London for the weekend :)

Over the weekend I went to London, which was so much fun, but not what I expected at all, at least in the sense of what I thought London was like. We left campus Friday around 7:45 in the morning and walked to the train station to find out that our train had been delayed so we’d be on the next train and uhh, it would be double booked since all the people from the train we were supposed to get onto had to get onto the one coming into the station around 10. But then once we were on it and it stopped at the first stop the conductor told us to get off and switch over to this other train, what a mess, but we made it to London just fine. King’s Cross to be exact. Yes, where platform 9 ¾ is. More about that later though. After purchasing tube tickets (which was a lot more complicated than it sounds….too many choices!) we got over to where our hostel was and put our stuff in the luggage room and attempted to find a place to get some lunch. The first restaurant we went into was filled with all these Asians just…standing there looking at us like we were stupid and not moving when we said excuse me and tried to get by, and then we noticed that the restaurant was empty so we got out of there since it didn’t seem like it was going to be a good place to eat. We ended up at an Italian restaurant where I got some yummy pizza, and learned that ordering water gives you a bottle of water, not a cup of tap water, and you have to ask for your check or else….they’re never going to give it to you. Around two we were allowed to check into the hostel and move our stuff into the room we were staying in so we did that…there were 5 of us in a 6 person room in the hostel and the other person was a girl from Germany named Camilla who was really nice….she was visiting her friend who had just spent a month in England for work or something of the sort. After getting our stuff a teensy bit settled we headed over to the Tate Modern Gallery which is a free art gallery in London and was a great thing to go see…especially because some of the artists featured there I had seen their work in slides at workstudy so it was neat to see the real thing (and also to be able to recognize some works of art!) There was some Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, Matisse, Man Ray, etc and a bunch of other artists as well. Some of the art was very eye-catching and I had a fun time walking around absorbing it all and reading about the difference pieces. Had a hot chocolate stop after we finished checking out the art and then headed back to the hostel to get ready for a night out in London. Friday night was fun, we met up with one of the girl’s friends who was studying abroad in London and spent most of the night in Leicester Square (pronounced, Lester square). After we got back to the hostel we hung out with some boys from France and Australia. Communicating with the French boy was a bit difficult considering only one of us spoke a bit of French, but it was fun nonetheless. Oh, forgot to mention, it was pouring alllll day Friday, good thing I had my umbrella! 
On Saturday we got up and had a free breakfast at the hostel (ick..) and then we took advantage of this walking tour we had a flier for - it was free and 3.5 hours long! We saw a lot of the historical sights in london such as the tower of london, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, London Bridge, Saint Paul's Cathedral, Trafalgar Square, etc etc. Everything was just beautiful and I took a lot of pictures of all the sights we saw. Our tour guides name was Sam and he was pretty captivating though we weren't listening all the time, we wanted to get some nice pictures. In the middle of the tour we got a half hour break for lunch/bathroom and it ended up being in a sort of shoppers market so I looked around there which was a lot of fun, there were so many things I wanted to buy! Like, this one man, he was making jewelry out of forks and it was just so neat to see the things he made. When we met up with the group again, Sam though we were germans because we were so quiet and he figured we didn't know any English. So, we promised him we'd make sure to be more obnoxious on the second half of the tour. We weren't really that obnoxious but by the end I think he was happy to have us gone haha because we were really trying to see if we could stir him up a bit. After the tour we went over to see Buckingham Palace and the Gardens there and it was all beautiful but by this point we were exhausted and our feet hurt and we needed some food so, thus began the lookout for affordable food around Buckingham Palace. We stumbled across the Duke of York which is a pub and restaurant (Maggie and I went there when we were in Manchester!) and decided to have dinner there. I think our waitress didn't like us very much, she swiched out halfway through our meal and didn't like that we wanted seperate checks and also wasn't very good about giving us more water and took away the ketchup halfway through the meal. Weird. I got a chicken and bacon pie with mashed potatoes and vegetables and it was really yummy mmm. I wish I could have more of it right now, I'm kind of hungry. After dinner we took the tube back to the hostel and rested for a bit before we got ready for another night out in London. This one didn't go quite as well. We started off at a pub and hoped to eventually end up at a club but we never did and everyone had minor catastrophes throughout the night; my toe got stepped on and was bleeding, another girl fell down some stairs that were slippery, etc. We ended up at burger king which was kind of hilarious because we got to watch some drunk guy fall up the stairs on his way up spilling his drink everywhere, and then fall down the stairs on his way down. I'm sure he was sore in the morning. Poor guy. We took a double decker bus back to near where our hostel was and then hung out with some of the guys staying in the hostel too (while some really, reaaaalllly loud music played).
In the morning we got up and went out for breakfast since the hostel breakfast wasn't as great as we wanted, and then we headed over to Kensington Palace and Kensington Gardens to check them out before we went shopping! The gardens were so nice, there were little kids playing soccer and people jogging and walking and it just seemed like a place everyone who lived near there went to exercise or hang out or something. Shopping was another experience, I don't think I've ever felt so overwhelmed in my entire life, there were just so many people pushing and prodding and so much stuff and a lot of it was expensive and I just didn't really feel comfortable there it felt like christmas in the US, you know how the malls get around that time, it was like that but just on some random sunday afternoon. I don't think someone could pay me to shop there around christmastime, no thank you. But, I did find a few things to buy, nothing important really, some pajamas and stuff. We went out to dinner after shopping, to a Lebenese place, except after going there we decided that restaurant was really meant for people who could read the menu, not americans looking for some dinner. The food was delicious but the waitress didn;t understand why we wanted to buy appetizers for our meals and blah blah blah, in the end we got 2 appetizers to share and each of us got our own for a sort of meal thing and it was really yummy, we had a lot of hommous which i love, and I got these meatball things, and only katrina would understand if I said the name so I'll just tell her later. I felt kind of bad though for eating lamb, I told myself I'd never do that since they're so cute but oh well, had to happen sometime I guess. After dinner we made our way back to the hostel and grabbed our stuff and took off for King's Cross where, of course, we had another adventure.
As many of you might not know, King's Cross is where they filmed Harry Potter (the train station scenes at least) and so Maggie and I wanted to find platform 9 3/4 to take our picture in front of. (This weekend we also saw where they filmed gringotts bank, and the hogwarts clock, in case anyones interested...i got pictures!) So, we find platform 9 3/4 and it's actually labeled as such and so we're being tourists and taking our pictures and whatever and so this lady comes up and asks if we want her to take our picture so of course we say sure, why not! But, as we learned, bad idea...So she of course wants to know where we're from and everything and then starts lecturing us about the war, and phone tapping, and big brother (made sure that we knew it was from a book, not just the TV show, though both of us knew she was talking about the book, duh) anyways, luckily some lady came up and asked oh is this your purse? (talking about mine) and so then I had to grab my purse (that I had left on the ground since this lady was so shocking and distracting and stuff) and then me and maggie got out of there but wow what an experience. The train ride home was fine, 2 hours was kind of boring and I got a bit antsy, and we took a taxi back to our dorms because it was 11 at night and stuff and well, that was my weekend in london in a nutshell! I'm kind of hungry now for dinner so I think I'll post pictures in this entry later but theres a few entries to keep my avid readers busy :) enjoy!