Travels && Adventures: London Town

Soo....lets start off this European Highlights blog in London, England! Team 831 (I guess I might as well come up with a name to refer to us as....maybe Team California?) started the European trip in London. My past international travels have also been with other tour companies. Each one had airport pick-up, which made things easy. This trip, we had to get out of the airport ourselves. But it was EASY! We knew exactly which line of the tube to get from the airport and where to go. Then once we left the tube station...our hotel was 2 blocks away. Easy. Haha, but it was a fun and adventurous beginning for our little gang.

Got there early. Sat around for a bit. Checked in. Took showers and cleaned up. Met at 4:30pm to explore London Town. Got some information, hopped on the tube, and continued to jump on and off checking out different sites around London.

Highlights of London:

1. The tube experience itself. English is a good way to start the trip, and learning how to navigate public transportation. I LOVE public transportation (and NO that was NOT sarcastic, its true!) And with public transportation...always comes good stories. The tube doors would shut rather quickly, allowing maybe 30 seconds to hop on and off? We must have been on and off that thing at least 6 times with no problems. And sometimes the whole group would know where we were going, other times, some of us didnt. So on our way back to the hotel, the last ride of the day.... And the doors SHUT on 3 of us! Sheilah nearly lost her leg as the doors closed. I remember seeing Chantel's face inside the tube. Confused. What the heck! The doors SHUT on us. Peter, Sheilah, and I were left behind. Luckily it was a time when we knew where the whole group was going. I mean, I would have been horrified if it was just me that got left and I happened to not know where we were all going, right? That would have been painful. And later as I will mention, Ollie, our glorious tour guide, informed us that, "HURRY! THEY DONT FUCKING WAIT!" [about the doors closings]. No kidding. They DONT wait.

2. Places we stopped at/things we saw:

Big Ben right as we got off the first tube ride. Pretty cool to see that right away. We were all so pumped up and excited to ride the tube and figure out things to see! Picture clicking everywhere!
We saw the London Tower as we stood on the London Bridge (which most people confused the Tower for the bridge...London Bridge is just a regular bridge, nothing fancy).
Buckingham Palace. I didnt know this at the time, but if the flag is up, then the Queen is home. According to my pictures...the flag was up. And the guards told us where to go where you can take pictures with standing still guards. They are just there for show. I personally didnt find this to be fun and/or entertaining to take pictures with them. Its weird. Who does that? A lot of people!

3. Green Park. We walked through this park and it was so great! I found a squirrel friend. We kind of broke up as a group slowly. Some wanted ice cream, some wanted to sit down, etc. There were lounge chairs everywhere on the grass. I knew you were expected to pay for them. We all wanted to sit and just enjoy the fact that we were in LONDON! I mean, I dont really go to parks here in California. Its actually quite a shame. It felt perfect to just lay there and enjoy the day. Some people got kicked out of the chairs cause they didnt want to pay, I knew it! Here's a good video of Liz and her awesome commentary of the park:

4. Abbey Road. Before leaving the hotel, I made sure I talked to someone about how to get to Abbey Road. My mom would probably disown me if she knew I had a free day in London and didnt check this site out! For those who dont know...Abbey Road is the name of a Beatles album, and the cover in particular is iconic. They are walking across Abbey Road in London, apparently where their studio was located. But of course, the way tourist attractions mess up meaning, this new "Abbey Road" was moved because of traffic or something. London still wanted to make it a tourist attraction...so they moved it down the road I think, haha. Kinda lame. But still, this was my favorite time in London. Trying to capture the right pose with all the traffic was entertaining!

Its terribly hard to try and pick my "favorite" city. They are all unique and amazing in their own way. But if I had to pick....London just might take the bait. It was clean, you could tube it and walk everywhere, I already knew the language.....and London by far has the coolest music scene! If the pound didnt kill our dollar, I would love to visit London (as well as the rest of England) for a much longer period of time. And I already told Nathan to work me up an architectural drawing of my English brick house with brilliant (yeah I sait it) green trees all around. And I'll paint my own zebra crossing in front of it. Bloody brilliant! And the telephone booths. We had to.

PS....It got dark around 10pm. Talk about a looooong day!