And last but certainly not least....London!
And now I finally come to my London entry, even though my trip has actually been over for a while, lol XD
Just have to say right now: London was my favorite destination, hands down. It's a big city, but I felt that in 2-3 days I knew my way around it surprisingly well, if I could just get to the Thames and orient myself! We had a great time there and I wish I could have been there for another few days, but that couldn't have happened, hahaha. Rome I was definitely ready to leave, same with Spain, I could have stayed longer in Dublin too, for sure, but London is the one that I wished I had been there longer.
Day One-
Here's the first London photo album! The first day we meet up with Ali, a British student that had been in Salzburg the week before we left! It was such a coincidence that we met him and that we were going to London quite soon, so he kept in touch with Sean quite a bit and they arranged a day for him to take us around the city! It was great, because he showed us sooo much, told us how we couldn't step on the 3-squares-in-a-row manholes, or we'd get bad luck for 7 year (lol), and had us starting to speak British.
It was great, we went to Tower Bridge, saw the Tower of London (where Queen Elizabeth I was held before becoming queen and where so many others were held as well!!!), and went to the Great Fire of London monument, which we took the spiral stairs all the way up to get a great view of the city. We walked across London Bridge (which was really boring) and saw various other sites, like the Globe Theater! We walked through a market hall, which strongly reminded me of Quincy Market and Fanueil Hall in Boston, which even had a big square just like in Boston where we watched a street preformer! I have to wonder if I liked London so much because little bits of it reminded me of Boston or home....
We went to Trafalgar Square, then to Parliament and of course Big Ben! I've told a few people this if I've talked to you about London, but Big Ben is so much more amazing in real life than any pictures convey. Of course I wanted to see it, but I didn't realize that it was actually going to be so beautiful. The roof has a lot of gold on it that I don't think translates into many pictures. Both during the day and at night it's just awesome!
After seeing Parliament, and starting a new album's worth of photos, that can be viewed here, we walked to Buckingham Palace. That was really cool, because Ali told us that the Queen was there that day, which you could tell because the flag was flying on top of the palace! After that we bought tickets to go see "Wicked" at the Apollo Victoria Theater, which were 25 Pounds ($50). That seems like a lot, and it was the most I've ever spent on a ticket for anything, but that was the reduced, day-of student price, so we got a really good deal. And if you think about it, if you went to Boston or New York to see it there, you would probably pay a lot more than $50 to go see a show of that quality. We picnicked at Buckingham and then went back to see the show!
"Wicked" was pretty awesome, the set was amazing and the costumes were great. The music was pretty cool, too. Unfortunately, I didn't like the story as much, it was alright, but I felt that it was a little too contrived and not very original as far as plots go. It is an interesting twist on the Wizard of Oz story and it's actually pretty political. Overall I liked it though!
We walked home afterwards, we actually ended up walking everywhere that we went in London because ride on the Tube (pronounced more like "chube" according to Ali!) is 4 Pounds... for a single ride. Yeah. We were not going to pay the equivalent of $8 for one ride. We walked right past Big Ben at 11 o'clock and I got a really crappy and stupid video of it. Here it is anyways, haha:
Day Two-
We made our way over to the British museum, which you can see in that second album and going into the third one here. The British Museum is definitely one of the coolest museums that I've ever been to. It had the Rosetta Stone, which is really awesome! I only got to see a small fraction of it, the Islamic art, a lot of the Egyptian art and mummies, and the tiniest fraction of Chinese art. I think though that the Smithsonians are still my favorite museums.
Day 3-
Since I was flying out at 6:30, I was kind of limited as to what I could do this last half day. I ended up going with Rachel H. and Andrew back to the Tate Modern Art Museum. It's amazing, because there are so many free and amazing museums in London, this being one of them. We looked through one half of one of the 4 floors and barely saw all of that in 2 hours! O_o We went on one the Carsten Höller slides, which is part of an exhibition there. I explain that a little better in the pictures...
So, after the museum, I accidentally lost Andrew and Rachel, but had to go after waiting for a while because I wanted to be at the airport by 4:30. I knew that I had to get to the Liverpool Station, which wasn't so bad, except that one of the wheels on my cheap 11 Euro suitcase broke, lol XD So, I ended up dragging a suitcase across London that was suddenly much heavier than it had been before the wheel broke. But, I still found it alright and caught a bus to London's Stanstead and got there just a little after 4:30. So, it was all good in the end!
It was really so good to be back in Salzburg, it was night by the time that I flew back in and I could see the Festung on Mönchsberg as we flew in. I really had tears in my eyes as I saw it, haha : )
Just have to say right now: London was my favorite destination, hands down. It's a big city, but I felt that in 2-3 days I knew my way around it surprisingly well, if I could just get to the Thames and orient myself! We had a great time there and I wish I could have been there for another few days, but that couldn't have happened, hahaha. Rome I was definitely ready to leave, same with Spain, I could have stayed longer in Dublin too, for sure, but London is the one that I wished I had been there longer.
Day One-
Here's the first London photo album! The first day we meet up with Ali, a British student that had been in Salzburg the week before we left! It was such a coincidence that we met him and that we were going to London quite soon, so he kept in touch with Sean quite a bit and they arranged a day for him to take us around the city! It was great, because he showed us sooo much, told us how we couldn't step on the 3-squares-in-a-row manholes, or we'd get bad luck for 7 year (lol), and had us starting to speak British.
It was great, we went to Tower Bridge, saw the Tower of London (where Queen Elizabeth I was held before becoming queen and where so many others were held as well!!!), and went to the Great Fire of London monument, which we took the spiral stairs all the way up to get a great view of the city. We walked across London Bridge (which was really boring) and saw various other sites, like the Globe Theater! We walked through a market hall, which strongly reminded me of Quincy Market and Fanueil Hall in Boston, which even had a big square just like in Boston where we watched a street preformer! I have to wonder if I liked London so much because little bits of it reminded me of Boston or home....
We went to Trafalgar Square, then to Parliament and of course Big Ben! I've told a few people this if I've talked to you about London, but Big Ben is so much more amazing in real life than any pictures convey. Of course I wanted to see it, but I didn't realize that it was actually going to be so beautiful. The roof has a lot of gold on it that I don't think translates into many pictures. Both during the day and at night it's just awesome!
After seeing Parliament, and starting a new album's worth of photos, that can be viewed here, we walked to Buckingham Palace. That was really cool, because Ali told us that the Queen was there that day, which you could tell because the flag was flying on top of the palace! After that we bought tickets to go see "Wicked" at the Apollo Victoria Theater, which were 25 Pounds ($50). That seems like a lot, and it was the most I've ever spent on a ticket for anything, but that was the reduced, day-of student price, so we got a really good deal. And if you think about it, if you went to Boston or New York to see it there, you would probably pay a lot more than $50 to go see a show of that quality. We picnicked at Buckingham and then went back to see the show!
"Wicked" was pretty awesome, the set was amazing and the costumes were great. The music was pretty cool, too. Unfortunately, I didn't like the story as much, it was alright, but I felt that it was a little too contrived and not very original as far as plots go. It is an interesting twist on the Wizard of Oz story and it's actually pretty political. Overall I liked it though!
We walked home afterwards, we actually ended up walking everywhere that we went in London because ride on the Tube (pronounced more like "chube" according to Ali!) is 4 Pounds... for a single ride. Yeah. We were not going to pay the equivalent of $8 for one ride. We walked right past Big Ben at 11 o'clock and I got a really crappy and stupid video of it. Here it is anyways, haha:
Click to viewDay Two-
We made our way over to the British museum, which you can see in that second album and going into the third one here. The British Museum is definitely one of the coolest museums that I've ever been to. It had the Rosetta Stone, which is really awesome! I only got to see a small fraction of it, the Islamic art, a lot of the Egyptian art and mummies, and the tiniest fraction of Chinese art. I think though that the Smithsonians are still my favorite museums.
Day 3-
Since I was flying out at 6:30, I was kind of limited as to what I could do this last half day. I ended up going with Rachel H. and Andrew back to the Tate Modern Art Museum. It's amazing, because there are so many free and amazing museums in London, this being one of them. We looked through one half of one of the 4 floors and barely saw all of that in 2 hours! O_o We went on one the Carsten Höller slides, which is part of an exhibition there. I explain that a little better in the pictures...
So, after the museum, I accidentally lost Andrew and Rachel, but had to go after waiting for a while because I wanted to be at the airport by 4:30. I knew that I had to get to the Liverpool Station, which wasn't so bad, except that one of the wheels on my cheap 11 Euro suitcase broke, lol XD So, I ended up dragging a suitcase across London that was suddenly much heavier than it had been before the wheel broke. But, I still found it alright and caught a bus to London's Stanstead and got there just a little after 4:30. So, it was all good in the end!
It was really so good to be back in Salzburg, it was night by the time that I flew back in and I could see the Festung on Mönchsberg as we flew in. I really had tears in my eyes as I saw it, haha : )