Friday, April 30, 2010

Tired Feet

It's definitely bed time! Today was jam packed full of events and I am ready to hit the sack. School started today, so reality set in. I had forgotten that the reason I actually came here was for a "study" abroad! It's amazing how much material is crammed into such a short amount of time! After class Kaitlyn and I went running in Hyde Park. It was beautiful! Somehow running becomes so much easier when its through trails along a pond and beautiful scenery. I definitely felt like I was in a movie. From there we went to the Museum of London then on to St. Paul's Cathedral. St. Paul's is gorgeous! Yes, we hiked a billion stairs to get to the very top, but it was worth it. We saw all of London from the bird's eye view, but I did come to the realization that I am scared of heights... especially when its really windy and I keep hearing about earthquakes. Don't worry I didn't die! But walking down spiral staircases sure made me dizzy!
We have an amazing chef here at the center, so today we were treated to a delicious mexican dinner of enchiladas and homemade salsa. We shoveled our food and ran to the Box Office at Lion King, just to find out that the student discounts are only offered on weekdays. We decided we needed to venture to Harrod's where we were taken back by the outrageous prices! It's so fun trying to guess how much a dress costs! Too bad the tube station shut down and we had to walk all the way to south kensington. We figured that would be okay since Ben's cookies is there... closed... so mad! Instead we walked in and out of pastry shops until we found fabulous crepes that were well worth the hunt! Nothing better than a late night snack after walking all day long! And that's all for today my friends!

Thursday, April 29, 2010


27 Palace Court

Day 1...

I'm so excited to finally be in London! It seems like I've been waiting for this experience for ever.
The jet lag definitely got to me. In fact, let's just say that yesterday was the longest day of my life! We thought it would be smart to take Ambien on the flight from Atlanta to London, so we would sleep and be ready to start our day off at 7:15 am when we arrived. However, that proved to be non effective at all. Sleep was still unattainable and my eyes are finally not glazed over anymore!
Fighting through the tiredness definitely provided some priceless moments...
As soon as we got to the London center, we took a walk around our quaint little neighborhood. (I definitely wouldn't mind living here!) We were starved, but didn't want to waste our first meal in London on something lousy. Instead, we wanted to start off with a bang! Something cultural. "Noodles Oodles" looked rather appetizing from the outside but boy were we wrong! We sat down and quickly realized that we didn't recognize anything on the menu. We asked the waitress who barely spoke any English what her favorite dish was. It looked like old noodles with throw up on top... not even joking!! A guy at the table next to us had a dish that looked okay, so we asked what it was and decided that was probably our safest option. Haha not safe at all! And it left a terrible after taste! We decided we don't have to eat there again, but we did recommend it to a few people! Haha
We then had our first tube adventure! We couldn't figure out how to use our oyster cards to get through the gates. Haha Kaitlyn decided the ticket slot looked like it would work... instead it just got stuck and we had to have some man come open the machine and fish her card out! He said, "Whatcha do that for?" British accents sound lighthearted and sarcastic so of course we just laughed it off, when in fact he was completely serious and annoyed. Little did we know, you just have to touch your oyster on a magnetic strip to walk through.
However, after that first incident we were very proud that we made it to Westminster where we saw the famous Big Ben, Parliament Houses, and Westminster Abbey.