hello london.

    We had a day off of classes last Friday, so Kayleigh and I took the opportunity to go to London! We had the bright idea of buying the earliest flight on Friday, which meant we were out for our first transportation at 2:45AM! We were like, no problem, we'll be able to sleep the whole way there! (We can both sleep anywhere.) Too bad we didn't take into account the fact that the Aircoach, flight, and bus were all just over an hour in length so about as soon as we fell asleep we were getting off, along with the fact that we had the two hours in the airport and went to bed about an hour before we had to get up...... Needless to say we began the trip quite tired already, but we were persevering!
    As we walked to the Aircoach stop Kayleigh and I prayed over our whole trip, and I saw CLEARLY the Lord's answers to our prayers continuously throughout! He is so good to care for His children!!! We had a couple of minor issues along the way, but overall everything went smoothly and we never felt unsafe which was huge.
    One big answer to prayer came as we planned the trip. We looked into a lot of different options for places to stay, but nothing inexpensive was falling into place. I mentioned this to Selina, a girl on my trip, and she said she had three wonderful Christian guy friends studying abroad in London. Sure enough, she asked them if they'd have a place for us, and they enthusiastically agreed to house us! This was huge, because they were very centrally located, making time and money conservation MUCH easier. It turned out they had a girl friend who was gone for the weekend so we got to share her room and bathroom to ourselves, and it was perfect. It was so great to experience the way being a part of the family of Christ brought us together and gave us so much in common (and no worries about safety and all that) even though we knew next to nothing about each other going in!
    We quickly mastered the London TUBE system, the subway. Since I'm usually directionally challenged, I was proud of myself for figuring it out so quickly! Once we finally found the apartment building and got let in by one of their random friends since they were in class, we walked over to Borough Market, the biggest most delicious farmers' market I've been to.

Tons of booths had free samples, which was wonderful. We got this deal for lunch where we got to choose 5 kinds things (all organic) for like 5 pounds. Unfortunately, pounds are NOT equivalent to dollars, and are even worse than Euros!

 Nearby cathedral.

 On London Bridge, seeing the Tower bridge (below)!

Architecture everywhere was just GORGEOUS. I didn't even know what most buildings were, but I took pictures anyway.

 Next we went to the Tate Modern Gallery for a little bit, which had (obviously) modern paintings by Picasso, Dali, etc. Then we went to the Tower of London (below) which was really cool to see but we didn't go inside because it cost 18 pounds to be admitted...

Next we went to Leicester Square, found some soup and split a pb&j, then headed to the Palace Theatre to see Singing in the Rain!!!

We were SO pumped!!!

Neither of us had actually ever seen this musical, but bought the tickets beforehand because it had incredible ratings and we figured we HAD to see a show while in London. It was one of the best choices we made! We had the worst, cheapest seats, and still enjoyed it thoroughly and immensely! The dancing was phenomenal. They actually had rain on the stage, not just sprinkles but POURING rain. The dancers danced right in the rain, getting soaked, and purposefully kicking and splashing the water right into the audience! We were in the highest balcony and couldn't see the front rows, but we could hear them ahhhh!-ing. It was so much fun!!

If you were wondering to the girl on the left was, we just asked her to join so that we didn't have an empty face :)

We made our way back to the apartment, exhausted, and met the guys for the first time then headed to bed. They were extremely sweet and actually made eggs and had all kinds of food out for us for breakfast in the morning! It was so great. This day we headed to the area with all of the most well-known sites...

Big Ben.

 Westminster Abbey. So. Beautiful.

It was founded in AD 960 as a Benedictine monastery. It is the nation's Coronation church and has been since the crowning of William the Conqueror in 1066. It is also still used daily for worship and prayer. Princess Diana's and Queen Elizabeth's funerals were held here.

We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but I'll try and describe it. When I walked in, as I looked up and around me in awe I literally cried, it was so beautiful. My thoughts were, this was built because of the honor our holy God deserves. What reverence! It made me also wonder what heaven is going to be like. I was struck by the statues and artwork everywhere, mostly memorials to people buried there. I was surprised to see tombstones for Charles Darwin, Jane Austen, Handel, and Charles Dickens among many, many others, all besides the royalty buried and memorialized there!

Note the London Eye back there.

Next we headed for the National Gallery and spent some time there. The collection was incredible, including art of Van Gogh, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, etc.  Admission was free as it is in all of London's galleries and museums! A donation is recommended but not compulsory. :)

 We got some of the most delicious cookies I've ever had at Ben's Cookies (recommended to us by the guys we stayed with), in Covent Gardens, famous for its covered piazza. There were many stores varying in scale, as well as booths for artists and artisans to sell all sorts of things. Very fun to browse through!

 

Although it was getting dark, we headed next for Buckingham Palace. This is where the royal family lives! It was beautiful. I couldn't get a good picture in the dark, but there were several guards standing by the doors of the palace with their tall black hats, completely unmoving. It was crazy to think of who all was inside!!!

We went back to the area of where we were staying and looked for a pub with music or something only to find that everything was completely dead, no pubs anywhere. It was too late and wasn't worth the money to us to go back into the busy city which was really sad, but I guess we learned that not all of London is buzzing with stuff to do at night! We had a nice walk anyway :)

 Next day: breakfast from the guys again. Then we headed to Knightsbridge. This is Harrods. It is a famous department store that takes up a whole city block. It was insane, and quite sickening, to be honest. So much materialism! It was extremely expensive, too! I should've taken pictures of some price tags. Thousands of pounds for one pair of earrings... you get the picture. Definitely worth seeing.

It was so interesting to note the marketing used there... some seemed random like this Egyptian room, but a lot of it involved typing the employees, music, decor, and atmosphere to the department and predicted customer. It varied hugely from room to room!

This is the Harrods bear! When we left I decided to ask the guard at the door about the history of the store and I definitely asked the right guy!! He used to lead historical tours of the place. It was first opened in 190? with just one room of the store. As it was passed down it expanded more and more until today: 8 stories up and 7 down!! (Almost half of it is used for storage.)

We had a lovely walk to the Hyde and Kensington Gardens, though it was rainy.

 I loved the contrast of outstanding architecture with this cheesy ice cream truck :) Also, these older women were precious with their linked arms, the left one's 2 inch heels, and, of course, their kitten umbrella.

 I may have enjoyed photographing these ducks at the Kensington Gardens pond too much.

I mistakenly thought people went to Kensington Palace because it was beautiful to see, not expecting to go in. When we found out, yes, this was the palace, we were a bit surprised. However, once we went inside and decided it was worth the money, we found out why it was so highly recommended we go there...

 Kensington Palace is where the historical royal family lived, so we toured a reflection on Queen Victoria's personal life, then the Queen's quarters, then the King's quarters. It was so fun seeing all of their costuming, and the reflection on Victoria's life was extremely interesting! She was a tiny woman, so talented, and just seemed so normal... It was very well set up with quotes from her journals by the items from the time the quote was about. (Quote on the left picture, her wedding dress, was "Oh! This was the happiest day of my life")

 Who knew she was an artist? There were lots of her sketchbooks for us to see!

Sweet children's clothing. Quote: "You would be amused to see Albert dancing [Vicky] in his arms."

Apparently she and Albert played duets on this piano :)

Quote for right picture: "During dancing, I squeezed and pressed dearest Albert's hand, and he mine."

 They had these phonographs on the left playing whispers like the palace gossip going around. The picture on the right represented the "18 hopes", Queen Anne's 18 children who all passed away, save one son. Prince William was his name and he was greatly loved by all, but tragically died at age 11!

 These birds represented the songbirds the queen liked to have above this room, where she chatted with friends.

Wow. The little hanging lantern things had little miniature people showing what people of all the different occupations within the palace would have looked like. It was so clever and fun!

Tapestry in the King's quarters.

The king's quarters were organized very interestingly, telling you how influential you would have to be to venture further and further into them. We actually got little booklets with scenarios that gave you options for responses, which determined how you were received into the different rooms. It was so clever! The picture above shows how guests tried to get attention... I cannot even IMAGINE trying to wear that dress! How would she get through the door? I don't know.

 If you can't see it, the opposite side says it took SIX BOYS to carry this train!!

Only the king's closest confidantes got to enter this hall. This is where they would have private conversations. The picture below shows the ceiling. It was incredibly intricate with SO MANY amazing portraits!!!

(For some reason my camera was fuzzy through this last site. Must have been smudged from the rain)

    This was our last site! We packed SO MUCH into those few days and absolutely loved it!!! It was amazing to experience a city with soooo much history and so many famous places... I loved hearing all different languages everywhere I went and the diversity and busyness of the city; I found it exhilarating!! As much as I loved to visit though and would totally love living there, I couldn't because of how expensive it is. I felt SO grateful that I am studying abroad in Ireland with all our traveling, food, and housing included in the program expense, because the guys we stayed with had to pay for all of that along with the cost of the program! We made our way back to say bye to the guys, took the bus to the airport, got on our flight smoothly, and took the Aircoach back to Greystones. What a transition! I am so thankful for the opportunity, AND such a great friend to experience it all with! Traveling together just the two of us worked out perfectly (it was nice not having a bunch of girls to please!).

This weekend we will be traveling again! What an exciting time! I am still just trying to savor every moment!!

xxoo