London Calling

London

This trip to london held a very special place in my heart because I was getting to see my friend Jodie for the first time in two years.  Jodie studied abroad at State University of New York at New Paltz for a semester and I helped to arrange that she live in our suite since she was studying psychology and half of us were doing the same.  She became a great friend in those few months and I've been hoping and saying we'd met again and I finally could fulfill that promise.  We met in London on Friday evening and proceeded to our hostel and then hopefully some dinner!  This was our first hostel experience and I was excited while Jodie was more apprehensive (probably a smarter emotion than mine).  The hostel was nice and in a park in Kensington.  We were sharing our room with at max 6 other girls.  There were 3 young girls from Sweden that we chatted with for awhile.  We left and got dinner just before the place closed(!) and then headed for a bar in the same area.  It turns out that we probably should have gone somewhere else for cheap, chill bars but we had a fun time anyways.  Unfortunately we didn't know the tube stops running at 12am so we had to take a cab which was exciting but also too much money :-\  The next day we did an insane grand walking tour of London.  We started at Portobello road street market which was really fun and crowded.  Didn't buy anything mostly because I didn't have room in the single backpack I took with me on this 2 week trip.  Then we went to the Tower of London and decided that the outside was pretty enough because nearly 20 pounds to go in was way too expensive.  From there we just strolled along the Thames and went towards all the classic sites like Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and others that I can't think of...essentially we walked a crazyyyyy amount but saw a lot!  It was beautiful weather bordering on hot.  The night before our waitress recommended a district with good drinking and food so we checked it out.  Unfortunately, we now loathe that waitress because we wandered around a district with hardly any food or drink and just got blisters on our feet.  It was a pretty defeating experience all around but that's life.  The next day we decided to take it a little easier and walked at a slower pace with frequent breaks because our poor feet ached.  That day we wanted to see a show at the west end but the shows that were on were sold out so we walked around that area and then went to the natural history museum and saw the bodies exhibit for animals.  That was super cool.  That day we decided that rather than wandering around looking for dinner, we would go to a place near our hostel that we'd walked by everyday.  This was our best decision ever.  The place was lovely and delicious.  We decided to extend our experience and ordered cocktails then an appetizer and then a main and then more cocktails and finally a dessert.  We were there for a good 4 hours and they never made us feel rushed to leave which is so different from in the US.  It was so nice to just sit and chat together about all kinds of things in our lives that we'd missed out on when we were apart.  The next morning we said goodbye and spoke of her coming to visit me in Utrecht soon!  I headed towards the train station to get to edinburgh.