I still have the Benny Hill theme song stuck in my head

'allo chaps! (I'll stop that now.) I am back from foggy London town. Back to school, back to writing papers and doing other things that I am not thrilled to do.

I had a wonderful time, and can't wait to tell you all about my trip, but I have a lot of work to do this week, along with preparing for Oslo this weekend, so don't mind if the updates are sparse.

I woke up terribly early on Wednesday in order to get out to Charles de Gaulle Airport in order for my 8:55am flight. Everything went smoothly on the way over. I took EasyJet which meant that everything was bright orange. This was my first experience with how British kids' whining is much cuter than American kids' simply because they have an adorable accent. I got to listen to "Mummy, I want another bite of chocolate!" from a few seats in front of me more than once.

I flew into London Luton, an airport about 50 km away from the city. Alex arrived a few minutes before me, so he was waiting for me outside of customs. I was thrilled to be back in an English-speaking country. Alex and I had a half-hour to kill before our bus left so we got some pounds sterling and bought some food.

The bus ride was pretty boring until we got near London.

I saw my first double-decker red bus.
We soon found our hotel and got all situated. Our plan for that night was to visit the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, and Westminster Abbey. We decided to buy unlimited passes for the Tube, which turned out to be an excellent idea. This was the wall tiling in the Baker Street station. So fun!
We came out of the subway and were like, "Where is Big Ben?" oh wait. It was right next to us. We walked over the Thames and took a ton of pictures.




We also saw the London Eye, which we had tickets for on Friday afternoon.
Walking over to the Abbey, there were some crazy people protesting across from the entrance to Parliament.

The Abbey was really cool. It was expensive to go in, but Alex convinced me. No pictures were allowed inside the Abbey, so I don't have any. What I can do is find some on the internet.


This was one of the best parts of the Abbey. There's a crazy ceiling that was once known as one of the wonders of the world. It was beautiful. My neck hurt from looking up at it.


"Poet's corner" was also very cool. It is where many British writers are either buried or honored. Almost all of my favorite writers were listed. For example, Charles Dickens is buried there and Jane Austen has a memorial.

As we left the church, an evening service was taking place, so we sat down for a few minutes. As we were finally leaving, an old woman came over and tried to convert us to the Church of England. We had to break it to her that we were Americans. I mean, people first came to my country to escape that church...

We went back over to the Thames and took a few pictures before deciding to head over to Buckingham Palace.


The palace looked nothing like I imagined it. I really did expect something with gold all over it. It was cool at night though.



At this point, I was starving. We went back over to the Paddington area where our hotel was and found a restaurant called "Garfunkel's". I devoured chicken and ham pie with mashed potatoes and gravy. SO GOOD.

I needed sleep at this point because of my food coma. There was a lot to do the next day!

P.S. Here is my favorite use of the Benny Hill theme song ever. I can't watch this without laughing hysterically.