Day 2 (3/23/11)

After disembarking the plane, we began the long and treacherous journey through security and customs. After some goofing around with the bus service to take us into London as well as money withdrawals and some much-needed teeth brushing, we were on our way! The bus driver was an awesome guy with an extremely sad story: he was from Spain and has had to be apart from his family for months at a time until he can make enough money to bring them here. He was a lot of fun and the ride was a blast; it was tough to get used to being on the left side of the street, and even weirder was moving to the right in order to be in the fast lane! When we got to the drop-off point we said goodbye and trekked to the Tube station.
After our first exhilarating Tube ride we got to the hostel, but couldn’t check in so we left our bags and headed out. From there we walked out to and along the Thames river, seeing many interesting things like the Tate Britain museum and a school next door that had a pretty cool entrance. We also looked across the river at some pretty cool buildings, which I don’t know. We continued walking until we came to a fantastic public park in front of the Houses of Parliament.
In the park was a gloriously ugly and colorful thing that kinda ruined the view, but its ok because Parliament was amazing. It had such a high level of detail combined with varying scales and types of ornament. We continued around it until we got to Westminster Abbey, which had a pretty awesome exterior with many different styles and colors. We walked around inside through the crazy amounts of stuff going on. It was packed full of statues and other relics, some looked pretty cool and others looked like poop. It was also kinda weird because almost everywhere you walked there was somebody buried below you, with a giant plaque on the ground. There was also an amazing courtyard inside where students came to eat and we came to rest our feet (what a poet I am…).
After we finished there we walked to Big Ben, and saw a few cool things including my favorite random building in London, various stunning entrances to Westminster, and a neat old Basilica. After we got our touristy side on at Big Ben we walked to Trafalgar Square where we saw the statue counting down the days till the Olympics, a giant ship in a bottle, and some mimes! From there we walked to the Cavalry Museum, which had a ridiculously massive entry court that seemed like a desert as we crossed it. After that we stopped by the Churchill War Rooms, a museum inside the original bunker that Winston Churchill and his war cabinet met/hid in during WWII. It was pretty awesome since almost all of it was still original.
After touring the War Rooms we walked through St. James Park, which was pretty amazing, but we saw a guy peeing in the bushes, which was kinda unfortunate since it was such a nice and classy area. Oh well, once we walked all the way through the park, we came to Buckminster Palace, which was pretty great! It was really crowded and not much was going on except for people staring at the guards.
After some touristy photos we left for home, and while it was a pretty uneventful walk home we did see a new version of the 2-door Toyota Rav4, which made my day!!!!! Finally we got home and unwound before heading to a small kebob shop up the street (no Istanbul but it was pretty good!). After dinner we walked home and went to bed!