London
Finally! After 2 years of planning, daydreaming, and saving up money (okay, that last part didn't really work out), I was on my way to Europe. Gretchen and I have been waitng for this day to come forever! Who cared about graduation, we were looking forward to this trip.
My first overseas trip, I had to take pictures of us and our Virgin Atlantic goodies.
Six hours later we landed at Gatwick airport. Though our flight took off at 7pm, we arrived in London at 6:30am local time. Tired? Nah! Jet lagged? Pwah! Off we went to explore our first European city...
First we checked into a youth hostel by Hyde Park (Circle Line: Bayswater), then it was off to the British Museum, and
Buckingham Palace (where a dress rehearsal for the Queen's birthday was going on!), Trafalgar Square, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben...when exhaustion set in, the only logical solution was to eat...that's when good ol' McDonald's called our name. (I ordered a Lamb McSpicy)
The next 2 days were full of more adventures in London. Watched the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace, roamed around the National Gallery (So many of my favorite artists right out of my art history books! Michaelangelo, Delacroix, Rembrant, Monet, Seurat, Degas, oh my!).
We toured the Tower of London, walked the Tower Bridge, and we also went to the London Bridge. Though this particular backpacker did not know that the London Bridge is actually over Nevada somewhere so needlesss to say I was very disappointed to find that it was just an indistict concrete bridge.
Trying to find a pub called the Lamb and Flag was a mission. We walked around in circles (everyone kept giving us the wrong directions), got tired, finally picked a pub called the Brewmaster (it was playing American Pie).
Got kicked out at 11pm because it was a Sunday and pubs close at 10:30pm on Sundays (11pm other nights). How horrible.
But we met these really cool locals who we ended up pub crawling with the next night before G and I had to say our goodbyes because we had tickets to see Miss Saigon at the Drury Lane Theatre. We were running late and our new friends were so nice as to pay for our cab ride in those ubiquious black cabs although this part of the night was a little bit hazy for me...
