London Town

WARNING: This may be a long post. And an incoherent one as well, since we didn't get back until 3:00 this morning.

We got to London on Friday. The bus was very comfortable. Thomas got us all to the hostel. It took forever to check in. They were very disorganized, especially since we had reservations.

After we settled our stuff into our rooms, groups broke off and went exploring. The group I went with just went walking to see what we could find. We walked toward the water, over one of the many bridges and found a play that was being put on outside. We went all the way to the Tower Bridge. It was very pretty at night. I am actually having trouble remembering exactly what we did, which is funny considering I am one of the few not drinking large amounts of beer. Anyway, we walked across the bridge and actually got to see it raised for a ship. We were so far from the hostel at this point that we decided to take a cab back.

Saturday we went exploring again. We got all-day tube (subway) passes so it wasn't too bad on the feet. We went and saw Big Ben, the Houses-o-Parliament, Westminster Abbey, and Buckingham Palace. Buckingham Palace was a huge disappointment. It isn't pretty, neat-looking or anything. The statue/ fountain outside of it was pretty neat though. I'll show you all pictures later. Describing it would be a bit difficult. We did, however, get to see the guards in the black feather duster hats play a song and march a bit. We had lunch at a little pub near Big Ben. We went back to Westminster Abbey to go in, but it was closed. It was £8 to get into anyway. Then we went on the London Eye. It was really cool. It is this huge ferris wheel with capsules instead of seats. The capsules hold like 20 people each. At the top, you can see most of London. Other than the floor, the capsules were all clear so you could see everything around you. I think it was worth the £12.50 and the 30 min wait. After that I think we walked down to the Tower bridge again to see it during the day. I have to say, it looked much cooler at night. We had dinner at this little Italianan place; most of us had pizza. I ordered the "FUNGHI" ( that is how it was spelled) . It was mushroom pizza. They charged us for the bread, which we thought wasn't fair since it was out on the table when we got there. Oh well. The rest of the night was pretty boring, so I'll just skip to Sunday.
Sunday I went off by myself because the group I was with was going to shop all day. I did not come to London to go to Ralph Lauren, so I decided to entertain myself. I bought a map at the hostel and had the receptionist mark the hostel location on it so if I got really freakin' lost, I could just show the map to a cab driver. I left the hostel and found a cafe to have breakfast. I looked at my map, which was also a guide book, to see if I could find anything interesting to do. The Britsih Museum wasn't far and it had the Rosetta Stone, so I decided to go there. I am pretty sure I enjoyed the museum, since I spent the next 5 hours there. They had all sorts of ancient culture stuff and an entire wing on the Enlightenment, a portrait gallery with an original Michelangelo cartoon ( 8ft x 10 ft at least), 7000 years of Chinese Jade, Egyptian exhibits, prehistory exhibits, a money though the ages display, and huge pieces of the Parthenon. They had a whole Africa sections. They had an exhibit of the Turning Arms into Tools movement. Mozambeke had a nasty civil war and there were arms all over the country. The program allows people to turn in the arms for things like plows and sewing machines. Then they give the guns to local artists, who turn them into sculpture. It was really cool. Though I found it funny when the tags said things like " a gift from the government of Egypt" Translation: we stole this from you, too bad for you.

After the museum, I went down the the Covent Garden Market ( which has existed in some form for 400 years). It was a bunch of little trendy shops with an open air market in between. There were tons of street performers. After I shopped a little, I bought an ice cream cone, found myself a nice step to sit on, and listened to a guitar player.

This post got really long, so I think I will continue it tomorrow.