading back in a cab (with the rudest grumpiest cab driver of my life).
The next morning we were up bright and early for the bus tour. We had a Scottish tour guide (but we didn’t get an open top bus, just a regular one). He was really funny and we got to get out and take pictures at a few spots and we got to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. The tour lasted three hours and we got to see a lot of London which was cool. Then the bus dropped us off and we were off to see the city on our own.
Ali, Lo, Ebony, Kelly, and I set off to find a place to eat. After some quick cheap sandwiches Ebony decided we needed to find this place that apparently had the best macaroons in the world and she saw it on the bus on the way over. So we searched all over and asked about a million people for directions. Finally when we were getting no were and just wondering around in really crowded streets we got some of us got frustrated and we were like, “we’ve been in London on our own for an hour and haven’t seen or done anything” so we decided it was off to the Tower of London and grabbed a bus over.
We got there and grabbed I grabbed a bite to reanimate myself, I just got a hotdog from a stand but it ended up being a frickin’ 4 pound hotdog which means an 8 dollar hotdog! I’m still pretty pissed about that fact lol Anyway then we went and explored the Tower of London and got to see the Crown Jewels. I’ve now seen the worlds biggest diamond, cool huh? The security for the jewels was out of this world as you can imagine. There were two 4 ton vault doors that locked it off and I don’t even know what else. But one of the things I loved most about the Towers was thinking that the people we read about in history books and that kind of thing actually lived in these rooms. The beds on display and such were actually used by royalty in the 1800’s. Pretty cool.
Then we walked over the Millennium Bridge to go see the Globe (which in case you’re not up on your Shakespeare is a recreation of the original theater that Shakespeare’s plays were first preformed in) and find out if we could see a show there (my absolute dream). We got there and found out a show time for the next day and after hitting up the gift store, we went to the Tate Museum right next door (free admission). We kind of wandered around a little bit, but we were pretty tired and were getting hungry.
AISF gave us these vouchers for a free meal and beer in a list of pubs all over the city so we picked a pub and set off there. We decided to go to Ye Old Cock Pub (umm yes we did pick it because of the name haha) on Fleet Street (Yay Sweeny Todd!). We found Ye Old Cock pub but they weren’t serving dinner anymore so they sent us off to Ye Old London Pub a little ways down the street, and that place was a total success. We met the nicest bar tender guy in the world. He was the sweetest little old man and i asked him if he had been working here long and apparently he’d been at the pub for 20 years, was born in London, lived in Africa for years, came back, and has dreams of moving back and starting a farm and selling beach front property. He even said that before we left we all had to get behind the bar for a picture :) so sweet. I had yet another delicious meat pie and this times i got chips and vinegar instead of mash so i had the full London food experience (since i don’t eat fish i couldn’t do the ligit fish and chips).
Then we headed back to the hotel, had some more of our wine, and headed off to the place the other girls went the other night, The Blag Spot. It was a really small chic place with hippie paraphernalia all over and planet earth projected on the wall. But unfortunately it was funk night, and we weren’t really feeling the music. But at one point a guy started talking to me and then i went off, and later when i went to the bar to get a beer, he came up and got me a drink and kept talking (it was funny because he was with a girl and another guy and the girl had been flirting with him all night and he brought me over and introduced me to everyone and she said they were old college mates, but if looks could kill i would have keeled over haha). Anyway I was actually really annoyed because i was talking to him and had just got my beer and my Kelly and Ebony came up and said, “We’re leaving”. So just like that i had to shove my beer in my bag (it was in a bottle... but still really classy i know) and i had to leave because i couldn’t find my way back without them. I got the guy’s number haha, but it was still kinda selfish of them... oh well we all had a good time.
The next day we went off to see Big Ben (cuz you have to right?) and Westminster Abby (which is where my camera died :( i was so sad... but oh well). Then we walked over to the Globe and saw Love’s Labour’s Lost. It was absolutely incredible! We were in the standing section, so a three hour show was a bit tough of the feet, but it was worth every single second. You have to be the best of the best to preform at the Globe and these guys were defiantly the best. I’ve seen a lot of shows and this one was one of the greatest i’ve ever seen. It was a funny show and they pulled it off really well. I was glad it wasn’t a tragedy of a history or anything, it was just light hearted and fun and easy to follow. But seeing a Shakespeare show in the Globe (I just kept looking around and thinking Shakespeare would have really directed in a theatre just like this!) was one of the greatest things of my whole life (obviously if you know me at all you know i kinda have a Shakespeare obsession, so a bit of my life is now more complete).
Then we headed back, grabbed a bite to eat, and got on the bus back to the airport (with thankfully didn’t take anywhere kind of near as long as the ride over) and headed home. It was kind of funny though because as soon as i heard the Irish accent on the plane i realized how much i missed it. I truly love Ireland and the accent and i don’t know what i’m going to do when it’s not there all the time when i get back haha.
So that was a summary of my London adventure! Sorry if was kind of abridged... or if it rambled too much, i kind of procrastinated on writing it and want to finish it so i can write my new blogs on the new events of my life haha. So hopefully you’ll be getting another one soon and i won’t wait so long to fill you in on my travels! Thanks again for reading this... Love you all!
<3 Molly
