10:15 Meet a friend from school at Café Pompidou
- Meg and I met a friend from school, Ita, (she is working in London for the summer), for breakfast on Sunday morning. We went to a French café where I got the walnut waffle and Meg had her very first full English breakfast.
The National Gallery was incredible with 46 rooms of famous paintings. They were organized according to style, place/era (ex. Italian Renaissance), and were so beautiful. Highlight of the visit was definitely seeing the Monet Bridge picture that I remember so well from my art corps days back at Miramar Ranch Elementary School. Mom—you would have loved it! I remember doing a lesson based on that painting and to see it in real life was incredible. (http://www.arttoheartweb.com/images/Claude%20Monet%20Water%20Lily%20Pond2.jpg) There were other Monet paintings, along with ones by van Gogh, including the chair and Sunflowers (http://www.artquotes.net/masters/vangogh/vangogh_sunflowers1888.jpg), Cezanne, Rembrandt, and tons of other famous painters. So cool!
12:30 Walk by St. James Park and Buckingham Palace
- Ita, (from Manchester originally), served as a great tour guide for us as we walked along St. James Park toward Buckingham Palace. It was a beautiful walk and it was really cool to walk up to the Palace. There is a huge fountain in the front and the building is very impressive. It is a major tourist attraction. It was definitely just something to check off the list of things to see, so it wasn’t one of my favorite things, but it was still neat.
Westminster Abbey was extremely impressive. I was amazed with how easy it is to walk around London and see everything. It would definitely be feasible to walk for an hour down the Thames and see all of the major tourist attractions. It is funny seeing all of these well-known buildings in person because they are very different than what I expected. First off, Big Ben was not as big as I thought it would be, but the Houses of Parliament surpassed my expectations.
3:00 Walking along the river
- Ita left us after we saw the Houses of Parliament, so Ken, Meg and I decided to walk along the river toward the London Eye and stop for an afternoon snack. It was really cool to see it during the daytime because there were a lot of cool street performers to watch. My favorite were two Michael Jackson type dancers. One of them did a really fun dance move with a crystal ball by making it look like it was in a case and he was spinning it. It’s really hard to explain but it looked awesome.
Meg and I split apart from the boys to go see the Tower of London. We only had about an hour and a half so we had to prioritize what we wanted to see. We started in the “Bloody Tower” and saw some torture devices used when the Tower of London was used as a prison. Next was seeing the Crown Jewels. They were absolutely stunning and it was amazing to see the size of the jewels and just how sparkly they were. The Tower of London really wasn’t so much of a tower as it was a city. I tried to imagine what it was like walking around in the city back when it was still in use. We saw the armour of the past kings and finished up by walking around the little city and going into all the towers that we could. It was such an interesting place and one that I definitely would like to learn more about.
6:00 Dinner
- We met back up with Duc and Ken for dinner at Picadilly Circus. It was almost like a miniature New York City Times Square. We walked around briefly to get a sense of the area, and embarrassingly ended up going to McDonalds for dinner. Hey-what can we say, we’re college students living on a budget.
- It felt so good to be able to put my feet up on the seat across from me after the long day of walking. I’m tempted to do a “map my run” to see the distance walked. Overall, it was a great weekend trip, and I absolutely love London. I’m hoping to get to go back once or twice more before the end of the summer.
July 25
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