London = A Dream Come True

We arrived in London feeling pretty tired, but kept on keeping on. We found our hostel, again without a lot of trouble, and dropped our bags off. We weren’t able to check in yet since it was too early, so we decided to go right back out again and get to the free London tour we’d heard about – it was through the same company that did our Paris tour. It was a good time – we saw the Wellington Arch, a bit of the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, St. James’ Palace, the London Eye, the Parliament Building, and etc. And our tour guide was very entertaining and told us stories, like about the time a drunk Irishman broke into Buckingham Palace and made it all the way into the Queen’s bedroom, or about Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot (which included a very detailed description of exactly how drawing and quartering is performed :-S).

After the tour, we got some tea at a nearby coffee shop, and then went to Evensong at Westminster Abbey. It was so beautiful! The Abbey is amazing, of course, and the boy’s/men’s choir there was fantastic. It was a little difficult to stay awake during the service, even though it was only an hour long, since sitting down for such a long time made us realize how tired we really were. Nevertheless, we managed it, and were really glad that we’d had the chance to go. Once the service was over, we headed back to our hostel to check in, sleep, and make plans for the following day.

Day two was wonderful – the first stop was at Westminster Abbey again, this time to take a tour. The Abbey was definitely one of my favorite parts of London. The most awesome audio-guides known to man were included in the price, and they made the tour so much more interesting than it would have been otherwise. The Abbey was so beautiful, and we saw the graves/memorials of a ton of famous people, including Queen Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scots, several kings, David Livingstone, Handel, and Oliver Cromwell (Cromwell is not there anymore, however, as his body was exhumed and mutilated later on…). We also saw the graves and monuments of a bunch of my favorite writers, like Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, John Keats, the Brontë sisters, and George Eliot, among others. No big deal :-P

Next, we were planning to go to Stonehenge, so we hurried over to Victoria Station to get tickets. Unfortunately, we discovered that the tour was sold out for that afternoon. At first, we thought that this would mean we wouldn’t be able to make it to Stonehenge at all, since the rest of our days in London were booked pretty full. However, we thought about it over lunch, and decided that we could switch our Wednesday and Monday afternoon plans around and go to Stonehenge on Wednesday morning instead. Thank goodness, because we would have been very sad to miss it!

Anyway, next on the agenda was now the Globe Theatre, which is located in a really cool, older part of London that put me in mind of Dickens novels and such. The Globe itself was really neat. Our tour guide was okay, and the exhibition was really cool – it was fun to learn some more about the theatre and how it was built. I was surprised to learn that it was only finished in 1997 – I knew it was a replica, as the original burned down, but I didn’t realize the new one was built so recently. Another fun thing about the tour was seeing the stones with the names of both famous and non-famous people who have donated to the Globe. We even saw John Cleese’s and Laurence Olivier’s stones among those covering the floor in the courtyard.

After a trip to the Globe’s gift shop to get some Shakespeare-related paraphernalia, it was off to the Tate Modern art museum, right next door to the theatre. I’m never too sure about modern art, but I really enjoyed it – some of it was cool, some of it was moving, and some of it was just plain disturbing, but all of it was really interesting. We spent a couple of hours there taking everything in, and then crossed the Millennium Bridge to take a look at St. Paul’s Cathedral. We didn’t go in since it’s really expensive and since we’ve seen a ton of cathedrals at this point, but the outside was very impressive – it’s so absolutely huge and gorgeous! And we saw the staircase from Mary Poppins…I wanted to start singing “feed the birds, tuppence a bag,” but I refrained.

After the obligatory red phone booth photo and a yummy sandwich at a nearby patisserie, we dashed over to King’s Cross Station in search of Platform 9¾. Yes, we are officially nerds. We had to ask like four people how to find it because it’s pretty hidden, and they all gave us a sly little smile as though they were thinking, “Oh yes, we know. We know who you are, you silly college-age fangirls” But we finally found it tucked away on the left side of platform 9, and sure enough, there was the half-a-luggage-trolley “submerged” into the brick wall, with the “Platform 9¾” sign above it. We took a few going-to-Hogwarts photos and had a grand old time. The funny thing was that we were probably the youngest people there…so we didn’t feel bad about being nerds. Not that we would have anyway :-P

Tuesday was our day to meet up with Briana – May 11th was her last day in London with her May-sem group, and she had a free day, so we decided to take advantage of it and spend the day with her. We planned to meet her at the British Museum entrance at 9:00, but were a good fifteen minutes late (dang Spanish culture, rubbing off on me) and got there just as she was starting to leave. Thankfully, we caught her in time, but it was close! I felt so bad…but it worked out. And I was so happy to see her! 4 months is really too long to be without your best friends. Anyway, we’d decided not to go to the British Museum with Briana since she’d been there like 3 times already, so we all headed off to the Tower of London together. It was very cool! So huge and imposing. And we got a great tour from one of the Yeoman warders that live at the Tower and take care of it. He was a lot of fun and had lots of great stories to tell us about murder and intrigue and people getting their heads chopped off. After the tour we went to look at the Crown Jewels, including the world’s biggest diamond. It was intense, let me tell you. Soooo shiny…next we saw the armory and the torture chamber, which were super interesting as well.

Once we’d seen our fill of the Tower, Kristen M. went to meet a friend of hers from home, and Briana and I went to take a look the Globe, since she hadn’t seen it yet. I was proud of my skills in navigating us there successfully :-) We then went shopping at a couple of thrift stores (or “charity stores,” as they call them in England) and also in some places around the Picadilly Circus and Theatre District areas. We didn’t really find anything to buy other than some yummy chocolate, but that was okay.
Next, it was time to go to the Queen’s Theatre to see Les Miserables! Let me tell you, it was probably the most amazing theatre production I’ve ever seen in my life (except for maybe Beauty and the Beast, but I saw that when I was four and don’t remember it, so it doesn’t really count)! I absolutely loved it. The actors were incredible, and the set and effects were nothing short of genius! There was a big circle on the stage that rotated sometimes, making it appear as though the actors were walking long distances. It’s hard to explain, but gosh, did it look cool. And everyone had amazing voices – which is good, because when they said the play was a musical, they meant it. I didn’t realize that virtually every line in Les Mis is sung! It was cool, though. We were flying pretty high when we left the theatre – what an experience!

We were hoping to end the night with a pint at one of the pubs, but unfortunately we forgot that pubs close at 11:30 instead of about 3:00 in the morning like in Spain (weird, right?) so we had to content ourselves with some fish and chips. A hardship, I know. Briana headed back to her hotel (I definitely didn’t want to say goodbye) and we went to our hostel, where we ate our fish and chips as a second dinner and went to bed.

Wednesday was our last full day in London. We got up early to get to our bus for Stonehenge, tickets at the ready. After about an hour-and-a-half ride through the English countryside (which looked oddly like Minnesota), we were there. It was impressive, and definitely worth the trip! Though I have to make the quintessential “I thought it would be bigger” comment. But no matter. I took about a million pictures of it and had lots of fun listening to the (again included!) audio-guide to learn about the history of the place. The surrounding area was very striking as well; lots of large, open, rolling fields, some vibrantly yellow mustard crops, and some cute sheep. It was quite a good time, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen like, every major European landmark now, so I’m feeling pretty good about myself.

Upon returning to London, it was time to go to the British Museum. We didn’t have tons of time there, but it was cool as museums go. And I got to see some Anglo-Saxon relics and some artifacts from the Sutton Hoo ship burial! That was exciting. Seriously, this trip gratified my nerdy English-major-ness in so many ways. After the museum, we made a trip over to Abbey Road Studios, because making an homage to the Beatles is just what you do when you go to London. It took us a couple of jaunts up and down the road to find it, but we finally saw the white wall full of signatures and song lyrics and knew we had arrived. We added our own names to the wall, and then a guy sitting by the famous crosswalk said he’d take a picture of us walking across the road if we’d take one of him. Unfortunately, we were only two instead of four so it isn’t truly like the Beatles’ picture, but it was still fun.

By this time, it was getting late and we had another play to get to, so we rushed over to the Globe Theatre once again. Yes, that’s right. I saw A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In the Globe Theatre. Did I mention that this trip was like English-major heaven? Because it was. The play was so much fun! Definitely the coolest Shakespearean experience (wow…that’s a mouthful) I’ve had thus far. At first I was disappointed that the actors weren’t decked out in full Renaissance regalia…I wasn’t in the mood for any of this “let’s reinterpret Shakespeare with 1920’s costuming” nonsense. But it worked well for the play, and they did a great job with it, so I got over it. It’s weird, though – I’ve seen a few live Shakespeare productions at this point in my life, but every single one of them has used 1800’s or early 1900’s costumes instead of Shakespeare-era clothing…weird. Someday I’ll see one with Renaissance costumes. Perchance.

Anyway, the play was a hoot – at the Globe, since a fair portion of the audience (the groundlings, as they are called) is up close and personal in the stage and since the actors can see every single face in the theatre, they interact with the crowd a lot, which is always hilarious. For example, an actor would pull someone up onto the stage with them, or an actress would touch a male audience member in a flirtatious manner. So funny! And the actors were all amazing, and really drew you into the story. Bottom stole the show with his hilariousness, and Lysander was a total cutie. And Puck was a vampy, jazz-age gal with a cabaret-type outfit on. Definitely a new interpretation there! Also, the LED-wings that the fairies had were a nice touch :-P

The next day was our last day in London – we finished it off with a trip to Trafalgar Square to get pics by one of the lions, and the nearby National Gallery. So we got our historical art fix as well as our modern one. There were lots of cool things to see there, and we had time to see the majority of the paintings. After that, we went to find Harrod’s, since we’d heard that the über-expensive merchandise was worth a look. It took us a bit to find it, but find it we did. What a place! I could hardly believe the extravagance. Floors and floors of expensive perfume and designer clothing and posh furniture and everything else under the sun. They even have a pet store! Among the other amazing things we saw were a £95,000 necklace and a bride with a huge rock on her hand trying on a beautiful wedding dress. After a while of feeling very poor, we went on a walk through the very lovely Hyde Park to get back to our hostel to grab our bags and get going.

We had planned on taking the 3:05 bus to the airport, but there were severe delays on the very line that would have gotten us to Liverpool station the fastest. After inching slowly along on the Central line for a while, we decided it would be faster to take a roundabout way, so we got off and figured out an alternative route. We finally got to the station, when it was nearly time for the 4:35 bus to leave, and after a lot of frantic running about and searching, we finally found the bus, which, thankfully, was late and so we were able to catch it. I had to buy another ticket since I couldn’t find my return-trip ticket (which I have since found during my clean-out session in my room…typical.), and Kristen M. and I had just enough pounds between the two of us to get me a new one. So we made it on the bus – unfortunately, it was now rush hour, so it took the bus almost an hour and a half to get to the airport instead of 55 minutes, meaning that Kristen M. now had approximately half an hour to catch her plane to Rome. We were both getting anxious – I wasn’t so worried that I wouldn’t catch my plane since my gate didn’t close until 6:30, but I was worried that my flight would be cancelled or something due to ash.

Anyway, after the bus finally got there, Kristen M. and I said a quick goodbye and she made a break for it – she texted me later to say that she had made it just fine, so thank goodness for that – while I got the bag and hurried off to check in to my own flight. It was to be my first experience flying alone. I waited in line at a RyanAir counter only to find out that my check-in was at the other counter, the one with no line. Of course. This always seems to happen, somehow. Anyway, check-in and security went pretty quickly, and I made it with lots of time to spare. Turns out, I had a lot more time than I thought I would – my plane was over two hours late – due to traffic, not to ash, as it happened. I was still worried, though – this would mean that I’d have less than an hour to catch my bus to Pamplona instead of the original three. I was getting unbearably antsy as I waited for the plane to come, but it finally did, and I was off to Spain once again. When we landed, I prepared myself to dash. Customs and baggage claim went blessedly fast, but I found out at the information desk that I needed to go to Terminal 4 for my bus. I was currently in Terminal 1. The lady advised me to take a taxi, since it was far away. “You have very little time,” she told me. Boy, was I ever aware of it.

So I ran outside and got into a taxi, quickly telling the driver in Spanish where I needed to go, somehow getting it out in spite of the fact that my mouth was dry because I was so nervous that I’d miss my bus and be stuck in the airport all night. He zoomed me on over to the terminal (I couldn’t believe how far away it was…thank God I didn’t try to walk there) and after paying a steep 22-euro fare (too scared to care at that point…), he told me where I needed to go to get to the bus platform, and I literally made a run for it. After asking at another info desk to figure out where the right door was, I ran again (keep in mind that I had a large backpack and a heavy duffel bag hanging off of me at this point…let’s hear it for adrenalin!), and made it to the platform with fifteen minutes to spare. Sweet relief! So that crisis was averted. It definitely took me some time to calm down, but once I was on the bus, I was basically home free. So after yet another night of travel, I made it safely back to Pamplona. I was pretty proud of my ability to make it from London to Pamplona by myself without getting stuck anywhere! Though I’m sure that God was helping me out through all of it, so I can’t really take any of the credit.

And here I am, with fewer than five days left in Pamplona! I can hardly believe it. I plan to spend these next days relaxing and preparing myself to go home, both materially and mentally. A few more goodbyes to say, a few more places to visit one last time, a few more euros to get rid of (that last will not be a hardship…:-P), and I’m off to the States once again! I’ll be sad to go, but I’m ready to be home, as I have probably already told you. I’ll probably write one more blog post, but for now, know that I’m thinking of you, and I’ll see you soon!