*Friday March 4*
After a restless night we woke up the next morning got dressed quickly and headed down to the bar for the complimentary breakfast. We had toast, peanut butter (a hot commodity coming from Italy) and instant coffee (not complaining). We all tried to eat as much as we could so we didn’t have to spend much money on food throughout the day. We had decided to meet James at Buckingham Palace, he couldn’t stay at the same hostel as us because it was over booked, and so we made our way across the street to the Hammersmith Underground station….which, by the way, has a Starbuck in it, and, like I said, the hostel only had instant coffee available (and had a system where you had to ask the bartender for hot water and I felt really bad going up there more than once) so we hit that up right away. A side note: London has a gazillion Starbucks. They are everywhere. I forgot what that’s like but it’s really strange, it’s almost as if no matter where you are standing you will always be able to see a Starbucks. We only went there once (I think) and the cappuccino was under-par compared to what Italy has to offer. Just sayin’.
Anyway, our main system of transportation was the Underground, and it is expensive (£4 PER ride= $6.40!!...crazy) so we decided to get day passes which were £6.60 each and paid for themselves with all the traveling we did. So Buckingham Palace was our first stop, where we caught up with James. It was a beautiful building with a very pretty iron and gold fence, very fancy and complete with a few guards with those fuzzy hats. After Buckingham we headed towards Big Ben and Westminster Abbey and decided to walk through a little park on our way there. It was soo nice to see the ducks and other little creatures and we went absolutely crazy with the pictures so sorry about that. The bridge we crossed was dedicated to Princess Diana which I thought was very nice. Westminster Abbey was gorgeous like usual and good ole Benny (which is actually the bell, not the tower) was still standing tall for us. Once we got our pics in we headed across the Thames and purchased tickets for the London Eye (the ferris wheel). Although the tickets were pretty expensive (£17 each, $27) we knew if we didn’t go we would regret it later so we just sucked it up and I’m so glad we did because it was absolutely beautiful. Even being afraid of heights (which all three of us girls were) the view was just amazing, every few minutes, as you got higher and higher up, you could see a different view of London. After we got off the Eye we were all starving and decided to head over to Covent Garden and try to find Chipotle, the only international Chipotle!! On our way we ran into the Sherlock Holmes restaurant and had to get a pic (for old times sake) so we could put it next to the one we took when we were 13. Ahh memories J I love London. Anyway, Chipotle was sooo good and I know what you’re thinking, but seriously we appreciate anything that isn’t Italian food much, much more now, and it was a nice little Mexican (if you can call it that) fix for us (you know how I like my cilantro). After Chipotle we mosied on over to the Covent Garden market to check out the scene and ran into a street performer with a big crowd around him. He was doing acrobatic tricks so we stopped and watched him for awhile. We then went to Ben’s cookie shop and had some wonderful triple chocolate cookies with milk and hot chocolate, it was delicious!
We then dropped James off at his hostel, which gave us the chance to see London properly at night. What a beautiful city. We had to stop multiple times to take photos of the lit up London Eye, the golden reflection of the Parliament building and Big Ben in the Thames and just the lights of the city in general. I am in love with London. This is the city that made me want to live in a city, which is why I go to school in Chicago. No city that I have visited thus far has been able to make me feel the way London does. Anyway, enough with the sappy stuff. So we headed back to our lovely hostel and had a little fun in Belushi’s Bar (located under the hostel). We went to bed pretty early that night since none of us had really gotten much sleep the night before.
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