March 28/29
Since Corey came to Paris, we’ve been on a very good schedule…A very good U.S. schedule that is. Weve been going to bed and waking up late, late, late. Well, the 29th was our trip to London and around 3:3am when we were about to go to sleep for about an hour before waking to catch the metro to get to the train station to take us to the airport (confusing I know) I realized the metro might not be running. After checking online, I was unfortunately correct so we got ready to go and started walking to our nearest RER (train) station which is about 45 minutes away. We must have been walking a little too leisurely because we almost didn’t make the train. Corey ad I ran into the station, bought tickets, ran down the huge flight of stairs with a big suitcase just as our train was pulling in. What a relief! We got super lucky.
After finally arriving at the airport, Corey and I boarded our plane and both fell asleep immediately, not waking until the plane was landing in London. We headed from the airport to central London via the Tube (the London Subway) on the Piccadilly line where we waited to meet Harris (Corey’s friend/house mate from UPenn) at a local coffee shop. Because we were running on an hour of airplane sleep, we decided to get coffee and having lived in Paris for awhile now and having become accustomed to small portion sizes I ordered a large and it was HUGE and not very expensive even with the pound conversion. I immediately liked London. Corey and I had just sat down to drink our coffee when Harris walked in. We sat and chatted at the coffee shop for awhile before heading to his dorm/flat to drop off our bag.
Our introduction to London began with a walk around Harris’s neighborhood. We walked from the London School of Economics (LSE where Harris is pursuing his masters) to Covent Garden, Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square, to the Thames river where we saw Big Ben, Parliament, and the London Eye. Our first actual stop was Westminster Abbey.
My first reaction to Westminster Abbey was, “You have to pay to get in?” In Paris, almost all of the churches are free to enter and tour and the museums have a fee to enter. However in London, the big museums were donation only and the churches cost money to enter. Westminster Abbey was really beautiful and impressively large. Unlike most of the very open churches in Paris, Westminster Abbey was labyrinth like in its layout. I think my new favorite facts from Westminster Abbey is that Darwin is buried there and there is also someone who couldn’t afford a large plot so he was given a very small square plot and is buried standing up.
After Westminster Abbey we headed to a pub for lunch were I had a BLT, Corey had Indian chicken madras, and Harris had fish and chips. From there we went to the Cabinet War Rooms which lie just on the edge of St. James park. The Cabinet War Rooms are a series of rooms, apartments, offices, etc, where Winston Churchill made his decisions during WWII. They are either in their exact same state or a recreation of their state while the war was going on. It was really interesting to say the least and one of my favorite parts was the large room that now serves as an interactive Churchill museum. I could have spent a loooong time there but we were pretty tired and had more to see so we cut our trip short.
After the war rooms, we headed out to St. James park where we took some photos before heading back to Trafalgar Square where we went to the National Gallery. Harris took us to the National Gallery because he wanted to show us a couple of Van Gogh’s paintings. When Corey and I looked at a map, we saw that they had a lot of paintings that we had both studied in art history like da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks, Botticelli Venus and Mars, The Arnolfini Wedding, and the Ambassadors to name a few.
After the National Gallery, Corey, Harris, and I headed back to the dorm for a quick nap before heading to a pub for dinner. Corey and Harris had the same chicken sandwich and I had Guinness battered fish and chips, mmmm. We got gelao for dessert before heading back to the dorm to watch March Madness (all number 1 seeds for the first time in the final four, WOW, the ugly stepsisters win this time) and got to sleep.
Here are some picture from the 28/29
