London Stole my Heart

October 24/25, 2013

"when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."
— Samuel Johnson

I honestly don't know what it was, but as soon as I arrived in London, I fell in love.  If it wasn't for the lack of sunshine, I may drop all now and pack my bags and move to London.  For now I will stick with Spain and California.  Yet as of now, mine and Aubrey's dream is to move to London after graduation for a period of time, possibly for grad school! 

Anyway, this trip all started the weekend before, when my roommate Patti and I were discussing if we had any plans for the following weekend and realized we didn't.  And right then and there we decided we wanted to go to London! I mean, why not?! The airplane tickets are the easiest part to figure out and the prices from Spain to London really weren't too extravagant, even for booking only 5 days in advance   The hardest part is finding places to stay.  While I was looking for hostels many of them kept saying you had to stay a minimum of 7 days and sadly that wasn't a possibility for us because of school.  I then remembered one of my friend's from high school, Brianna, moved to London afar graduation to go to school at the University of Greenwich.  So I messaged her to she if she knew of any good places to stay and do you know what she said, "You can stay with me if you want!"  I was so beyond ecstatic, because hostels are so expensive and this would just make things so much more simple and comfortable. 

Our travels began on the 24th by taking a bus from Granada to the Málaga airport at 8pm and our flight was leaving at about 10 I believe so we didn't arrive to the airport in London till about 12am on the 25th.  We took a shuttle to our hotel for the night since the train wouldn't be running to our friend's house that late.  We checked in and passed out for the night.  

When we woke up, it's Friday the 25th, we headed to the train station, bought day passes that let us travel on all trains and busses with the same ticket, so great, and headed to Brianna's flat.  She lives in a beautiful area about 30 minutes by train away from the center of London.  I can't say enough how thankful  we were for Brianna to open her home for us.  It was great getting to see her. I hadn't seen her since Warped tour, the summer after we graduated high school (2011).  We chit chatted for awhile then took off to explore the wonderful city that is London. 

We wandered around Wesminster Abbey area and saw all the little sites, buildings, statues. etc along the way.  Our first grand attraction we say was the Tower of Parliament, a.k.a. what everyone calls Big Ben.  Which I was told isn't the actual name, Big Ben is the name of the bell inside the tower.  Any-who, it was AMAZING to be able to see it in person.  So crazy to realize I was actually there, in London, looking at this famous tower.  We took classic pictures in front of it and just took our time begin tourists.  

Jumping for joy in front of "Big Ben"

In my new favorite place

Next, we found the place that I would live if I were to be homeless.  St. James Park.  It is one of the Royal Parks.  Never have I been to a park so beautiful and so perfect.  I don't know what it was or if I was just craving some beautiful crisp fall air or fall colors, but this place had it all.  The leaves were falling, the grass was bright green and everything about this place made me fall in love.  Don't get me wrong, Spain has been great, but is hot and dry and it was nice to be in a place that was actually a bit chilly and felt like autumn.  

St. James Park

From here we moved onto Buckingham Palace, just a short walk away from the park.  It was beautiful.  We walked around and took photos for quite awhile.  We watched the guards in front of the place walk back and forth a bit and watched how still they could be.  It's insane. I could never do that.  I can't stay still for one minute let alone hours! 

Buckingham Palace

We decided we'd try and make it back to the London Eye to take a ride and see the city from a different point of view.  On the way there, we found more guards guarding something else, haha, and they were doing a march or something. So we stood and watched and took selfies with one of the guys and I swear I saw a little smile on his face. :)

My roomie Patti and the London Eye

Again, we stopped for a simple photo shoot on the way to the London Eye and took pictures with it standing beautifully in the background on the other side of the river.  Yet we realized that by the time we got over there, it might be too late to ride and we had plans to meet back up at Brianna's house.  So after walking in a large circle, taking more photos and just enjoying the sites, we realized we still needed to eat.  After much deliberation, we finally found a small little cafe type place to eat.  It wasn't amazing, but it wasn't bad.  I had fish and chips, and I maybe biased, but those from Fort Bragg are much, much better! 

Brianna and I

Finally we headed back to Brianna's and thank goodness again for Brianna because I didn't pack any clothes for going out, so she lent me a lovely dress that I wanted to steal away from her. haha.  We got to meet her good friend Claire and after getting ready, headed to the dorms of their campus to chill in Claire's room for awhile.  After a bit, we headed to the club that they have on their campus for a party.  We had a great time getting to know some of their friends, spending time with Brianna and Claire, and of course, getting to listen to some of those amazing british guy's voices ;) haha 

Claire, Brianna, Me and Patti at the party