A little too robust for merlot wine

This weekend was one of the most eventful yet, I traveled to London, England! I absolutely loved London, and it was pretty much just what I expected it to be. As a reminder to myself, and to inform all of you reading this, here is a play by play of my weekend:

The beginning of the trip started off with a pleasant surprise! As I’m sitting in my seat on the plane waiting for everyone else to board, guess who comes trotting down the isle … cara ladddddd! I knew we’d both be in London that weekend, but had no idea we were on the same flight seeing as she was coming from Seville. Cara snuck into the seat right in front of me, but sadly, I was asleep the entire flight, as I have come to master the art of “sleep traveling”. But we didn’t get into London until an hour after we were supposed to, so Cara had to run to catch her bus, while me and my friends took our time and eventually got on a bus at 2 am.  But stupid lady at the airport put us on the wrong shuttle bus, so when we got to the city center, we had no idea how to get to our hostel. We ended up just taking a cab there and finally arrived at 4am. But without fail, we still got up at 9am the next morning to get ready and explore London!!

I had made a tentative agenda for me and my friends to follow, and we started off the day taking the tube to Green Park and walking down to Buckingham Palace. Unfortunately though, this is the sign we saw when we got there: 

Stupid Sign

In fact, I didnt even get to see the guards at all to play with them and poke them and try to make them move! I was pretty bummed. but that's okay because we got to see some guards ride past us on horses which was cool too. 

Guards on Horses!

Yasmin and me outside Buckingham Palace

Then we proceeded to walk toward Big Ben, we passed some typical London phone booths, and pretended to be Lindsay Lohan in parent trap (aka the title of this blog, and my favorite line of the movie, “a little to robust for a merlot wine, but I do prefer the kind of the California grape”). Then we stumbled upon some cute London outside markets, and eventually found our way to Westminster abbey and Big Ben! We didn't pay to go in any of these sites, but they were still cool to see from the outside. BUT, after going into the westminster abbey gift shop we accidentally walked into the exit of the church, only to be quickly approached by a priest asking us if we were there to pray? Oops, nope, not there to pray … we left right away. But at least we got to step inside!

Red Phone Booth! I was surprised to find that the phone actually worked. London is going old school. Interestingly, they are also transitioning back to using the old fashion double decker buses, probably for the tourists. I saw them around the city a few times and they are definitely cooler.

In the afternoon we took the tube to get lunch at chippyyyyyy!! aka, chipotle. It was my first chipotle in 2.5 months and it was great! but not as good as at home. Then we walked to trafalgar square and picadilly circle. By this time it was 5pm and we were exhausted, but we found this hugeeee toy store while waiting for our bus, and ended up spending an hour inside looking at the toys hahah. yes. im 10 again. after that adventure, and our hour long bus ride home (on a double decker bus) we finally got back to our hostel. I took a 30 minute power nap, and got ready for the night. On the agenda was fish and chips for dinner, and then to go hang out at a pub. The fish and chips we got were delicious! But by the time we were ready to go to a pub at 11:30, they were done serving alcohol for the night! London closes down much earlier than Barcelona, and this was our first experience with that. So at midnight we decided to catch the last tube home, and call it a night.

The next morning we wake up and start a brand new day of exploring the city! Here is a list of the things I did on Saturday:

- Walked over to borough market. I loved this market because it felt like a combination of our bouqueria in barcelona, and the crafts fair in Gaithersburg with lots of fresh fruit and veggies, some chocolates and nuts, but also a lot of pastries, dips, jams, free tastes, meats, sandwiches, and soups. I was so excited when I bought a real english muffin for breakfast, but sadly it tasted the same as frozen ones I can get at home.

- Walked over to where we could see the London Bridge (it was raining so we didn’t walk all the way there) and took our touristy pictures. 

Me standing on the next bridge over from the London Bridge, close enough though.

- Walked to the London Eye, took our touristy pictures

- Took the tube to the Kings Cross tube stop, took our touristy pictures of platform 9 and 3/4 where harry potter goes to Hogwarts.

Off to Hogwarts! It took such a long time to find the platform in the train station, so we debated walking around asking people how we could get to hogwarts. Funny thing is, I'm sure people would have known exactly what we were talking about.

Make sure to mind the gap, or should I say, "mind the gop"

 

- Walked to Trafalgar square to buy tickets for a matinee show! I really wanted to see Le Mis or jersey boys, but my friends didn’t feel the same way, and the only show we all agreed to see was Stomp. But I was still just as excited because I had wanted to see it for a long time, and it was so good!

Going into Stomp!

- Went to a pub in Baker Street to watch the England vs Ireland rugby game! The pub was all st. patty's day-ed out, decorated in green and giving away free Guinness hats to customers (we got there too late to get them though). Also, rugby is a crazy sport, its so weird I didn't understand anything that was going on, but it looked cool and decided that we should play it more in the states.

- After the game we walked around oxford street where all the fancy stores are. We got some delicious cookies from "bens cookies", bought some souvenirs, and eventually made our way back to our hostel at about 10pm.

At 1:30 in the morning, my friends had to catch a bus to get back to the airport for their flight at 6am Sunday morning, but since I decided to stay in London until Monday, I got a full nights rest. In the morning I got ready and went over to my friend Libby´s apartment in the morning to spend the morning with her and Cara. We went to Trafalgar square to see the st. pattys day concert and festivities and then went out for lunch for once again, fish and chips. We quickly had to get back so Cara could get catch a bus to the airport, and because Libby had a huge paper to write for school, so I called up my friend Liz who is also studying in London, and spent the afternoon/evening with her! 

Libby, Cara, and me in Trafalgar square for the St. Patrick's Day Festival

Fish and chips round #2. yummmmmm

With Liz I did all the things I didn’t have time to do earlier in the weekend such as visiting Harrods and going into a small café for tea and scones (and grandma, I made especially sure to get scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam, just like you said! it was delicious). Then we walked through Hyde Park and Kensington Park to see the Kensington palace where Will and Kate will live. We walked down the fancy street in westminster and got dinner at some asain food restaurant, and then passed the pizza place where princess Diana used to take Will and Harry to get pizza

Harrods!

Look at me, drinking tea.

Tea and scones (with clotted cream and strawberry jam)

Standing in Hyde Park

Princess Diana's pizza joint

It was about 10:30pm when I got on the metro back to Libby´s apartment and had to quickly pack my bags and leave for my shuttle at midnight. I got on the shuttle at 1am and got to the airport at 2am. I thought I was going to be stranded alone at the airport, but I was surprisingly surrounded by probably a hundred other people sleeping on the airport floors and couches waiting for early morning flights. I found a comfy spot in the corner booth in a cafe, where I read my book and slept for about an hour (that’s one of my methods of “sleep traveling”, to read a few pages of my book and I’m passed out 5 pages in)(with this method, I have successfully read 45 pages of my book in the past 2.5 months). But at 4am I got up for my flight and waited until I could go through security. it was a loooonnnggggg day getting back to barcelona, but eventually, at 11am, after 1 tube ride, 1 shuttle, 1 flight, 2 metro rides, and 3 hours of sleep, I was back in my residencia, ready (barely) to start my day of classes.

London was a beautiful city (other than the cloudy weather), and I loved visiting!! I almost felt like I was going home for the weekend, being able to speak english and see my friends. But I think I made the right decision not to study there for the entire semester because the culture was nothing I wasn´t used to in the US, and the people didn't seem much different. I’m glad I got to visit england and I had an awesome weekend, but I am grateful that throughout the course of the semester, I get to study in place where I can learn about the rich history, culture, society, and people that I knew nothing about beforehand. I can’t believe I only have a month left!!! In fact, I took my first final exam this morning. It was pretty easy so its relieving that the class in finally over and I only have 4 classes I have to go to now.

One other thing that happened this week that was pretty cool was getting to see the Barcelona vs. Granada futbol game at Camp Nou (Barcelona futbol stadium)!!! Camp Nou is the biggest stadium in the WORLD. We were in the highest seats, but with my glasses I saw the game pretty well. The crowd was yelling the whole time and of course we won 5-3. I go to see Messi (pretty much the best player in the world) make history when he had a hat trick and scored is 234^th goal, breaking the record for the most goals ever scored by one player in the history of FCB (futbol club barcelona). And even though I didn’t realize this happened until the day after the game, still cool that I saw it.

Anyway, I’m off to class! Adios!

Our view of the field! When this stadium was built, it wasn't the biggest in the world, but for the Olympic games, or maybe for some other global event, they needed to build more seating, and instead of building up, they dug in the ground and built down. So the bottom sections are the newest sections and the field is actually below ground level.

If you look close, you can see me, Yasmin, Kayla, and Aya standing in the right bottom side of the picture.

Aya, Kayla, Yasmin, and me in our seats