penny for the guy = $10

Continuing my month of constant travel, I spent last weekend in LONDON! Two of my friends on the program, Carmen and Mike, have Swarthmore friends studing in London this semester and I decided to tag along to visit them. I thought I´d just have my HCAYS friends in England, but as it turns out I was super busy meeting up with old friends.

We flew in on Thursday night and I went to see Christine, "the best nanny in the world." I was a little nervous about seeing her, because although we´d communicated over email and facebook, I hadn´t seen her since I was 9. She´s living about 45 minutes outside of London with her husband Daniel and their adorable 2 year old daughter Lucy. I shouldn´t have worried, because Christine was just as friendly and fun as I remember. Lucy was asleep, but the adults (I guess that includes me now--weird) ordered in Indian food, drank wine and talked about old times. It was really great to catch up. We all decided it was better if I set out for London in the morning, so I stayed the night and thus got to meet Lucy on Friday morning! She´s so cute and really smart -- Christine is teaching her sign language and Spanish. They were all heading up to Newcastle to visit friends for the weekend, so I took a train to London in the morning. I was so happy to see Christine and meet her wonderful family:

As soon as I got into London, the counter-culture shock set in. After a few months of hearing and seening exclusively Spanish in public, English was music to my ears. England was really comforting because a) I have so many great memories of visiting there with my family in the past and b) the culture is close-ish-er to that of the U.S. (i.e. English-speaking and non-siesta-taking). For these reasons, I was grinning like an idiot in Liverpool Street Station. People must have thought I was crazy.

Joe and Matt are both at Queen Mary College in the East End. After finding the campus and dropping my stuff at their apartment, we took the tube to Westminister and started some serious sightseeing. We saw: Westminister Abbey, Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, the London Eye, Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace, St. James´ Park, and the National Gallery. Phew! Most of the sites we just looked at from the outside because it was too ´spensive to go in. This was a theme of my trip. Here are some faux-toes:

houses of parliament

whitehall palace

some ivy that looked pretty

buckingham palace

st. james' park--the real St. James Gate! 

big ben with the london eye peeking out from behind a building

westminster abbey

chilling with oliver cromwell outside HofP

big ben

That night, we split up and Carmen and her boyfriend had a date night and Mike, Matt and I went to Brick Lane for Indian food. I went for a spicy curry, but Mike made friends with all the waiters by ordering the spiciest vindaloo they had. He was literally sweating because it was so hot!

I wanted to meet up with my friend Rae from high school and see some Guy Fawkes´Day bonfires, but our mobiles weren´t working and we couldn´t figure out how to find each other. However, I did meet up with Talia and Zach Kwartler at a pub in Shore Ditch, one of London´s oldest areas. We had a pint at the pub and then went with a big group of Matt´s friends to this bar/club in the same neighborhood. Here´s another bit of culture shock - at both of these places, we stayed until last call. At the bar, that was 11 p.m. and at the club it was 2 a.m. For a seasoned madrileña like myself, it was crazy early!

The next morning, Mike and I woke up early because we wanted to have time for a full english breakfast before meeting Zach and Talia at the Tower of London. I got the "vegetarian version," which had baked beans, fried eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms, and hash browns. Mike's non-veggie version included sausage, bacon and black pudding. Needless to say, we were full for quite a long time afterwards.

The Tower of London was great! I remember vaguely going as a kid, but we spent the entire morning and then some checking out the crown jewels, armory, prison rooms, etc. My personal favorite was a punch bowl in the royal plate that holds 144 bottles of wine. Obviously for when the royals want to rage.

tower bridge NOT london bridge (the yeoman warder was adamant about this)

some people got axed here

what a clown!

After finding a "pubby pub" and eating fish 'n' chips and a pint for lunch, the Kwartlers split to go to a play. Mike and I crossed the river (on the REAL london bridge) and went to see Shakespeare's Globe Theater and the Tate Modern museum. The Tate just opened a new exhibition by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei that is comprised of 100 million handmade, handpainted porcelain sunflower seeds. 

millennium bridge, thames river, st. paul's cathedral

that's a lotta seeds, man!

After a really long day, we were totally pooped so went out for dinner and then stayed in on saturday night. But here's where the fun starts!

Part 1: Carmen was staying an extra day and flying back monday morning, but Mike and I were leaving on Sunday morning at 8:20. We set alarms for 5:30 and proceeded to pass out. Somehow, neither alarm went off! We woke up at 6:30 and RAN to the bus station to get to the train station to take the train to the airport. We got to the airport at 8:00 A.K.A. TWENTY MINUTES BEFORE OUR FLIGHT LEFT AND SOMEHOW MADE OUR FLIGHT. WHAT?!

Part 2: While we were waiting in line to get on the plane, I ran to a little stand to buy some juice and a snack for the plane. I got on the plane, and realized I didn't have my wallet! In a panic, I ran up the aisle and asked the flight attendant if  I could go back and look for it in the store. He said I couldn't, but one of the tarmac dudes in an orange vest volunteered to do it for me. 5 MINUTES LATER HE WALKED UP THE AISLE IN THE PLANE AND HANDED ME MY WALLET WITH ALL MY MONEY AND CARDS AND EVERYTHING THERE. WHAT?! x2

I've been extremely careful ever since because I think I used up all of my luck for the next 10 years that morning. After those two adventures everything went smoothly and I was back in my house in Madrid by noon. Wowza! 

Besos,

S