Our last and final day in London was quite the adventure let me say. I don't think my legs have ever been so tired in my life. That's the one thing I didn't like about London. The city is so huge that in order to see it all (and I feel like we didn't even see half of it) you have to cram a million and one things into one day, and we therefore weren't really able to enjoy it. It wasn't like Dublin where I could sit in a pub, enjoy the live irish music, and soak in all in. London was one subway ride after another--going one speed: fast.
We started our day going to Abbey Road, where the Beatles recorded their final album "Abbey Road." The actual crossing is the famous road that the Beatles are shown crossing on the cover. I'm really glad we went even though it was only like for 15 minutes, I can officially say I walked on the real Abbey Road. I was sure to also get a postcard at the small Beatles shop on the corner so I have proof. Well the pictures so serve as evidence too.
After Abbey Road, we went straight to the British Museum. This museum is famous for several of its treasures that it holds. One of the most famous being the Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta Stone carries an inscription in 3 different languages which helped decipher the ancient Eqyptian hieroglyphic script. This stone in the museum is the only surviving fragment of a larger stone slab recording a decree on 27 March, 196 BC.
I felt we allocated a little too much time at the British Museum. Don't get me wrong it was a very interesting museum but we only probably needed to spend an 1 or so there. Besides the couple of really famous pieces, it felt like just a typical history museum with artifacts from all over the world. We left the museum and started our journey to wait for it...CHIPOTLE. We were so excited when we saw it that I think Sarah went in full sprint around the corner when she saw the sign.
It was a fantastic lunch, especially since mexican is probably my most missed food group while being in Europe. I coudln't get the guacamole on my burrito though because it was an additional 2.3 pounds to get it. London really hurt my budget. If you think the Euro is bad, the pound is ten times worse. To help you non-mathematical people understand conversion rates, let's say you wanted to take out 100 Euros from the bank. It would cost you around $130-$140 US dollars. But if you wanted to take out 100 Pounds it would cost you around $160-$170 US dollars. So I really tried to watch what I spend even though it was a little difficult. After our bellies were full with delicious chipotle, we then crossed over the well-known "London Bridge." Funny though the London Bridge isn't a pretty bridge, it's just a basic gray stone bridge.
The really pretty bridge was Tower Bridge, which we didn't walk over personally but we got a good view of it from standing on the London Bridge. We did walk the "Queens Walk" over to where you could reach Tower Bridge, so I have officially walked the steps of the Queen.
We also kind of cheated with Tower London as well. We were short for time and since we had a clear view of it we figured hey we can just take a picture of it, say we went there and call it a day. Too many things to do too little time. It was a very pretty building however.
I stole this picture from my friend Abbie, which is Tower London at night. Kind of wish I got to see this in person, but it wasn't on the top of my priority list.
The last part of our day was making a trek to see the Olympic Village. Our tour guide the previous day had informed us that they have already started setting up for the Summer 2012 Olympics. We took the Subway to the closest station and had to walk a good bit to get to the village. We ended up not actually being able to get all the way there because so many construction sites blocked the entrances. We were going to keep trying to find a way to get in, but eventually we gave up and just said we were satisfied with the best possible view we could get. Unfortunately, they hadn't set up as much as we would have thought, but it was still pretty cool to say that we've been to where the Summer 2012 Olympics are being held.
Our stay still wasn't over. The four of us then ventured to Camden Market, this huge market and area of all kind of shops and vendors and restaurants. It was really cool, but we didn't stay long because it was just that cold. I was so cold I couldn't even function to shop and that says A LOT. We went through one area of vendors, I got a present for kc, and by that time we were just like "Where is a starbucks?" Of course one was just down the block and I ended up getting a hot chocolate which warmed me right up. After just shopping for probably a mere 30 minutes we headed back to the hostel and got ready to go out and meet up with Sarah's friend who was living in London. She lived in Kingston, so we had to take a subway then a bus to get to her, but we had a really good time. We pregamed with some of her friends, then went out to this club. Unfortunately we didn't get back to the hostel until around 3:30 and had to wake up at 5:30 to catch our flight. It's true when my friends who had studied abroad told me before I left for Europe, "sleep only when your dead." No such thing as beauty sleep in Europe.
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