Thursday, March 22, 2012

Lovely London

Our final destination for this trip was London. Our plane from Dublin to London was delayed for a bit due to bad weather in Dublin and London. I absolutely hate flying so it was not a fun fight for me. To make matters worse, as we were landing, the head flight attendant said to make sure we knew where the emergency exits were. That is not a good thing to say to someone who is scared of flying, so that put me over the edge. I was incredibly happy when we were safely in the airport!

It's busy here


Shani's great aunt lives in Morden (close to Wimbledon) so we were able to stay with her for free which saved us a ton of money! We had to take the train and the underground to get to her house. There was a problem with one of the lines that was backing up everything so it took us a long time to get to her house. When we finally did we decided to take a nap for a bit. Shani wanted to keep sleeping but I made her get up and go into London with me since we didn't have very much time. We took the Underground into King's Cross and started walking around from there. We wandered through Hyde Park and a few other places before heading back to Shani's aunt's house for dinner and an early bed time.






We started the next morning by going to The British Museum. When I was in London last time with my family we didn't go, so I was really excited to check it out. This museum is GIGANTIC. We could have spent days there and still not have seen everything. The only really famous thing that I knew they had was the Rosetta Stone. But, I had absolutely no idea where it was. So, I paid the 2 pounds for the map so we could find it. Shani didn't want to spend too much time there because she wanted to go back to her aunt's house to run and hang out with her family so we decided to see the top 10 things to see in 1 hour. My friend, Jennifer, from K-State is studying abroad in London so she came and met us which was a lot of fun! It was nice to see her again. We went around and saw the Rosetta Stone, one of the Easter Island statues, some statues from the Parthenon, a mummy and some other things. It was really fun. When Shani left Jennifer and I continued to walk around and look at things. Later we met up with my friend/former house mate/former coworker Kristin. She and her friend came to the museum for high tea and Jennifer and I joined her. It was really nice to see her too! Nice to catch up with things from the United States too. :p


The Rosetta Stone

"The head and arms of the sun-god Helios emerge out of the sea at dawn. His chariot is to be imagined as still underwater..."

Hey! Dum-Dum! You give me gum-gum!

Yay! Kristin!

Tea Tray


After tea we parted ways and Jennifer and I went towards the theater district so I could meet Shani to see our West End show: Shrek The Musical. Last time I was in London I saw Lord of the Rings the Musical and it turns out that Shrek was in the same theater as Lord of the Rings. I have made it my personal mission to see a show in that theater every time I go to London. :p The show was cute, I liked the costumes a lot. I have been going through some crazy theater withdrawals (non-theater people won't understand), so I was REALLY glad for the opportunity to see any theater, even a not very deep show like this.


Yay Jennifer!


The next day we went walking around again. We went through Trafalgar Square and through the National Galleries. Later through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens to see the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain and Kensington Palace.  

National Galleries

Big Ben

Trafalgar Square

Princess Diana Memorial Fountain