London!

I'm trying to catch up on relaying my travels, but I keep going places! Makes it difficult. Anyway, after the 15 day extravaganza, I came "home" to my new apartment in Alicante, where I had lived for two days before I left, and did a couple loads of laundry, went to two classes, then left again.

London was awesome. I got back a week ago so I wish I would have posted this sooner so it would still be fresh in my mind, but I definitely won't forget it. It was such a relaxing trip--more like a vacation than my backpacking through France and Italy. No trains to catch or languages to struggle through, just a sweet city and lots of English.

I went with two of my favorite chicas here. I knew it would be a fun trip going in to it, and I proved to be right. We had the same mindset: museums and churches are boring, let's have fun. Thus, we skipped a lot of the "must-see" sites like Westminster Abbey (what does that even mean?) and St. Paul's Cathedral (we saw the outside!) and so on. Plus, I hadn't heard of some of the places until I started planning the trip, so it couldn't have been that "must-see."

Like my other trips, we walked and walked and walked. It's a great way to see the city and then sleep well at night. I could feel each and every mattress spring poking against my back at the hostel, so I needed all the help I could get. We walked across London Bridge (it wasn't falling down). Ho hum. They screwed it up by painting it bright blue. Did some more bridges, saw a changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace (stupidest thing ever-->), saw Shakespeare's Globe Theatre (remake, real one burned down), walked by Big Ben, and went through some parks. We also made it to two museums (yes, TWO) and sped through them pretty quick. National Gallery was all art. Boring. I liked the British Museum though, which was described to me by a friend as "the place where they put all they shit they stole from everyone else."

I saw the Rosetta Stone...not a collection of language tapes like I thought (joke). Apparently some dudes used the hieroglyphics on this rock to decode, well, hieroglyphics or something. Point is, the rock is the reason we know about ancient Egyptian civilization. We saw actual tombs and sculptures from like, 700 B.C. That's incredible, almost 3000 years ago! Some of the mosaics were really cool. We spent an embarassingly large amount of time in the African section...looking at the map. "Whoa, did you know Sudan was that big?" "I've never even heard of Benin!" Then we got started talking about the Somalian pirates. We seriously spent more time in front of that map than any other exhibit, but that's kind of the epitome of this trip I think. After we got all the touristy stuff out of the way, we got to explore the city a bit.

We stumbled across an awesome district called Soho. Isn't there a Soho in New York? This place was sweet. Tons of different restaurants and coffee shops and shopping...very hip. We ended up going back twice. Chinese, Indian, Thai, Italian mmm. We were blessed with incredible weather, and everyone got their lunch and sprawled out on the grass in the park nearby. It was just so relaxing and laid back. A vacation from vacation, if you will :)

We ran into a street fair sort of thing with different tents set up selling baked goods, fruit, nuts, and such. The cool part: instead of money, you had to pay "kindness." I gave a guy a hug and got a brownie. That's what I'm talking about! It was actually a promotion (by Absolut Vodka!) but it just added to the chill atmosphere.

We could have gone to a stage show or hit up the club scene. Instead, we opted for delicious Mexican food, Dr. Pepper, and a movie.

Mexican food- we all had a hankerin' for some Chipotle, and this place was close. Funny that you have to go to London to find some real Mexican food over here.

Dr. Pepper-oh God, how I missed you. Spain has Coke and "Coca Cola Light" and Fanta that tastes like orange juice. No bueno. I had DP twice in London and bought another bottle back to Spain with me. It lasted less than 24 hours.

Movie-we paid a ridiculous amount of money to see a mediocre-at-best movie (the new Seth Rogen one), but it was in English! I don't go to the movies in Spain because they dub it over in Spanish, and that's just bullshit.

Overall, an awesome, American-style night, and trip in general. Much needed.