london

myself and 6 other girls went to london this previous weekend! since we didnt get to our hostel until after midnight on friday, we obviously didnt do anything until the next morning except crash in our amazingly comfortable beds. none of us slept very well since our room was next to the entryway to the hallway and the door slammed shut anytime someone went through it. plus we were really close to the bathroom that had a loud dryer (and could hear people outside our window strolling through the cobblestone driveway with their suitcases). anyways, we decided to suck it up and wake up semi-early to experience london. saturday was the only nice day forecasted and we wanted to see as much as possible.

we were beyond excited to see abbey road. this photo ended up being perfect (or near to) since we had a 5th person to photograph the 4 of us. thanks jackie!! and even though the crossroad was repainted and the photo is taken at a different angle, you can see the wall to the abbey road studios in the left in each photo (except the title covers it up in the album cover).

after freaking out for a bit, we took the quintessential london red double-decker bus and sat on the top. it went directly to buckingham palace, so we continued there. by the way, london has "look left" and "look right" painted at each crosswalk since they drive on the opposite side of the road. as weird as i thought these were at first, they proved to help us out a lot haha.

buckingham palace was gorgeous and soooo large, but not much was going on so we went out to lunch at a pub called shakespeares. the food was amazing and i got chili nachos with jalepenos. i blame this for the start of my stomach ache that lasted 3 days.

since we had seen the eye of london down the street from buckingham, we decided to walk down towards that way. we walked through a beautiful park, st. james park, in order to get there. the animals were so friendly and we were all more amused than any park animals should make us. and of course the fall colors were brilliantly bright. we also had to pass the horse guards to get to the riverbank where the eye was located. before we even got there, we encountered a cute telephone booth (the ones you see in movies) so we of course tried to see how many we could pack in there. we got the four of us in before heading further down the bank.

he seriously climbed up here as soon as we started taking pictures, so cute

goose having his lunch and getting in my face with it

after walking past the eye, we saw big ben, a cute couple shooting their wedding photos, house of parliament, westminster hall, westminster abbey, and a huge abortion protest. at this point, we wanted to head back where we came from so we could get dinner and back to our hostel. we decided to stay in and watch a movie since we hadnt gotten much sleep the night before.

panorama from the back of the horse guards showing the eye in the distance

since lisa and katie had met up with a friend the previous day, we hit up abbey road again the next morning. we looked closer at the graffiti, found the abbey road studios where the beatles (and many others) recorded, and checked out this tiny beatles coffee shop that sold a bunch of merchandise. we also went to buckingham palace again but everything was blocked off. we asked a police officer what was going on and they were bringing the queen back to the palace, we even saw the car she was coming in on.

abbey road studios
we werent allowed in :(

since we were meeting up with the rest of the group that had gone on a harry potter tour, we went to the kings cross train station to see the 9 and 3/4 platform where part of the movie was filmed. we also found a small restaurant to eat lunch at since it was starting to rain. of course it was pouring by the time we finished eating so we went to harrods, which is a famous department store that princess diana's boyfriend owned. it was like wandering through santa's workshop. we ate delicious chocolate, stared at all the beautiful packaging, designer purses, and of course died when we saw their display windows (being the design nerds we are).

since the tube was under construction, we had to find an alternate way back. conveniently we had to transfer around piccadilly circus, which is the times square of london. we walked from there to the oxford circus and saw the world's prettiest anthropologie store and christmas lights strung across the streets. it made me sad that christmas is immediately after i return from europe. im going to miss that christmas anticipation that im used to. im so excited to come home i cant even think about christmas barely. after we regrouped at our hostel we went to a local pub called angies.

we were leaving the next morning, so we woke up and attempted to see anything possible before we needed to get to the airport. we had breakfast and coffee at shakespeares since their food was so good previously; however this time it was not the same experience. my breakfast food never came and the waitresses were so flustered even though there was approximately 3 other people in the restaurant. it was ridiculous. she got so flustered and mad at us when i requested her to take off the food she charged me on my receipt. i figured i should be the mad one, but i was so confused why she was upset that i just payed for my coffee and we left. since it was raining when we went to buckingham the day before, and needed to stay in the area in order to catch our train, we walked the couple blocks back to to it. instead of returning to the train station the way we came, we went the entire way around buckingham through green park and the palace gardens. we saw a ton of monuments for wwii and pretty fall colors. even though we didnt see london tower and the bridge (it was a bit out of the way), we saw so much of london for the couple days we had. i really want to return here some day so i can see what i missed!

guards through the gate

panorama of the palace and green park

now im in rome for the next week before i head to ireland (dublin, galway), and belgium (brussels) for our very short thanksgiving break. 

today, i kind of felt like i havent seen much of rome since ive done so much traveling. i dont have much time left so i decided to do something each week until i leave. i wanted to choose thigns that rome had to offer without it being on the typical tourist list. so today i researched a lot and found some hidden museums, tombs, parks, monuments, and general places i still havent seen. besides catching up on homework this weekend, im going to explore romaaaaa (its my last weekend here before finals! ahhhhh) until later, lots of love!!
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