The Journey is the Destination: London~ Day 1

I know I promised to blog about my trip to Liverpool, but this past weekend I went to London. So I thought it would be alright to jump ahead. I have plenty to tell you about Liverpool, York, and starting classes (so hopefully I will get to that later this week!) I spent 3 absolutely amazing days in London. The city was more than I ever expected!

Caribbean food stand in the market!

Italian man that sold delicious fresh Italian food

This was the first time I stayed in a hostel. It was really nice!

We took the megabus from Manchester to London and arrived in London at about 11am on Friday morning. The megabus is a really cheap alternative to taking the train around the UK. After we got off the bus we dropped our bags off at the hostel and set out to get lunch and explore. We found this really neat little food market set up a few streets from our hostel. There were tons of ethnic food stands and specialty food for sale! It took a while to decide what to get, but I ended up with a delicious sandwich from this little Italian man.

After we got our lunch we headed towards Buckingham palace. It was only a 15 minute walk from our hostel. On our way there we saw a carriage going into the royal mews; it was escorted by police, so I couldn't help but wonder if there was someone in the carriage. Buckingham palace itself is HUGE! It feels so much bigger than the White House. It is very ornate, with a beautifully carved statue/fountain in front. We had just missed the changing of the guards because it is at 11:30 and every other day in the winter. From Buckingham palace we walked down "the Mall" which apparently during the restoration period was were the wealthy strolled around. We took a bit of a detour into Prince Jame's Park, which is right beside the mall; the weather was beautiful, so there were plenty of people out to enjoy the nice day. The park had a lot of birds/ducks, which was apparently intentional. The park also had "floriferous shrubberies in the spirit of John Nash"; at least that is what a sign told us haha- not really sure what that means, but I'm sure the park would be beautiful in the spring as it was already very pretty in the middle of winter. From the park we headed through a marble arch past a statue given to the British government by the Russians celebrating the anniversary of manned space flight.

From there we made our way through to Trafalgar Square. This is where the Olympic time clock is located for the London 2012 games (by the way, I can't wait for these)! The National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery are also located in the square. There are also some pretty cool statues and fountains, ~~which we may or may not have climbed on...like all of the little children to take a picture with the lions.~~ There were some street performers here too including a man in a kilt and a man painted entirely in silver that looked like a statue (this seemed to be a common theme with street performers in London).

Trafalgar Square!

You can see Big Ben in the background

After Trafalgar Square we wondered across the Thames and up towards Big Ben, Parliament, and the London Eye. I never realized just how large the London Eye was until I was standing under it! Big Ben and Parliament were so cool too see, I almost wish I could work there! After taking like a million pictures of Big Ben and Parliament we moved on to Westminster Abbey. I honestly can not even comprehend how people could build buildings as large and beautiful as Westminster without the technology and machines we have today! We didn't get to go into any of the buildings, but I can only imagine how grand they were after (esp. after going in the York Minster last weekend). After we saw Westminster Abbey we headed off to meet my friend Ashley for dinner.

The main gates to Parliament!

One amazingly beautiful side of Westminster Abbey!

After we had finished our sight-seeing for the day, we headed to meet-up with my friend Ashley who had just gotten done with her last class for this semester. She is doing the GLS program, so they will spend the rest of their semester working an internship in London. She took us to a really good Belgian restaurant! Afterwards, we walked around Oxford st, which is one of the main shopping districts in London. One of the department stores had a really unique window display- it was a wooden roller coaster!