My Life Abroad

Back from a quick weekend in London! I am very tired, but it was definitely worth it and I got to see just about everything that I wanted to! We had a quick flight from Rome to Stansted Airport, which is about an hour outside the city. We then took the Stansted Express, which is a nice WiFi enabled version of the Amtrak, into the city.

The first thing that we did was go straight to Chipotle and get food. It was soooo good, and the manager liked us so much and she gave us buy one get one coupons, and told us all of the cool markets to go see and what other stuff to do in London. People in London are very very nice, which is something that I didn't expect at all.

We then checked into our hostel, which was a "traditional" hostel. I am definitely not a big fan. There were some weirdos in my room which I shared with 8 other guys who I didnt know. Some kid was reading me his birth certificate aloud to me, which was bizarre...haha. The whole hostel thing is just weird and I don't plan on staying at one like that again (hopefully).

The first night that we got there some of us broke off and went to the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, which were both cool. The mummies were cool as well as a lot of the artifacts from Ancient Rome, which I have been learning a lot about in the past couple of weeks.

Saturday started at 8am, and we saw almost everything you could see in one day. We bought the London Pass, which was 39 pounds, which translates to about $60-65 (The dollar to pound exchange rate is even worse than the dollar to the euro). The London Pass is a great investment since it is like paying the admission fee for different sites around London ahead of time, and you get them at a discounted rate. We took the Tube everywhere, which is the equivalent of the El (except cleaner). We started at the Tower of London and Tower Bridge, then headed to Shakespeare's Globe. The Globe was kind of a disappointment since it was all rebuilt and it isn't even the right location. But it was cool to see and hear about what theater was like back in the day of Shakespeare. Next we crossed the Millennium Bridge to go to St. Paul's Cathedral, which I believe is the main cathedral of the Church of England. It is where Charles and Diana were married.

Next we saw Big Ben, the London Eye, Westminster Abbey, and Buckingham Palace, which were all very cool to see.

Now I need to start studying for my tests this week and catch up on some sleep!

Ciao

Joe