The Adventures of Studying Abroad: We're Back From London....

Hey Everyone!
We finally made it back and I have a lot of things to share. We will see if I can remember everything but I guess I will just start from the beginning.

We left on February 10th at approximately 10:15 p.m. to start our 7-8 hour coach bus journey down to London, England. Started off pretty tired but with the help of snacks provided by the house we stayed awake a little longer. We were offered soda on the bus, I chose Dr. Pepper and Jacob chose Fanta. Halfway through the bus ride Jacob took his shoes off so he would be more comfortable while attempting to sleep. We finally arrived at a rest stop and Jacob realized his feet were soaking wet along with his shoes. We were both complaining about who's soda was spilled all over the floor, etc. We assumed that it couldn't have been ours since we didn't want to drink them because of the caffeine. We looked around and sure enough, Jacob's orange soda which was sitting in between us somehow got a hole in it and was leaking all over the floor and Jacob's feet/shoes. I guess it was our own fault and he finally got his shoes to dry provided the hand dryer at the rest stop. We finally made it to London around 8 a.m. and pulled up to what seemed to be a great hotel. To my sadness we weren't staying at the gorgeous President's Hotel on the left hand side of the street, we were staying in the complete dump called the Smart Russell Square Hostel on the right hand side of the street.

(Now, I could go on and on about the hostel and how much I hated it, how gross it was, the terrible beds, the bloody sheets, the crusty pillows, the showers that shut off if you took your hand of the knob.....and so on and so on, but I figured I would spare you the complaining. So minus the terrible hostel experience the entire trip, everything else was great. And I'm now glad that Jacob and I booked hotels instead of hostels for our springbreak and Paris trips.)

We learned how to ride the Tube (London's Subway system) that morning and I didn't realize how easy it would be to use. We each received a card called the Oyster Card which has 20 pounds worth of money on it. Each Tube ride costs 1.90 pounds so we had enough money to use for the weekend. The maps to use the Tube are so simplistic and it would be hard to end up not catching the right tube. I will admit that I was a little scared to ride them since they are so far underground, most needing to take an elevator up when you arrive at your destination. I was worried about terrorist threats and I know that may sounds stupid but there's so many people and no security whatsoever. Anyone could bring anything down there and not a soul would know. But to my relief nothing happened and after a while I didn't even think of things such as that.

That first morning we were there we left the hostel and went on a free tour through the NewEurope Tour Company. They work on a tip-based pay so at the end of the tour we were supposed to tip the tour guide whatever we thought the tour was worth. Our tour guides name was Ben and he was from Canada, so definitely relatable. He was great and took us to every main tourist site around London such as Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Changing of the Guards, Wellington Arch, and Big Ben of course. I was pretty impressed with the tour and we got to see everything that would've been on my list if I would've had one. At the end of the tour Ben took us all to this pub where they would give us a discount for being on the tour. We decided that we would eat lunch there and was that a bad decision. Everyone at our table (6 of us) hated our meals, the service was terrible such as no one got their drinks until after they received their meal, and we would ask for refills and they would never refill them. So we were pretty bummed out about that so Jacob and I went in search of somewhere that would satisfy us. We came across a pastry shop in Leicester Square called Patisserie Valerie, which must be a chain because we found more than one, and decided to get some dessert. Jacob got a cinnamon roll and I got some mandarin gelato both of which we enjoyed very much.

I'm pretty sure that that consisted of our first day there. I will probably write some more tonight about our second day but we will see. If not then you'll just have to wait until tomorrow!