Day Fourteen - London, England

Day Fourteen – London, England

What another great day!! We started out by going to Buckingham Palace to watch the Changing of the Guard. It was very different from what I expected. I assumed it would be similar to the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C. but there were stark differences. In D.C., the ceremony is very serious, precise, and solemn. The ceremony here only takes place once a day and is more of a celebratory event. It lasted 45 minutes and included a lot of soldiers and a fanfare type band. It was pretty hard to see everything because it was so crowded but Alyssa got some great pictures on my camera for me (thanks girl!!), and thankfully the guards spread out and did different things so I got to see parts of it. I kept waiting for Kate to walk out onto the balcony but she must’ve forgotten I was there :P

After that we were walked to our next destination and stopped at St. James Park, which is right next to Buckingham Palace, along the way. It was beautiful so we sat down and had a little snack and Drew gathered a flock of pigeons with the bread he was throwing around haha I almost thought they were going to take over our area! It was fairly cold today but sunny at the same time so it was nice to sit in the park on a day like today. Then we took the standard London telephone booth picture and we got it with Big Ben in the background (see fb) so that’s pretty cool.

Then we went to Westminster Abbey – we had been outside of it last night but we went in to tour it today. To be honest, I didn’t know much about it before today except that it was an iconic cathedral in London and William and Kate were married there (what else do I need to know, right?) so it was really neat to learn lots about it. I had no idea how many famous people had been buried there and it was amazing to see the tombs of people like Queen Mary of Scots, tons of King Henrys/Edwards/Charles, Geoffrey Chaucer, Oliver Cromwell, etc. It was an absolutely beautiful cathedral and the ceiling in King Henry VII’s chapel is actually one of the wonders of the world! I’ve always wanted to see a wonder of the world and it was definitely incredible. I found it interesting that they also had a “Tomb of the Unknown Warrior” and I was wondering if that one came first or the one in America…so I looked it up and found out that the English one came first and there’s actually many “tomb of unknown soldiers” around the world. However, the tomb in London was a much less big deal than ours is and it obviously carries a very different weight to them.

After I got a few souvenirs from the Westminster Abbey gift shop for the fam, we hopped on a double decker bus and headed for Trafalgar Square. We thought that our bus pass would get us on the double decker busses but we weren’t sure so we literally just ran onto one and had quite the experience trying to communicate with the bus driver what we were doing….Caitlin couldn’t even find her bus pass so thankfully the bus driver just took her word that she really did have one and off we were! It was fun riding on the second story of the bus.

We made it to Trafalgar Square, which is a giant square with a pretty fountain and some statues and it’s right near a few national museums. We ate a little snack there and planned our adventures for the rest of the day. We get almost total freedom to come and go as we please and it’s up to us to get ourselves everywhere and I’m very proud to say that Drew, Alyssa, and I have become masters of the Tube because of it! I used to be somewhat intimidated by new systems of public transportation but being thrown right into this one really forced us to learn it quickly and in only a day in a half, I feel so comfortable getting to where we need to go without any help!!! Airplane, car, double decker bus, taxi, metro…you name it, we’ve done it on this trip!

From there, we took another double decker bus to the Tower of London – a historic castle that sits on the north bank of the River Thames. There’s so much history to that fortress and although we didn’t go inside of it because we were running out of time, it was beautiful to see it and we got to learn a lot about it from some postings outside of the castle. They still had an old drawbridge and everything! The Tower of London is right next to the Tower Bridge, which we also got to see. This bridge is the most beautiful bridge I’ve ever seen and it’s what people typically think of when they think of “London Bridge.” The ACTUAL London Bridge is interestingly located in Arizona but there is another “London Bridge” in London but it’s not as magnificent so people are usually thinking of “Tower Bridge” when they refer to “London Bridge.”

After this long and crazy morning and afternoon, we got back on the Tube and headed back tour hostel. We cleaned up and got ready for dinner and the show!! We went to a traditional English pub where we all ordered fish and chips of course! We couldn’t leave London without doing that J They were delicious so we scarfed that down then walked down the street to Apollo Victoria Theater for my favorite musical in the entire world!!

I was so excited to Wicked in the London theater that I could hardly stand it. Like I mentioned in my last blog, I have seen Wicked before but it was 5 or 6 years ago and this is my absolute favorite musical!! It didn’t disappoint at ALL and the three hours that it lasted felt like 10 minutes. It was AMAZING and I think I enjoyed hearing it with British accents even more! The girl that played the lead had a phenomenal voice and I was so enthralled. I’m so thankful for the opportunity to go see it – it definitely made London an even better experience so far! I seriously can’t express how good the show was.

I feel like I thought of a million other things I wanted to blog about today but I am forgetting now! I did get to do laundry tonight for the first time on this trip so that was a big relief.

We also made a bunch of more observations about the differences between American culture and marketing and European society today and I feel like I’m becoming much more well-rounded as a person by being over here.

I feel like I’m forgetting so much but it’s really late at this point so hopefully I’ll just be able to add whatever I’ve forgotten tomorrow!!

Until next time,

MC