London

I am so behind on blogging it's ridiculous! So my goal this week is to fully catch up so expect at least one a day.  

For the last part of spring travel break I went to London with Sara.  We had so much fun but London is much different then I thought it would be.  It is so city like with some old historical buildings thrown in.  I suppose I should have realized how HUGE it truly is.  It was a busy couple of days but we were able to see a lot and not be too murdered by the awful pound. 

The first day we were in London, we took pictures at Platform 9 3/4!  Luckily Sara also loves Harry Potter and London is the perfect city for the Harry Potter fan.  We also checked into our hostile which ended up being really nice.  Few.  We went to the British Museum where we saw more Egyptian stuff (I think this is my 3rd Egyptian exhibit in the past 2 months) Roman artifacts, Etruscan artifacts, old coins, and African things. Pretty neat but the best was yet to come because we saw WICKED that night!  It was so amazingly good.  I literally smiled through the entire thing and our tickets were only 15 pounds since I told the man we were poor American college students.  Thank goodness.  For dinner I had fish n chips- oh so yummy.

Our second day we went on two walking tours of London.  The first was the Royal London Tour where we saw Royal London things such as the Duke of Wellington's house, Buckingham Palace which wasn't originally going to be a palace but when the king realized a normal Londoner had a bigger house then him, he bought it.  That's why it isn't very palace looking.  We also saw guards and the house that Price Harry, William, and Charles stay in when they come to London.  We saw the original palace where Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn lived.  From there we went to Trafalgar Square which is where the National Gallery is.  We saw some arch thing that connects this square the Buckingham Place and the street is red in color so that every time the queen drives home, she is given the red carpet treatment.  We walked to the Hourseguards palace and saw where beach volleyball will be taking place in the 2012 olympics.  We also saw St. James Park which was so beautiful.  We also saw Westminster Abby which is super old looking and then the House of Parliament and Big Ben! Goodness, we saw a ton on this one tour. 

For lunch we went to Camden Garden and then on the tour of Old London.  We saw a building that the Harry Potter clock came from, the Millennium Bridge (also from Harry) and the Globe Theater.  We walked along the Thames River until we came to St. Paul's cathedral.  Random fact about London- museums are free but churches are expensive to get into.  Oh, you want to see St. Paul's? That will be 16 pounds a person.  Excuse me, but I am not paying $30 to go into a church.  I cannot even imagine brining a family to London from the US.  Talk about pricey!  Okay, back to the tour!  We saw the Royal Exchange (the outside of Gringotts was modeled after this) and the Bank of England (this inside of Gringotts was modeled after this)!  Then we saw the Tower Bridge (which I thought was the London Bridge- woops) and the London Bridge (not pretty).  Finally, we saw the Tower of London which is like a huge fort.  It reminded me a bit of St. Augustine.  

The next day we went to Stonehenge in the morning and that was so cool to see despite the fact that it was painfully cold outside.  It was in the negative Celsius- freezing!  After Stonehenge we went to Harrods which is huge and I ate a brownie.  Then we went to the Natural History museum and saw Dinosaurs, ocean animals, land animals, creepy crawlers, and an ecology exhibit. The building is so pretty.  We had fish n chips again for dinner and then went to the Tate Modern Museum at night.  We saw Monet's Water Lily which I was so excited to see because I didn't even know they were there!

The next morning we came back to Florence so that was London.  I had such a great spring travel break but boy oh boy is it nice to be home in Florence.