Day Trippin' in London

Saturday was probably a day I'd rank somewhere in the top 10 Best Days of My Life because I finally got to go to London, the city I've been dreaming of for years. Weirdly enough I was not that into the idea when my friends first brought it up last week -- I did some private whining about only staying one day, not being able to meet up with my college roommate Alex, and not having nearly enough time to see everything I wanted to see. I even seriously considered skipping it this time and joining another group on a day trip to Wales. But London's magnetic pull on me won out and on Saturday I found myself waking at the crack of dawn (i.e. 7:00, LOL) to join 8 other friends for a trip out to the city.

The day before my flatmates and I had bought tickets that covered trips to and from Bath, plus all public transport in London for the day for just £30. We caught an 8:13 train which was, for some reason, packed. Not with people. Just with the signs reserving their seats. So many reservations. Not so many passengers. Which meant some of us ended up standing until we could snag some vacated seats at the next few stops. There was about a fifteen minute delay because of flooding that's been impeding travel to and from London all week, but we reached Paddington Station without any other problems. 

Once there, we hit the ground running, trying to cross everything off our itinerary (which was essentially a list of tourist must-sees). I handed over my map (Thanks, Mom! That really came in handy!) to my much less directionally-challenged friend and we were off to Abbey Road. It wasn't too bad a walk, maybe 20 to 30 minutes, plus we got to see what seemed to be some of ritzy residential London.

And then, we were there. Sort of. We had to walk along the road a bit to find the actual crosswalk. And then there could be no doubt we had reached it, what with the giggling tourists and the exasperated drivers. We admired the graffiti outside the studio, stuck our cameras through the gates to get pictures of it, and contemplated how best to get the money shot without a) getting run down or b) making British enemies and then getting run down. But finally, after waiting our turn and (sort of incorrectly) judging when the traffic was lightest, my flatmates and I walked in the footsteps of the Fab Four.

Grinning like a maniac because I got to be Paul (not worth going barefoot though)!

There was actually much less freaking out than there could have been, though maybe we were all distracted by the surprisingly heavy traffic. Seriously, you would think there would be more regulation in the area but it's really all down to driver-pedestrian trust. (Incidentally, we got honked at for taking this. I guess the driver who WAVED US ON, I will add, thought we were just casually crossing. But I mean, come on. You're driving on Abbey Road and there are people poised with cameras on the other side of the street for Pete's sake. But I digress.)

We (successfully) interpreted the bus schedule and caught one to take us to the next stop on the list, King's Cross Station. Though it took way longer than we anticipated and seemed to make about twenty extra stops, it was a thrill to actually get where we needed to be, on our own and using public transportation. At King's Cross we met up with one of my flatmate's friends who's living in London, grabbed some quick lunch, and waited in line for our quite necessary and very touristy Platform 9 3/4 pictures. 

Unlike Abbey Road, this one felt a little strange. For one thing, nothing actually happened there at that spot. An author just wrote about something happening at it. For another, everyone else in the station is just sort of going on with their lives, not caring about the tourists queuing up to take a picture with a wall. It makes you feel sort of weird to care about half a cart sticking out of a wall that's really not special in any other way. But we'd come all that way and were not leaving without our pictures, so queue up we did.

After waiting patiently for us, our guide took us to the tube station right by King's Cross and amazed us with her ability to almost immediately recite which lines we needed to take to connect to other lines to ultimately get ourselves to Westminster. It was truly a sight to behold. Twenty minutes later we were emerging from the tube, right into the line of sight of the London Eye (HA, see what I did there?).

Seriously, right there.

The Eye, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and the Houses of Parliament are all in one pretty close area, so we just sort of walked around in awe for a little bit, taking pictures of everything. We thought about taking a ride on the Eye, but when we saw the price (£20!!!) we were suddenly way less interested. Instead, we walked back across Westminster Bridge (I swear we crossed that thing at least four times) and headed for Buckingham Palace.

I've been on this bridge enough to last a few decades at least.

There really isn't much to say about Buckingham Palace except that, of course, it's beautiful, and of course, it reawakened my urge to be swept away by Prince Harry. But I think anyone would fall prey to those desires standing in front of this.

I'd like to gain entrance to your social club.

Here's a picture of me being a tourist in front of the Palace:

This picture will go viral once I'm sippin' tea with Kate.

We were then feeling pretty drained so we went in search of caffeine. The French cafe our guide was planning on taking us to was too busy (and VERY fancy) so we ended up in (drum roll) Starbucks. This sort of clashed with my previous and steadfast avoidance of the Starbucks in Bath, but now it's starting to sound like a new sub-section of my bucket list: sip Starbucks in every iconic city, maybe? I've got New York and London down already!

After Starbucks my flatmate and her friend broke from our group to go to dinner with some friends while the rest of us headed to Trafalgar Square.

Trafalgar Square had a nice vibe to it, with people milling around, hanging out and taking pictures as the sun went down. It also felt like the place where it finally sank in that we were in London, because we had a few lazy minutes where we could just stop and look around. A few of us ventured to climb the giant lions surrounding Nelson's Column. I'm super glad I did too, because it was a nice photo op (though I did use a boost from my roommate, Hadley...she really got the job done).

Between the Lions(' paws)

(As I anticipated, getting down was even scarier. Luckily a nice foreigner came to the rescue after I insisted to Hadley that I couldn't make the jump without crushing her. No, no one was crushed to death beneath an iconic landmark this trip.)

We sort of hung around the square for a while, taking group pictures and watching some sort of mime character confuse everyone by doing literally nothing, and then we headed off to find dinner.

One of many favorite pictures of the day -- Big Ben peeking out behind my lion friend

Dinner was at a pub sort of place called Walkers of Whitehall. It looked pretty fancy but the prices didn't seem too outrageous (though we are still easily misled by the exchange rate) and the food was pretty scrumptious. It only seemed fitting that I order my first official English fish and chips in London, and it was some of the tastiest food I've had here so far.

All too soon we were meeting back up with the other two and being coached on which tube line to take back to Paddington Station. The tube doesn't seem all that confusing; I would love to spend enough time in London to really navigate it like a pro, but a couple of rides on it will have to do for now. We made it back to Bath Spa Station just after 10:00, ready to fall into bed.

London was a perfect first trip out of Bath; I'm already mentally planning my return trip, because there's so much more I'd love to see. Until then, I'm ready to start my second week of classes back in Bath -- the first without tedious syllabus speeches. Cheers!