A lovely time in London!

What a weekend I had with my pal Loretta in the great and proper city of London, England! Loretta began her tour of Western Europe on Monday, February 26th so we thought, "Meh... why not go up a few days early and take in some jolly good sights?" And so we did! For those of you who do not know this, Loretta and I have a quirk about us that some may call strange but we find endearing - we like to speak in British accents. We are known among our friends and family for putting on such an accent. After explaining this to my fellow English exchange student Rav before our departure, he told us that our British accent is probably the worst impression he's ever heard and to please never speak like that again. We simply had to find out for ourselves and couldn't wait to observe the accent in its mother country.

We boarded a 6 am train to Eindhoven where a bus took us to the Eindhoven airport. This airport is quite small and so it was relatively easy to check in and board our 9:35am plane to the Stansted airport outside of London. It was cool to see the flat green land leave us behind as we crossed the channel to Britain. We had arranged to take a coach from Stansted and were beside ourselves as we crossed over English countryside to Victoria station in London. Using the Underground (which we now have become experts on) we found our way to the Globetrotter Inn, the hostel we stayed at. Once we had checked in we were back on the 'tube' again to begin the sightseeing tour. We found this great 2 days for the price of 1 deal for an excellent double-decker sightseeing tour bus. We had purchased the tickets online before we left so everything was paid for and ready to go. Equipped with our cameras and headphones to listen to the commentary along the way, we were the ultimate tourists! All of you would be proud to know that us Canadians represented well... when the evening grew chilly and everyone else went to the sheltered part of the bus, Loretta and I stayed put and revelled in the fact that as Canadians, this was nothing more than a cool spring breeze. Unfortunately, my umbrella was not Canadian made and the wind got the better of it! That evening we got some great views of Hyde Park, St. Paul's Cathedral. Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, the London Eye, the Tower Bridge, the London Tower and so much more! The great thing about the tour was that you could hop off any time and get on the next bus. This was so handy throughout the weekend. By 7:00 we were pooped and so after a great little dinner at an Italian restaurant we settled down for a good sleep back at the hostel.

Saturday was jammed packed with more sightseeing as we took advantage of the hop on and off tour bus. Before we headed out though, we thought how AWESOME it would be if we could book some tickets for a real, live musical in London! Loretta had never seen a musical before but as she discovered, finding one we both hadn't seen was quite difficult - I didn't realize how many I had seen until she started listing them. Finally, we saw a great deal for the musical 'We will Rock You' featuring Queen's music for only 25 pounds! We bought them online right away to see the matinee performance on Sunday.

We spent Saturday morning walking around Westminster Abbey, Big Ben at the Parliament, St. James' Park and Buckingham Palace (and the gift shop). It was very surreal to be standing in all of these places I had seen in the media for so long. We were getting so good at the underground but for one exhausting mistake. At one station, we decided to take the stairs and be fit instead of using the lift. After 5 minutes of climbing and no sign of the entrance we saw a haunting sign that read "193 steps, equivalent of 15 stories" Those stairs took ages to climb and we couldn't wait to sit back down on the bus. By midday we had made our way to Piccadilly and were browsing some quirky gift shops when we saw a musical ticket booth... we went over to double check the location of our musical for tomorrow when we realized something disturbing......

It turned out that in our excitement of purchasing the 'We will rock you' tickets we ended up not purchasing 'We will rock you' tickets at all: we had bought tickets for a serious drama about a band in the communist era called 'Rock n' Roll'! Oh no! This turn of events was almost too much! What were we going to do?? We decided it was too important to us to see the musical... so on a whim we purchased tickets for the real 'We will rock you' which was starting in one hour! We were going to try our luck and pick up the communist tickets tomorrow and try to scalp them... as long as we could get back even half of what we spent we would be happy. But having no prior scalping experience, we had no idea what to expect.

'We will rock you', however, was absolutely fantastic! The music was phenomenal and it had a great plot; the perfect choice for Loretta's first musical. By the time the play ended we were gearing up to meet Daniel for dinner! Daniel is one of my really good friends from high school who just happened to be in London the same weekend! Small, small, world. The three of us had a ball at dinner and it was great to catch up with him and hear about his past six months in Scotland as an exchange student. We met up with his two friends at Planet Hollywood and along the way I literally ran into Lubna, one of my Tilburg mentors! Really, small, small world. Soon it was time for Loretta and I to head out but our timing was less than perfect. The tube stations had all closed 10 minutes ago! Personally, I feel one never experiences the true London unless you get stuck in the pouring rain at night with no tube access. Somehow we managed to figure out the buses and find our way home... phew!

On Sunday, my last day, our first order of business was watching the changing of the guards at Buckingham palace. We were unable to secure a good viewing spot so we decided to head out on the sightseeing bus again towards London tower. But before we got there, we decided that we should probably try to sell those darn communist play tickets before 3:00pm when it began. After finding the theatre and obtaining our tickets (of course there were no refunds) we decided to clear our heads and grab a bite to eat at a traditional English pub before working our scalping magic. By 2:30 our selling hats were on and we headed towards the theatre. After failing to sell the tickets to two Hungarian tourists, I spotted two young women, around our age looking quizzically at the theatre entrance. I asked if they were getting tickets to the show and they explained they weren't sure... the price inside was 20 pounds. I said we would sell our tickets for 15 pounds each if they wanted and they replied with an immediate 'Yes!'. Oh what a happy moment, I even took a picture of that momentous transaction.

It was late afternoon and we decided to end our sightseeing tour by visiting London Tower, a magnificent medieval castle that is most closely associated with Henry VIII, it also houses the Crown Jewels! We purchased the recorded tour that you can pause and play along the walk. We actually had a really good time learning this history. The Crown Jewels were so ornate and spectacular. It was amazing to think that real monarchs had worn them.

Feeling happy about our weekend of sightseeing, we couldn't help but realize there was one thing missing from our London experience.....

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING MAY BE TOO DORKY FOR SOME READERS TO CONTINUE

A trip to King's Cross simply had to be made. For those of you who don't know, it is the station where the famous Harry Potter character departs for Hogwarts at Platform 9 and 3/4. And you know what... we actually found the Platform 9 and 3/4 and managed to push our trolley through the brick walls! At last, our time at London was complete!

I had to catch a city bus at 2am to get to Victoria station where a coach would bring me back to Stansted airport. For this leg of the trip, I was on my own and somewhat nervous for everything would work out alright. Now here I am back in my room after taking the London city bus, the airport coach, the plane, the Eindhoven city bus, and the train to Tilburg. It's quite empowering being able to travel like this on your own.

Cheerio for now!