I spent this weekend in London with my friend Jaclyn. We flew over Friday evening after our classes were over. The flight only took about 45-50 minutes so it wasn't bad at all!
When we arrived at Heathrow Airport in London we had to go through British Border Control -- and that was not fun at all. We had to wait in line for about 45 minutes and when it was finally our turn to talk to an agent, we learned we needed to fill out some "landing cards" so we had to get out of line to do that. Luckily they didn't make us go to the back of the line and they just let us go once we filled them out. The Border control agent was very pushy and aggressive in asking why we were staying; apparently "we're visiting" and "we're tourists" and "we want to sight-see" were not great answers but she eventually let us through. To make a comparison: when I arrived in France, Border Control was just a a guy at a desk who looks at your passport to make sure it matches your photo and then he stamps it -- it took all of about 15 seconds!
Once we were done with the airport bullshit, we met Jaclyn's friend Sarah who is studying abroad in London for the semester and who volunteered to show us around. First she showed us how to get to our hostel using the Tube so we could get settled in. Once we dropped our bags off we left because we had booked a reservation for the London Icebar -- a bar made entirely out of ice. It was really cool and the urban punch I ordered was really good. The tickerts only allowed us to stay there for 45 minutes which seemed short to us, but after being there 45 minutes seemed plenty because it was cold as fuck haha. We arrived in London fairly late so after the icebar there was enough time to get a really late (11:30pm) dinner. The only place we found open was an Italian restaurant so we got some really good personal pizzas. We needed to be up early the next day so we returned to the hostel.
On Saturday we did a lot of sight-seeing. I saw Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and some really gorgeous British public parks like Hyde Park and St. James' Park. The weather was beautiful -- 60 something and sunny! -- so it was a great day to walk around the parks. We spent most of the day sight-seeing so we worked up quite an appetite so of course we had to go get Fish & Chips! What would a trip to London be without that?!
Sunday was by far the best day though. Jaclyn and I had tickets to go on the London Eye, a giant Ferris Wheel that let's you get a great view of the city. The Eye only goes around once but it moves very slowly; we were up there for about 30 or so minutes. The pictures I took made the pricy ticket worth it. After the Eye, we met Sarah for lunch and killed a couple hours visiting some shops and enjoying walking around the city. We also went to The British Museum and saw the Rosetta Stone! But then it was time for the best part of the trip: a tour of the set of Harry Potter! Jaclyn and I had bought tickets. We had to take the national rail and then a bus to get to the studio and it took about an hour and a half. The tour was absolutely amazing! We got to see sets from the movie and the real props and costumes used in the films. Jaclyn and I took more pictures there than from the rest of the trip combined haha. The tour lasted about 2 and a half hours, and then we arrived at the gift shop -- shiiiittt! Of course the merchandise is overpriced because they know people (myself included) will buy it anyway but it was especially expensive because of the awful conversation rate of the dollar to the British pound. I said "fuck it" and I bought a Hufflepuff hoodie and scarf -- it cost me about $100 but it had to be done haha.
The rest of the day was spent commuting back to the city and then getting another late dinner. Our flight to return to Paris was at 8:20am on Monday so we were going to have to get up reallly early to take the 40 minute ride to the airport plus have time to go through security and have enough time left over to make sure we didn't miss the plane so we decided to just stay up all night instead of sleeping a few hours. Somehow we managed to stay up and get to the airport and catch our flight without falling asleep. By the time I got back to my host family's appartment I was absolutely exhausted and I passed right out.
It was a great trip and I had a lot of fun. As always, Picture Time!!
No comments:
Post a Comment