London

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Day 2—London

The second day of my journey pretty much picked up where day one left off. During the flight to London, I watched a couple movies, and tried SO unbelievably hard to sleep. The good news is that the seat to me was empty, the bad news, the woman on the other side of the empty seat claimed it with her bag… and then didn’t use the seat or the bag for the rest of the flight. SO I didn’t sleep a wink. When I got off the plane, I found Morgan at customs and we went through the line together, exchanged money, and found our way to the underground, all while laughing and joking (due to the extreme cases of sleepy slap happiness that we were both suffering from).

Floating Silver Man

Once we made it to our hostel, which is very nice by the way, and got all settled in, we went to the bank to exchange money and then started walking around and exploring the streets of London! We went to a market called Covent Garden, and the atmosphere there was very cool. We saw floating silver people, and an energetic group of street performing strings players. As we walked around, I noticed that literally everyone smokes here. Like, do they not get the same Surgeon General warnings that we do, or what? It’s bloody insane. Morgan and I also had a conversation about how people seem to be better looking here. Morgan pointed out that maybe it was because none of them were overweight. And then I pointed out that maybe they weren’t overweight because they all smoke (in reality I think everyone just walks and bikes and refrains from gluttony).

We left Covent Garden’s Market and continued to walk, and walk, and walk. Donna you were right about the band aids. Fortunately, Morgan had me covered. We walked across the Waterloo bridge which gave us a gorgeous view of both the modern, shiny, skyscraper side of London, and the old historic side with Big Ben (which I learned today isn’t the tower or the clock, it’s just the bell), Parliament, a huge castle, and the London Eye.

Millennium Bridge

We definitely had a few Harry Potter moments today as well. I’m pretty sure that we walked down “Grimmauld Place,” and Mo and I were both hoping that Sirius’s house would show itself. I don’t want to leave you in suspense so I’ll just tell you. It didn’t appear. Then we walked across Millennium Bridge, which is much smaller in real life than it is in the movie, but still extremely surreal. From the bridge we saw Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and THE London Bridge.

Storm over the Thames River

Then we were ambushed by a torrential storm and after years of searching in the pouring rain, we found shelter and food for our starving bellies in a sandwich restaurant called Smithfield London. It was a filling meal, and we got to have fries and hot coffee (the perfect cure for my sudden hypothermia). At the restaurant, Morgan and I (big emphasis on the I), okay fine, it was all me, complained twelve times about the fact that the doors to the restaurant were open. I regret not shutting them because I was seriously SO cold. And we, crap, that was all me too, made a fool of myself on her Snapchat story trying to speak Cockney.


Then we limped to the underground in wet shoes, and finally made it back. We climbed 97 flights of stairs, changed into warm clothes, ate sweet tart balls, and sewed my fake glasses back together. And it was a fantastic, fun, and memorable day. I still can’t believe that I am here because it all feels so surreal (although the sight of Big Ben and the London Eye took our breath away and made it all feel real for a moment). Before I left I thought it would feel real when I got on the plane. Then when it still didn’t feel real, I thought that it would when I landed in London, and now I’ve just decided to concede to live in this constant state of amazement that I am here, and that my life really is this great. I am seriously SO blessed, can’t believe I get to do this for 15 more days!