London: Part I

First official buddy pic!

The morning we left for London started waaaay earlier than I would have liked. Our flight was at 7am so we had to be awake by 4:30am. Suffice to say, I didn't really sleep that night. Melissa had called a cab to take us to the airport since the buses don't run that early. We waited by the window but our taxi never came so she had to call another one. Luckily, that one showed up and it only took about 10 minutes for us to get there. When we got to the airport it was drizzling and cold which I took to be an evil omen, haha. Our flight was really short, only about an hour and 15 minutes but we landed in Luton so we were still quite a ways away from our hostel. We took a bus into the city and Melissa and I got to chat. It was the first time that we had really gotten to actually talk and it hit me that I was for real talking to the same girl who I had only known through letters for the past 5 years. I think it was on this bus ride that I finally got over my anxiety about her not liking me and was able to just be myself.

Palmers Lodge: Swiss Cottage

We arrived at Palmers Lodge: Swiss Cottage at around 10am. By then all of my sleepiness had been replaced by the pure excitement of being in London for the first time. Since check in wasn't until 3pm we had some time to kill so we dropped off our luggage and headed out. We took a look at the map and it said that Regents Park was just a short walk away from our hostel. I had heard that Tom Hiddleston likes to go for runs at that park so we made a beeline for it. Unfortunately, we did not have a Hiddles sighting but the park was phenomenally beautiful. We were blessed with a gorgeous sunny day and there were flowers, birds and dogs (met a magnificent pug named Emilio) everywhere. It was like a dream! I was expecting London to be cold and gray so I wasn't at all prepared for a crisp spring day. We stopped for a bite to eat at a café at the corner of the park and I got a fruit cup and some cashews since my tummy still wasn't feeling 100%. While we were sitting there my lower back started to feel crampy which is a precursor that my moon blood is about to arrive. It did in fact start shortly after so we had to find a drug store in town. While looking for a drug store we found ourselves on Baker St. and that was very exciting! We passed the Sherlock Holmes Museum and the line looked a little long so we didn't end up going in. In retrospect, I really regret that we didn't even peek in the gift shop. I know, I know. I fudged up on that one.

Sherlock Holmes Museum was super cute (at least from the outside)

Goddesses of Spring

Next we walked over to the National Gallery. That proved to be quite a walk so we got to see a lot of the city and do lots of people watching at the same time. When we finally got there we were pretty tired so we just sat down on some steps and relaxed (ie: took some selfies). The museum was free to the public so that was nice. I hate to admit it as an artist but I tend to get bored easily at museums. It's shameful, I know, but that's just how things are. We looked around for about an hour and on our way out we saw a queue lining up for a van Gogh exhibit. They said the wait time would be about 10 minutes and at the time that felt like 10 minutes too long so we peaced out. Again, big mistake. The exhibit turned out to be of all of van Gogh's sunflower paintings and the fact that I could've seen all of them together in one place for free if I had only waited 10 lousy minutes is enough to make me want to scream so I won't say anymore on the subject.

Photo I almost died over

In the courtyard outside the gallery all the children were having their pictures taken in front of these awesome lion statues so naturally I wanted my picture with one too. I did find it a little strange that no other adults were having their picture taken but not enough to stop me from climbing up there. Hoisting myself up was a challenge but the bigger problem turned out to be getting back down. The reason why only children were having their picture taken was because their parents were needed to lift them up onto the pillar. When I looked over the edge I noticed the edge was curved and there was no foothold for me to climb down on. At that point I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to be stuck on this crummy pillar forever. To my relief, a kind stranger came to my aid. A gentleman (they do still exist) who I didn't even share the same language with put his hand out for me to grab onto and then used his leg as a step for me to climb down on. At that moment I was filled with a surge of love for my fellow human beings (which is a pretty rare occurrence for me). 

Next on our list of destinations was Big Ben and luckily it was relatively close to the National Gallery so we didn't have to walk that far. The London Eye was directly across the street from Parliament so we got to scratch that off our list too. We didn't ride on the Eye (too cheap) but it was cool to see up close. It was about 5pm by then so we decided to just see one more landmark then we'd head back to the hostel. Being the super nerd that I am, I chose the Millennium Bridge since it was in "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince". If I had known it was going to take us an hour to walk down there I would've chosen Westminster Abbey instead but hindsight is 20/20. We got to walk along the Thames though, so that was nice and once we got to the bridge we had a pretty good view of Tower Bridge as well. I was running on empty by that point so we took the Underground back to the hostel. When we got back to our room we were surprised to find that we had a new neighbor! A Japanese business man was to share our room with us so any plans to sleep in our underwear went out the window. But no matter, I had a bit of a lie down, which I sorely needed and felt much better. Around 8pm we went trolling for food and we found a cute Italian place a few minutes away. It was really packed but we were starving so we didn't mind that much AND all of the people who worked there were from Italy so that was cool. When our pizzas arrived they were absolutely humongous so we could have shared one but whatevz.

I think we turned in pretty early that night and I slept like a baby. I was shocked that I slept so good since my bed was itty bitty teeny tiny but I was exhausted so a pile of hay would've been good enough at that point. I wish I had taken a photo of our dorm since it looked like the dorms in Harry Potter. To be honest, that's why we chose this hostel in the first place, haha!

So in conclusion, our first day in London was great despite not getting to see everything we had wanted to see but there are only so many hours in the day. The next day we would journey to the Warner Brothers Studio and that turned out to be another great adventure. Get ready for lots of Harry Potter love in my next post!

Cheers!