London

I haven't blogged in forever and the biggest reason for that is that I went to London for five days. Before that, I spent a day in Livorno with Mackenzie and a friend we met in Montalcino named Giovanni. There's not really much to say about that, we just walked around and saw the city, which was cool because it's on the coast so we got to see the sea for the first time in a while. London on the other hand was AMAZING, and I will try not to leave anything out.

Wednesday:
- Mackenzie, Gabby, and I left for the train station in Florence at 1:30 PM and caught a train to Pisa Centrale, which took about an hour. From there, we had to get a ten minute train to Pisa Airport, where we waited for a couple of hours after going through security and passport checks. We then had a 2 hour flight to Stanstead Airport in England, where we got food and waited about an hour to get a bus to Liverpool Street in London. That bus took about an hour and by then it was getting pretty late. From Liverpool Street we had to walk to the nearest Underground Station and take two different lines to finally get to our hostel. We got to the street and had a little trouble finding the hostel, to the point where we almost had breakdowns and thought we were in the completely wrong place, but we finally found it around 12:30 AM and basically went right to bed. There is a one hour time difference so it was actually 1:30 AM in Florence and we were exhausted.
- At Stanstead airport, we had to go through some pretty intense border control. We had to fill out a sheet with basically every piece of information you can imagine, and then wait in line to have our passports and return tickets inspected, and answer some questions. When we finally got through we were relieved, because it was so intimidating that we were actually worried we would have problems.
- Our hostel... We stayed at St. Christopher's Village (London Bridge) in Southwark, London. It is one of the most well known hostels in the area so we felt pretty good about it. When we first walked in there was a reception desk and an area with five computers that were available to use internet on. There was also a cooler with random food and drinks you could buy, and the room was full of brochures for things to do in London and coupons to get discount prices as certain places. From there, you walk through a door into a room with a balcony that overlooks a large room downstairs which by day was seating for the hostel restaurant as well as a place with free wifi that you could use if you had a laptop. There were TVs down there and a little bar. By night, this room became a nightclub, and there was a huge discoball on the ceiling and really loud music. We did not make an appearance there... To the left of the room with the balcony was Belushi's, a bar that was open to the public but also connected to the hostel where we could get discounts with our keycards. They also served food and served as the place to get our complimentary breakfast in the morning (which was basically just toast, and we never took advantage of it). Straight ahead, there was another door which could only be accessed with your keycard. Inside, there was a "chill out" room with couches and tables, and a cinema room with a big screen and benches where they played movies at night. There were also two luggage rooms where we kept our stuff the last day we were there after we had checked out. The rooms themselves were not bad. The first night we stayed in a room with ten bunk beds, but after that we were in a room with only six. The rooms were really warm and the beds weren't bad. There was underbed storage that you could buy a lock for but we used them without locks and had no problem.

Thursday: We got up early and went to Starbucks for breakfast and coffee. We did some researching on the hostel computers to find things we wanted to do on the map, then headed out. We ate lunch in a park with a playground, and Gabby and Mackenzie had a lot of fun playing around in there.
- From there, we took the underground to Abbey Road where we took pictures and bought some little souvenirs. After that we went to Covent Market which that day (it always changes) was a really touristy market where we bought a bunch of cheap souvenirs and had fun looking around.
- At 3, we met up with a tourguide and took a group walking tour around part of the city for 2 and a half hours. We saw a lot of cool things, including the London Bridge, the Tower Bridge and Tower, the Millenium Bridge, the Great Fire Monument, Bank, the Strand, and a lot of other things along the way, like the Hogwarts clock and Gringotts! We learned a lot about the history of the area, including why they drive on the left side of the road.
- After the tour, we chilled at Starbucks for a little while to warm up, then headed out to a different area of the city to get dinner. We found a really good mexican restaurant where we got a lot of food and a few drinks. After dinner, we went to a cafe that served shisha, and smoked an electric hookah. Not really my thing, but Gabby and Mackenzie are huge smokers so they enjoyed it and it was still fun to watch them fool around.
- After this, it was around 10:30 PM and we went to Liverpool Street station, because Theresa was flying in that day and we figured we would meet her there since she was going to be alone. We ended up just missing her, but had no way of getting in contact with her so we didn't know that. We waited until around 12:30, by which time the underground had stopped running and we had to get a double decker bus back to our hostel. The bus arrived at 1:05 AM and we got back a little before 1:30. At the door we were ambushed by Theresa, and to our surprise, Teagan, who had previously told us he had to cancel the trip. We caught up on stories for the day and then headed to bed, once again exhausted.

Friday:
- We had tickets for Harry Potter at 9:30 AM at the Odeon in Leicester Square, so we got up early and went to the supermarket across the street to grab breakfast. They had bagels and premade sandwiches and stuff that was pretty cheap and easy. Then we headed to Leicester Square and picked up our tickets and went in. The movie was, as expected, fantastic, and the theater was the nicest one I have ever been in. The screen was huge and very high quality, and we had center seats. It was so cool to see the movie in London, and see places that we had been in certain scenes!
- After the movie we walked around Leicester Square a little and then went to lunch at TGI Fridays.
- After this, the rest of the group wanted to go to the aquarium, but I wasn't interested because it was expensive and I had a whole list of London things I wanted to see and do, and plus it was a gorgeous day. So we headed toward the aquarium which was right next to the London Eye. We set up a meeting time and place and they went inside, and I spent the day alone, walking around. Which actually turned out to be one of the best days I had. I saw the Eye (which is the biggest ferris wheel in the world) then walked across the river to Westminster Abbey, Parliament, and Big Ben. After that, I walked back, but I still had time, so I walked to the other side of the Eye, where I stumbled upon a little street fair with a bunch of different food and craft stands and street preformers. It was really cool and I do not regret my decision not to go to the aquarium.
- When they got out of the aquarium they had seen an ad for a Fright House thing that was nearby that they wanted to check out, and I had happened to walk by it earlier so I showed them where it was. It was a live performance haunted maze. Mackenzie had a stiff neck from sleeping wrong so she was nervous about going in because they had videos of people screaming and ducking and jumping out of the way and didn't know if she was up for it. I decided to stay out with her because it wasn't really something I thought I would enjoy anyway. The people that worked there were dressed up in costumes and to advertise they went down on to the street and scared people and handed out flyers, so while the others were inside, Mackenzie and I watched the people on the street get scared and laughed a lot.
- After that we headed back to the hostel because Mackenzie was really tired. It was only around 6 but it felt really late. Because Teagan had planned on cancelling his trip, he actually had to stay in a different hostel for the next two nights, so after hanging at the hostel for a little, they all set out to find his new hostel. I stayed behind and showered (kinda gross) and straightened my hair and hung out in the chill out room. It took them about two hours, which was a really long time, so I figured they had found something to do, so I went across the street to subway and got dinner. When they finally got back, it turned out that they had had a lot of trouble finding the hostel and then there was a complication with their underground train, so they had to sit in the same place for 45 minutes. We were all exhausted so we went to the cinema room and watched The Matrix, then headed up to bed for the night.

Saturday:
- We had agreed to meet Teagan at 10 AM in front of Belushi's, but 10 came and went and Teagan was nowhere to be seen. We headed down to the station that he would have gotten off at, which was right across from Starbucks, so we took it in turns to wait for Teagan and get coffee and breakfast. When Teagan still didn't show up, we went back to the Hostel and mapped out our plan for the day. Finally, when we were just about to leave without him, Teagan showed up at around 11:30. Annoying, but we let it go and set off.
- I'm not sure on the order we did things that day but I know we went to King's Cross to see platform 9 and 3/4 (disappointing), took them to see St. Paul's cathedral and let Theresa light a candle for her aunt whose funeral was that day, went back to Covent Garden with them to see if they wanted any souvenirs, went to lunch at an English pub where I got a grilled Carefully cheese sandwich, and went to Trafalgar Square which is a really famous square full of fountains and statues.
- After a while, Theresa's back started to hurt, so she went back to the hostel and the rest of us went to Piccadilly Circus to see it all lit up at night. We walked around the streets and looked at the shops, and then decided we wanted to see a movie. We went back to the Odeon in Leicester Square and bought tickets, then got take out Chinese noodles and sat outside to eat them before the movie. We saw Let Me In, which we though was a horror movie, but turned out to be a vampire drama... it was really disturbing and weird. After that we went back to our hostels and went to bed.
- Mackenzie had booked the hostel at a different time than us and actually couldn't book it for Saturday night, so she was at a different hostel than us and Teagan. We planned to meet up at Earl's Cross, the station near Teagan's hostel, at 10 the next morning because we wanted to make in to Buckingham Palace for the changing of the guards by 11:15.

Sunday:
- It ended up taking us 45 minutes to get to the station in the morning so we were late and we couldn't find Teagan or Mackenzie and figured they had left without us. We bought pasties (DISGUSTING) at a shop for breakfast and then headed over to the palace ourselves. We watched the changing of the guards, then hung out at Green Park right next door to see if we came across Mackenzie and Teagan (although we later found out that they did not make it to the Palace because the underground station they tried to take there was closed so they took a bus and it was too late for them to get there), but after a while we decided just to set off with the rest of our plan for the day.
- From there we went to Hyde Park, where we came across "Winter Wonderland" which is a huge fair/carnival thing that they apparently do around Christmas with rides and food and crafts and all different kinds of stuff. We walked around there for a while, and then we were going to head to Harrods, our last destination before leaving, but Theresa really didn't want to go so we decided to just give up and head back to the Hostel where we knew Mackenzie and Teagan would have to go at some point because Mackenzie had left her stuff there with us.
- We got all of our stuff out of the luggage rooms and bought some internet time while we waited for the other two to show up. We got lunch at Subway and sat in the chill out room eating it. Finally, Mackenzie and Teagan came in and we shared stories of our day. Theresa and Teagan had an earlier bus back to Stanstead than we did, so they left, and Gabby, Mackenzie, and I waited around for a little longer before heading out to our bus stop. When we got to the airport, we had a few hours of waiting to do so we bought some magazines to spend our last few pounds, then sat together waiting. Finally, it was time to board and we got on to our two hour flight back to Pisa. From there, we had to take a bus back to Florence train station, and then a cab back to our apartment. We ended up getting home around 2 AM (needless to say, class the next day was a struggle).

Since London, I have done a couple more exciting things. Tuesday in Art History we went to the Accademia and saw the David. It was absolutely incredible and indescribable. Tuesday night, I made stuffing and mashed potatoes that my parents sent me, and also some veggies and chicken and rolls that we picked up at the store and had a little Thanksgiving dinner with Gabby and Mackenzie. Tonight, our apartment is having dinner all together. We are making pasta, rice, steak, and different veggies, to celebrate an Italian Thanksgiving. It is really hard for me to be away from home on this holiday, but I know we are going home in less than two weeks now, so I'm holding on to that.

I can't even convey how much I fell in love with London. I literally wanted to stay there forever. It is so different than here, and so different than home, but still has some little pieces of the Western world that made it easier to be away. It is so beautiful and so easy to navigate and I fell in love with every second we spent there. I would love to go back and I wish I could share that amazing experience with everyone I know. It was easily the highlight of my three months abroad.

All that's left to say is, I really can't wait to go home. It's been real, and it's been fun, but please get me the heck out of here ; )

Ciaoooo