London!

Hiya! (a TON of British people say that instead of Hi.. I'll never say it, but I'm willing to type it) I feel like I've left you all hanging so long without posting! Have no fear.. I'm taking time away from my studies to update you on my life.

On Friday I went to London for the first time! It's a 6 hour coach ride away or a 3 hour train ride. Since we are poor University students Britt and I took the coach. It's only $32 round trip. We went to the coach stop 30 minutes early to be sure we would get a seat next to each other. We realized as the bus was boarding we were sitting on the wrong line! We waited in the wind and rain for nothing and got to the back of the line for the London bus. Our bus didn't leave on time because it was overbooked and no one was willing to get off and take the train ( I was.. but I decided I guess I HAD to stay with Brittany.) It took us 8 hours just to get to Victoria Station in London! We hit so much traffic and almost died because the bus was swaying in and out of lanes on the highway.. plus we were driving on the wrong side of the road! By the time we got off the coach, took the tube and got to the hostel it was 11pm. This was my first time staying in a hostel and it wasn't too bad. Well at first it was.. They give us the keys to the room and told us we were in beds 4 & 6 (out of 12 beds of all females) When we got into the room there were women in both of our beds! Got a little scared that we weren't going to have anywhere to sleep, but we found out the woman didn't want to climb up to the second and third bunk so they just took our beds.. nice. Britt and I got ready very quickly and went out with three girls we met up with that Britt is friends with from her college in Maryland. They are studying abroad in Spain and planned on meeting up with us and staying in the same hostel. We went out (and found out that the tube stops running at midnight.) We took a bus home and all was fine.. only got a few hours of sleep though because it's kinda odd sleeping in a room of strangers.

The next day - our only full day - we filled in as much touristy London activities as possible. We woke up at 9am ate breakfast and left the hostel right away. We got home around dinner time, ate and went out again.. this is where we almost died a second time. We went out.. all was fine - until we tried to get back to the hostel. We knew we would have to take the bus, but couldn't find a bus to take us back to our stop because it was after 3am and only select night buses were running. We decided we were going to get on a bus that was near our stop and walk the rest. We got to a stop that Britt's friend thought was closer to us.. but it wasn't. We ended up in a sketchy part of London with a used bus pass and no jackets. We looked for another bus, but none were coming and we would still have to walk a lot. After Britt was trying to hail a cab unsuccessfully I went into the street and stuck my hand in the air. Luckily, the cab driver drove past a group of people and came to me (still got it from my cab hailing days in NYC) We finally got home around 4am and went off to our bunks to get our daily 4 hours of sleep.

The final day was spent in London casually. We woke up at 9 and walked around to the last couple things we didn't see. Of course Britt and I had to bring our backpacks because we wouldn't have time to go back to the hostel. It wasn't too miserable and provided us with a fabulous workout. We caught the coach back to Newcastle at 5:30pm (FYI a lot of places in London included the coach station charge you to use the bathroom.. odd right?) We got home early because the driver had road rage and did about 90mph the whole way home. In the end it was a lot of fun. I'm glad I finally got to go on my first trip even if it was just to London. I'm looking forward to March and April when both my parents and my sisters are going to be meeting up with me there.

It's 1am, just discovered my bag of clementines has began to rot and my library books were due Friday so I owe a fine.. I guess on that note it's time for bed. Goodnight my loyal followers!

XO

Platform 9 3/4 from the first Harry Potter film.

Big Ben and Parliament.
On the Westminster Bridge.