I could probably split this up into several posts, but I’m not, so good luck slogging your way through this beast!
Thursday night Jessica (my travel companion) and I took the night bus from Paris to London. My advice to anyone wishing to go from Paris to London or vice versa: don’t take the night bus. I don’t know how expensive the other buses are (all together my round-trip ticket was on 75 euros, versus at least 260 euros roundtrip for the Chunnel), but you will not get any sleep on the bus and thus the day will be wasted because you will be exhausted. Plus, you don’t get to see any of the country side if you go at night. This is what you’ll be missing.
Anyway, after we got off the bus we dilly-dallied for a little bit because we weren’t sure when the Tube started running in the morning (in Paris it starts at about 6:00), and we weren’t sure where to go. Eventually we made it to Victoria station where we bought an oyster card (you can put as much money as you want on it and it will get you into the Underground) and a rail ticket to Lingfield, which is the stop you take to get to the London temple. Yes, oddly enough the London temple is not in London. Its in Newchapel, Surrey. In the instructions to get to the temple it said to take a taxi, but because we had no coins with which to use the payphone to call a taxi, we decided to use our feet. My advice to anyone wishing to go to the London temple: get the coins to call the taxi (or have a phone that works in England). We were both tired, and I’m not sure how long of a walk it was, but it took us a good hour, hour-and-a-half to get there (maybe I should have looked up how many miles before I admitted how long it took us..oops). However, the temple is lovely and we met some really nice people there. It was also the sight of my first fish-and-chips consumption (we had to buy food in order to have coins to pay for the phone to call the taxi) and my first time calling and riding in a taxi. Quite thrilling actually.
After the temple we bought tickets for “Oliver,” went to our hostel, dropped off our bags, took a quick power nap, and then went back to the theater. It was fantastic. Fagin was my favorite character by far, and the actor who played him was funny.
After eating dinner we went back to the hostel and crashed. Friday morning we went to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guard. I’m glad I saw it, but it wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. Maybe I just had a lame view, but it was over in about five minutes and I guess I was expecting something that would take a long time.
Anyway, then we went on the longest walk of our lives. Seriously, it was probably just a mile or two, but it took us from 12:00-6:00 because we spent about two hours in the tower of London (where they keep the crown jewels and have some of the history of England). The first picture is of Tower Bridge and the second is of the actual London Tower complex.
Then we walked up past Shakespeare’s Globe theater, the London Eye (we did not go on it), Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, and Westminster Abbey (which we also did not go into). Then we saw Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, and Ripley’s Believe it or Not (which, believe it or not, we did not go into).
By this time our feet were about to go on strike, so we hopped onto a double-decker, took it to the end of the line, took another double-decker back, and a couple more while we saw more of London and let our feet take a vacation.
When it got dark we went back to Tower Bridge because I’d heard it was cool at night, but it wasn’t lit up. Luckily London Bridge was, so we took some pictures of that.
Sunday we went to church and I met a guy I know from Provo (he dated one of my roommates) who was in London with Men’s Chorus. He invited us on a picnic, so we were able to get dinner, yay! Also, we were able to see Hyde Park, which, aside from all of the sunbathers, was beautiful.
Then it was back on the bus for another nine-or-so hours to France. However, I can say that I have now been under and on the English Channel. On the way to London we went on a train that goes through the chunnel (the bus went into a big cattle-car looking thing that was on the train, and we all stayed on the bus), and on the way back we took the ferry (the moon from the ferry).
All in all, I really liked England, but the jury’s still out on London. I felt like the builders of London have tried to build the latest and greatest wherever they could, while still keeping the heritage of the older sites, with the result being a hodge-podge of different styles of architecture. Visually, it was very busy. Also, there were a few times when I wondered if the English really talked the way they were, or if they were just putting on a show for the tourists because their accents were super strong (ok, I didn’t really think that, but their accents weren’t like the typical ones you hear in movies).
Monday I slept from 9:30am to 5:30 pm and then that night from 1am to 9am. Yeah. Don’t take the night bus.
