London. It’s one of my favorite cities in the entire world. Not that I’ve been to every city in the entire world, but you know what I mean. Since my mom is from here, I’ve been quite a lot. I’ve always said that I could definitely see myself living here at some point in my life, and it’s even more true now. I’m in the mindset of living in new places, so everywhere is a possibility, especially a city like London that I know relatively well and feel pretty comfortable. Also I have to give a shout out to the Martin family for hosting us this trip and every other time that I and my family have come to London, whether it was planned in advance or not! They are wonderful and I really don’t know where I would be without them. Cheers, guys! Day One The first thing we did when we arrived at the Martin’s was, naturally, have a cup of tea. We then drove by Wimbledon and went wild blackberry picking. About an hour and a half and a few stinging nettle bites later, we came home with four bags of blackberries. Quite successful. And a great addition to the porridge at breakfast the next morning! The day concluded with traditional, real fish and chips. Otherwise known as heaven. Our next few days were much busier. We hit so many different sites in two days, it’s really impressive, actually. We gave Lori, our family friend who has never been out of the USA before now, just about the whole London experience!
Day Two Day two was a central London tour, so we took the Tube in and exited at Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. From there, we walked over to Westminster Abbey and then on to Buckingham Palace. Along the way, we passed the Swaziland Embassy, which had a really cool masthead (if they have those for buildings?) that was great big ship with billowing sails. Well, it was bronze so there wasn’t much actual billowing, but it was still pretty interesting looking. Along that same street, we noticed that the architecture and building materials of one building was different to the two on either side. We wondered why, and came to the possible conclusion that it was the site of a bomb drop during the Blitz in World War II. Imagining that was quite humbling, and also thinking that if it had been about five blocks in another direction, it could have hit Buckingham Palace. Miraculously, many of the larger iconic structures in London were missed during the Blitz. Buckingham was as big as ever, and the flag was up so the Queen was in! Most likely having tea. We carried on down the mall and ate lunch at the Institute for Contemporary Art, which ended up being an interesting unplanned adventure. Continuing on, we entered Trafalgar Square. Apparently, according to my mom, I once bathed in the fountains there as a small child. This was not repeated. The last big stop of the day was in the National Gallery, which has many amazing paintings from many different artists. My favorite part was the paintings from the impressionist era. I’ve always been a fan. The paintings included Sunflowers by Van Gogh and Water Lilies by Monet. Just beautiful. We concluded the day with dinner at My Old Dutch, where you order what is basically a pizza, but it’s on a crepe. Yes please. Would repeat that one, for sure. The restaurant itself was very lovely looking with a colorful mural of tulips and fake grass on the walls. It was wonderful, and a good end to a day on the move! Day Three Well, if you thought that was a long day, it possibly paled in comparison to the next day. Which of course was the day I wore my black boots that have a slight heel….oh well, it was worth it. I think. We got an early start and went into the west side of London, starting at Saint Paul’s Cathedral. We climbed right the way to the top, where the view is quite amazing. From there you can see basically everything, including a great look at the Shard, which is the second tallest building in Europe. We explored around the rest of Saint Paul’s, and we found the memorial that is dedicated to the US soldiers who died in World War II from the people of Britain. The next stop was Queen Mary’s College, where my mom went to school! It was really great to see the place she studied and hear all her stories in context, quite literally! Most of it was under construction as they’re revamping the campus and some of the buildings we couldn’t get into because it was the weekend, so we’ve already said we’ll go back. Having just graduated, it was awesome to see where my mom had been at my age and it made me think about how returning to Macalester might be years from now! From QMC we took the Tube to the Tower of London. We didn’t go inside because it takes almost four hours to tour properly and we had a lot of other things to see, so instead we walked around it to see Tower Bridge. I really love bridges, they are fascinating. And we saw three today! After taking pictures with Tower Bridge in the background, we walked along the Thames to London Bridge and crossed the river there. London Bridge is the bridge that was sold to an American in the 60’s when it was up for a remodeling. The story is that the man who bought it thought he was getting Tower Bridge and was very upset when it arrived. I’m not sure that’s true, but it is a pretty funny thought. By this time it was lunch and we were getting hungry. So we went into Borough Market, which is just phenomenal. So many stalls with such an expansive variety of food and drinks. However, this also means there are quite a few people milling around, and me (in my onset of hangry-ness) was getting very annoyed. I’m not a fan of other people inhibiting my forward motion. But we quickly located the sausage rolls (meat filled pastry) and pie (another type of meat/veggie filled pastry) and mash (mashed potatoes), so I was satisfied. Also, while we were there, I noticed a guy who was blindfolded leaning with his back on a wall. I was very confused until I saw a group of five other men come back to him with food and beer, and they were all wearing matching shirts that said “STAG” on them. For those that don’t know, a stag is what a bachelor party is called over here, so this poor guy had probably been kidnapped and blindfolded by his friends. Ah well, I hope he enjoyed himself! We’d now been on our feet for a while, so we went off to The George for a pint. The George was built in 1676 after the original was burnt down and it is visited by both William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. In fact, it was mentioned in Little Dorrit! Very cool to see. We then made a few pit stops to buy some amazing cheese as well as 100% chocolate before walking by the Clink (an old prison along the Thames) and looking in on the Golden Hinde, which is a reconstruction of the galleon ship which Sir Francis Drake sailed during his circumnavigation of the world from 1577-80. The next stop was the Globe Theatre. We were unable to tour it because they were in the middle of a closed rehearsal for a show that was currently running, but we were able to look around the outside. We then walked over the Millennium Bridge, which was closed almost immediately after it was opened in 2000 to be fixed because when it first opened it started to wobble. I actually looked at this in my differential equations class at school! The professor who wrote my textbook for that class, Steven Strogatz of Cornell University, wrote a paper looking at how crowd dynamics had affected the bridge. When people had started walking on it, it began wobble very heavily from side to side. These oscillations were caused by a combination of people walking with matching strides as well as the structure being flexible to a wave frequency that is close to a human stride. If every person that crossed the bridge had been moving perfectly randomly, then nothing may have happened, but once a small group was moving simultaneously the bridge started to wobble, which forced even more people to synchronize their walking, which led to more wobble and thus the problem just kept compounding! If you want to see the YouTube video of the bridge that my differential equations professor showed us in class, click here! It is a very interesting example of how mathematics can explain the world around us and since I had been there before it has really stuck with me. Don’t worry, it doesn’t do that anymore! Once we’d crossed the Thames again, we were headed up to the West End theatre district. This is like the Broadway of London. We had tickets for a comedy called The Play That Goes Wrong, which I’m not really going to talk about because it wasn’t very good…...JUST KIDDING. It was utterly hilarious, I was laughing the whole time. The premise is that a murder mystery play is being put on in which anything that could possibly go wrong during a show does. Everything from forgetting lines to having props go missing to the set falling apart. I’m not usually a slapstick humour kind of person, but this was so clever, I was entertained the entire time by the quick wit. The rest of audience loved it as well. I’m going to stop now because my description is absolutely not doing it justice whatsoever. Basically, if you’re in London at any point between now and April (or possibly next September) I highly recommend that you go see it! Chris, if you’re reading this, please inform Harry that he doesn’t need to hunt me down. Day Four Our final day in London was less jam packed. We went to Kensington Gardens, a public park, which used to be the private gardens and grounds of Kensington Palace. The big attraction for us here was the Peter Pan statue. It’s a cute testament to a timeless book. We then walked to Harrod’s, the famous department store. Not my thing, but it is an interesting site to see. And, of course, we entered right at the beauty department essentially hitting a wall of perfume that made breathing and thinking difficult...but all in all a good trip! We finished the day a full English tea, with tea, crumpets, scones, crustless finger sandwiches and Chiffon pie with all the proper fixings. I must have drunk an entire pot of tea myself. It was amazing, and the perfect way to end the trip! Day Five (travel day) Naturally it pours with rain all day. Wouldn’t have been a true England trip without a little bit of rain, now would it? Sammie and I are officially together! We met them in King’s Cross Station and stopped at platform 9 and ¾ before catching the train, which I am currently on. Check out the Picture Gallery page to see some more shots from the past few days. I never feel like I have enough time here in England. Guess I’ll have to come back! But for now, off we go to Paris!
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Meet AnyaHi, Hola, Bonjour, Ciao!
I’m Anya Phillips, a data analyst and travel enthusiast who is always on the lookout for the next adventure! Categories
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