LONDON - A Beautiful City

For those who dream of going to London and fear they will never make it - do not worry! London is oddly very similiar to Portland and New York -- it's just waaayyy bigger, has older buildings, and you'll hear every possible language. It's hard to tell who's a local or not because most are just visitor's just like us in the big city of London. Speaking of London, it has an intricate underground tube system akin to New York--but be weary of taking large quantities of luggage on a trip, because you'll have to carry it up and down the tube station stairs unless you get lucky and they have a "lift" or elevator. We thought we packed light with one large suitcase, a carry-on, and a purse...but then, mom's suitcase is probably 50lbs and when you carry that up and down the stairs what seems a dozen times or so...your arms can't take much more! (She can't take much more captain!...)

We stayed at the London Central Hostel on Bolsover Street (about 5 minutes from the Great Portland Street Tube Station). It was very nice and clean, and we shared a room with 5 other girls. We met one of them-Bell-who was from Australia. Two of her friends were with her. They've been working in Scotland (will do for about a year) and were taking a holiday in London for about 10 days. She was very nice, but the girls were quite the night owls. I think one of the nights the last girl wandered in about 3:30am (that was the morning we had to be up around 4:30am...) Overall it was a nice stay.

While in London, we discovered Westminster Abbey (we were going to have a look inside but the line was terribly long!), Big Ben (even better in person), the London Bridge (majestic), Buckingham Palace (we arrived by chance just when the changing of the guard was beginning--very neat! Too bad the Queen was in residence, because we thus could not go inside...Mum kept on pretending to see the Queen or Prince William--oh mum!), and we sailed on the Thames River (so peaceful and a great way to get around). We were going to go up on the London Eye, but decided that the delay of being able to land in our plane gave us all the opportunity we needed to see an arial view of the large city. I almost forgot to mention that we saw the Tower of London. It was my favorite. It was so interesting and our Beefeater guide was hilarious! He just made me laugh and mentioned the unusual aspects about the Tower and was so animated. He said that to become a beefeater, one has to have been in the army, navy or marines for 22 years at the least, be honest, have made a certain rank, be extremely good looking, have earned such and such awards/rankings, and have a six pack that will show through the uniform. Haha!

We've also done quite a bit of window shopping on Oxford Street--think Times Square accept much more shopping. The streets are crowded and filled with twenty-something year old Londoners looking for the newest fashions. Everyone in London dresses up--even if just in jeans. Women's fashions are black pant leggings with fashionable shirts, very short skirts, and lower neck tops. They look great, but if I had a man I wouldn't want him! Nor is it something I would wear! Since London is the main city in England and where shows, theater and movies take place, all the good looking people go there to be discovered, so it seems models are roaming the streets everywhere. Also, a lot of people smoke in London, which is kind of odd considering all the health warnings! The shops there were too spendy for us, but it was neat seeing the fashions.

A store our friend Graham recommended turned out to be a favorite of mum's and mines: Marks & Spencers aka M&S. We located their food department and they have sandwiches to go for such a reasonable price--very much in our budget and they are good! Mum had a salmon type sandwich just the other day--yummy...Kevin, you have to try it! lol We loved their baggettes with peanut butter! I LOVE peanut butter!

Yesterday we left London via these modes of transportation: Getting on the Great Portland Street Tube at around 5:50am (torture lugging around those suitcases!), got off at the Baker Street Tube and jumped on the Bakerloo and stopped at Waterloo where we bought train tickets to Woking. There we hired a taxi to take us to our car rental agency and picked up our Voltzwagon car. This is where our journey really began!...