In the interest of space, I'll get right into the not-so-mini rundown of 'what I did and saw'.
We took the Stanstead Express train from the RyanAir sketch airport, which was expensive but gave us a booklet of very nice '2 for 1' deals on most of the major attractions we were planning to visit anyway, and ended up probably saving money. :) This left us off fairly close to the Tower of London so we headed that way rather than finding the hostel, running on about 2 hours of sleep, and walked under London Bridge without it falling down, marveled in the beauty of the Thames, took loads of pictures of the Tower Bridge and were mobbed by pigeons outside the actual Tower (which wasn't very tall- more of a fortress). Inside, we saw the sparkily and beautiful crown jewels (that's saying something, coming from 'ick jewelry' me), lots of old war outfits and artifacts, then quick hopped on the tube over to the area we'd frequent the next few days sort of a lot: Big Ben and the London Eye!
I skipped out on a ride on the London Eye- a giant ferris wheel overlooking the whole city, which I do regret a little bit, but while my friends were up there I was able to explore a bit around on my own; always a favorite pastime in big new cities. I stumbled upon the 'garden museum', found a walled in old library and rang the buzzer to ask to see the archives and was politely turned away, but oh well, and kind of slummed around the pretty park full of statues in front of Westminster Abbey and the Big Ben Parliament Building. Their collection of statues was interesting to me: I mean, Winston Churchill is a logical given, but it was refreshing to also see stonework figures of Nelson Mandela and Abe Lincoln. So I took loads of pictures of them, which are worth thousands of words and it's probably in everyone's best interest to just look at my Facebook album to get a good idea for what I saw.
From the Big Ben central area, we made our way by tube to the hostel in Russell Square, which was in a fantastic location but with amenities severely lacking. I've experienced two other hostels here this trip: one in Dublin and one in Cork, but both were head and shoulders above this place with barracks style bunking, though the price matched so I can't complain and am getting used to using old shirts as towels. One day I'll look back at all of this and be thankful I saved money- right? Also to note, London is incredibly expensive, being pounds and all, but I super-budgeted most of the time and enjoyed several almost-expired-discount £1.67 Tesco sandwich meals during the course of the weekend. That night, we stopped by the neighboring British museum and checked out the Rosetta Stone (there was probably a lot more there worth seeing but I was running on empty and not in a museum-seeing mood) and clocked in early, because we got up early again the next day!
Saturday featured Trafalgar Square, Westminster Abbey, and the Globe Theater! All were fantastic, educational and seem like a blur looking back. Westminster especially- everything was so beautiful, and important, that it's hard to even keep track of how many ancient graves we saw and walked over: really, the place was so full that some of the lesser-important important people had some folding chairs on top of their spots of eternal rest. That was kind of sad. At the Globe I had freshman year of High School English class flashbacks as I frolicked as a groundling and already knew a lot of the trivia from our happy guide. They have shows there still sometimes, though the upcoming season doesn't start until April. That night we'd planned to go around the pubs, but found that unlike in Ireland, the English ones seemed to be more for eating and old people, and clubs were the nightlife place of choice for us twenty-somethings (that seems so weird. Why am I so old). So we were just incredibly under-dressed by the standards of London clubbers and instead walked down to the London Eye and Big Ben, sat on a bench along the Thames, talked and listened to One Direction. Everything was lit up, and it was a really great moment: probably my favorite bit from the trip, even factoring in how many amazing things we'd seen the past two days. Maybe that seems silly, but as I discussed the next night when I met up with an old friend from high school, it's the people you spend time with that make life worth living.
As this London Post gets ever longer, I'll wrap up with Sunday. In the morning I fulfilled my childhood dreams and pushed a cart through the wall at King's Cross Station, experienced a bit of fairytale princess life at the Buckingham Palace changing of the guard, and snuck for a moment into the high-rolling life of a celebrity at Harrod's department store. We walked through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens to the statue of child-forever Peter Pan, and finished up our London experience with a Broadway show, Jersey Boys! Our seats were terrible and I'd only eaten a double hostel breakfast and a Cadbury bar (heavenly) up until that point, but the show was really very enjoyable. I liked mostly all of the New Jersey shout outs as a welcome feeling from home, compounded later after the show when I grabbed dinner and a pint at a pub with a friend I hadn't really talked to very much since graduation.
Much as I adored the Harry Potter perfection of this past weekend, and was swept up with the thrill of seeing the landmarks I'd admired from afar for so long, coming 'home' to Ireland was really welcome at the end. London was a big city, kind of similar to Dublin, but more what I saw as a combination of D.C. and New York (I was thinking about how the early American cities were modeled after the British ones, after all). Galway's ubiquitous trad music, cobbled streets, rain and brogue seemed just right after a wonderful, but very tiring, weekend holiday. So as much as I loved it, it is good to be back.
From the Big Ben central area, we made our way by tube to the hostel in Russell Square, which was in a fantastic location but with amenities severely lacking. I've experienced two other hostels here this trip: one in Dublin and one in Cork, but both were head and shoulders above this place with barracks style bunking, though the price matched so I can't complain and am getting used to using old shirts as towels. One day I'll look back at all of this and be thankful I saved money- right? Also to note, London is incredibly expensive, being pounds and all, but I super-budgeted most of the time and enjoyed several almost-expired-discount £1.67 Tesco sandwich meals during the course of the weekend. That night, we stopped by the neighboring British museum and checked out the Rosetta Stone (there was probably a lot more there worth seeing but I was running on empty and not in a museum-seeing mood) and clocked in early, because we got up early again the next day!
Saturday featured Trafalgar Square, Westminster Abbey, and the Globe Theater! All were fantastic, educational and seem like a blur looking back. Westminster especially- everything was so beautiful, and important, that it's hard to even keep track of how many ancient graves we saw and walked over: really, the place was so full that some of the lesser-important important people had some folding chairs on top of their spots of eternal rest. That was kind of sad. At the Globe I had freshman year of High School English class flashbacks as I frolicked as a groundling and already knew a lot of the trivia from our happy guide. They have shows there still sometimes, though the upcoming season doesn't start until April. That night we'd planned to go around the pubs, but found that unlike in Ireland, the English ones seemed to be more for eating and old people, and clubs were the nightlife place of choice for us twenty-somethings (that seems so weird. Why am I so old). So we were just incredibly under-dressed by the standards of London clubbers and instead walked down to the London Eye and Big Ben, sat on a bench along the Thames, talked and listened to One Direction. Everything was lit up, and it was a really great moment: probably my favorite bit from the trip, even factoring in how many amazing things we'd seen the past two days. Maybe that seems silly, but as I discussed the next night when I met up with an old friend from high school, it's the people you spend time with that make life worth living.
As this London Post gets ever longer, I'll wrap up with Sunday. In the morning I fulfilled my childhood dreams and pushed a cart through the wall at King's Cross Station, experienced a bit of fairytale princess life at the Buckingham Palace changing of the guard, and snuck for a moment into the high-rolling life of a celebrity at Harrod's department store. We walked through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens to the statue of child-forever Peter Pan, and finished up our London experience with a Broadway show, Jersey Boys! Our seats were terrible and I'd only eaten a double hostel breakfast and a Cadbury bar (heavenly) up until that point, but the show was really very enjoyable. I liked mostly all of the New Jersey shout outs as a welcome feeling from home, compounded later after the show when I grabbed dinner and a pint at a pub with a friend I hadn't really talked to very much since graduation.
Much as I adored the Harry Potter perfection of this past weekend, and was swept up with the thrill of seeing the landmarks I'd admired from afar for so long, coming 'home' to Ireland was really welcome at the end. London was a big city, kind of similar to Dublin, but more what I saw as a combination of D.C. and New York (I was thinking about how the early American cities were modeled after the British ones, after all). Galway's ubiquitous trad music, cobbled streets, rain and brogue seemed just right after a wonderful, but very tiring, weekend holiday. So as much as I loved it, it is good to be back.
No comments:
Post a Comment