London calling

Best weekend of my life. London is magnificent. I've always heard it's comparable to NYC, but both cities have completely different personalities. Not to mention, London's a cleaner, safer, more historic version and a trillion times better. New favorite city.

Before I get into the details of all the tourist traps I went to, I'm going to set up the stage a little.

Our hostel was an older cottage-like house on the north end of London. We walked in, saw the pretty architecture and nice bar/dining area, even the staff was friendly and invited us to events, so we're feeling pretty great about our choice. Until we get to our room. Try a closet size room for 12 girls, with the bunks stacked 3 high. Terrifying, but I guess all part of the hostel experience.

Bunk beds:

The escalators for the tub lines are also obnoxiously tall. I didn't even realize until I looked straight down from the top, and from then on, I focused my eyes on the eye-level billboards running all the way down on both sides. If you can't tell, I don't care much for heights.

Escalator from the bottom, you can barely see the top!!

London Fog is a brand because it is literally ALWAYS foggy. It's not a nasty metropolitan smog though, it's truly just how the weather pans out.

Being a tourist is exhausting. We packed so much in to the few days we were there and learned that we needed to take it a little easier on later trips.

Okay, now on to the tourist traps. I'll start with my absolute favorite, the Tower of London. Interesting in itself to see another castle and where they held prisoners, etc. But, it's also where they keep all of the Crown Jewels. King Edward had a scepter made with the Star of Africa, the largest piece of the Cullinan Diamond at 530.2 karats (the original Cullinan Diamond was 3,106 karats before being divided into multiple parts because it was "too big" making the owner "too conceited"). Julie and I went down the conveyor belt that passes this scepter, as well as other crowns, rings, scepters, three different times. Yes, we were THOSE girls. But hey, I've never seen so many kinds of jewels that big in one place.

The Tower of London:

Part of it from the inside: 

We saw the Tower of London on a day when we were very active tourists, fitting a lot into the schedule. We also saw the remade Globe theatre, an open-aired theatre built in 1599 by Shakespeare. I enjoyed seeing the actual place where most of Shakespeare's plays had performed after visiting his hometown last Sunday. Today, you can still attend performances there and even buy a groundling ticket, which are the tickets for the standing section right in front of the stage. Back in the day, these were the lower class tickets, but I can't wait to experience a play like this during a later trip to London!

The Globe theatre:

The reconstructed stage:

The Tate Modern, a modern art museum run by the same company as the Tate Liverpool we went to last weekend, was located right next to the Globe. Between this museum, and The National Gallery, we saw van Gogh's, Monet's, Warhol's, Picacco's, Degas's, Cezanne's, Rembrandt's, and so many other talented artists. I was in love viewing these paintings up close because I learned so much about the artist's techniques during my years of art classes.

Since my trip to London was so jam-packed, I'll leave you with this for now.. but stay tunned for a first class train ride experience among other events!