Foggy Streets of Londontown

To start off, this is a picture of a possible pair of shoes that I am buying for 35 euro…Just take a wild guess at which ones I’m buying.



LONDON!!! Time to report to the world how this wonderful metropolis treated me. Well, to start off, it is just now hitting me how I actually spent 3 days in a huge city all by myself and survived! I can’t tell you how incredibly adult I feel by having done that. Just another testament that I can take on the Amazing Race. Think you would be capable of doing this?? Let me know and you can be my potential Amazing Race partner! The clock is ticking on this decision because I’m applying for the show in less than 7 months!

Alrighty, now London. When I arrived to London Luton Airport on Friday the 13th, it was close to midnight and there was no way for me to get to the city and have a place to sleep so the airport became my bed. To my surprise, there really were a lot of people sleeping at the airport, so many, actually, that I had trouble finding a good spot. This is where I slept and the money that I guarded with my life as I slept:





Cozier that you can possibly imagine. Of course, the cold floor didn’t make for the best night’s sleep. Morning comes and I catch a bus to London! About an hour later (Luton Airport is REALLY far away) I got dropped off at Baker Street, home of Sherlock Holmes, and in the northern part of Central London, mapless I might add as well. So now, here I am just looking around thinking “Oh snap! What am I going to do? Where am I going?” So I walk, and walk, and walk…Pretty soon I run into an apparently barricaded US Embassy that I wasn’t allowed to take pictures of. I keep on walking and eventually find myself at Buckingham Palace!



Not as big as I thought it would be, what with the Queen of England living there and all, but impressive nonetheless. Now you might be asking, “Why in the world are you walking? London is a big city with lots of public transportation.” And I would answer, “True, but that transportation costs money. And with a crappy exchange rate of 2 dollars for 1 pound, I am not about to spend all my money there.” Little did I know that eventually I would. Hehe. Anywho, still mapless and wandering, I get to Downing Street, home of PM Tony Blair, and other fancy buildings. But seeing this is what got me even more excited!



With Big Ben as my guide, I get to the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. Very nice place to just sit and stare at. I got lots of pictures of them but I must be selective so I don’t drown your internet with my pictures. The best part about this discovery of Big Ben was that I got there close to 11 am! You know what that means, right? 11 wonderful chimes of that HUGE clock. Got a video of that that I can show on my computer because I have no clue how to minimize it and e-mail it to people.





After Big Ben, I found a map and went to check out St. Margaret’s Cathedral, the first Catholic church to be built after England went Protestant. This was completely different than any Spanish church I have seen and beautiful in it’s own way. No pictures allowed inside but you can see the outside without any problem at all!



When I got done with this it was about time to go check in at my bed & breakfast. After a quick peek at my map, Earl’s Court, where my bed awaited, didn’t look too far from Westminster where I was. So again, I decided to walk. 3 hours and lots of kilometers later, I got to my place tired like WHOA!! This extreme exhaustion was remedied, however, by walking by a lot of neat places, like St. James Park.




Nice, huh? Now, I got all checked in and it was getting close to evening. There was still tons of London to see. So while my feet and body were begging for rest, my eyes and exploring self decided to get up and drag the rest of me along for the ride. However, at this point, I was against walking back to the other side of London that I had just come from. I folded and went and bought a 3 day transportation pass. This made me feel extremely dumb after having walked as much as I did. Then I remembered all the great things I saw and those dumb feelings went away real quick. Next stop, St. Paul’s Cathedral, the 2nd largest cathedral in the world!



I got there too late to do the touristy visit but right on time to attend an Evensong service. In this service there was only singing of praises and psalms to God by an amazing children’s choir accompanied by a few older men. The best part about this wasn’t just being able to attend a service in an amazing house of God but being able to do so from the choir seats right by the altar!!!! I got there early enough that I was asked to move up to those seats with a few other people. What a privilege! What an amazing experience…I will never, ever forget it.

To wrap up the evening, I then went down to Leicester Square (pronounced L-eye-ster) and saw me the great American musical, Avenue Q! What a hilarious show. Outrageous, really. I never thought I’d see puppets doing what they did in that show! Some good songs from it: The Internet is for Porn, What Do You Do with a B.A. in English, and Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist Sometimes. Yeah, that’s the kind of show this was. Hehe…Ok, well that is enough for now. And to think this is only day 1!! Days 2 & 3 will be up later this week.