Arriving at the date of May 11th, I am truly beginning to realize that these Semana Santa blogs are being drawn out into a seemingly never-ending blogging fest. I apologize for the wordiness and the belatedness of it all, but I will now (attempt) to give you a brief overview of our time in London. :)
London = Love, which I attribute largely to the fact that everyone there speaks that ever-so-beautiful-and-greatly-longed-for English that I have been missing in Espana. Weather? Cold (scarves and winter coats), partly cloudy/partly sunny...but NO RAIN! That is a miracle in and of itself considering the always-rainy reputation of the land of constant drizzle. :)
We only had 1.5 days in London, so we attempted to make the most of our short visit. Arriving in London during the afternoon (after the Chunnel), we took several subway lines to our hotel outside of the center of the city. Piece of advice: Taking large, heavy luggage on the subway is ok if you are only taking one line....but when you have to change lines, climb stairs, and rush to make the train...well...taking the "tube" is not such a good idea then. :)
Biceps burning and slightly winded, we finally made it to our hotel. We had the remainder of the afternoon to potentially do sight-seeing as well as the next day. Our hotel was a fair distance outside of the city, so even if we went into town that very day, there wouldn't be much time left for actual sight-seeing. So we made a choice: we decided to stop and rest. That may sound ridiculous to do since we were in a beautiful foreign city, but sometimes rest is necessary. We cuddled in the hotel beds and rented an American movie to watch on the TV in English (you can imagine my excitement)! This was honestly one of the highlights of our Semana Santa for me -- a relaxing night cuddled with my mom in which no translating was necessary for my viewing pleasure. It was perfect. :)
The next day, we woke up early and headed into the city. Taking a classic double-decker tour bus, we rode past the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, The London Eye, The London Tower, The London Bridge, and many other famous landmarks. London was beautiful from what we saw of it - it felt a little smaller than Rome and Paris, but that was kind of relief after being in such large cities. Here are a couple of London highlights from our day out...
-Seeing AND hearing Big Ben gong at 2pm. :)
-Taking the classic tourist pictures in a real London phonebooth!
-Exploring outside of Buckingham Palace and watching the two guards (sadly there was no changing of the guards on the day we visited).
-Posing like the statues outside of Buckingham Palace.
-Seeing the Tower of London and picturing the life of drama and wealth of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. :)
-Taking a river cruise and seeing the London Bridge!
Post sight-seeing, we headed to our second London hotel which was located close to our airport (the "London" airport was actually about 45 minutes outside of the center of London). Exhausted but immensely thankful for all we had seen and done, and for being able to share all of it together, we ate dinner, collapsed into our beds, and then prepared to fly back to Spain early the next morning. :) Although our time in London may seem anti-climatic, don't give up on the Semana Santa blogs yet, my faithful reader! I think that sometimes the non-dramatic, non-climatic things are necessary, even welcomed, in life. Sometimes it's nice for things to just go smoothly and easily and peacefully. Sure, struggles build character and provide stories for humor, but sometimes ease is what we need. And I'm incredibly thankful that our time in London was just that - easy and relaxing. :) So don't quit on the Semana Santa blogs yet -- we're almost done! Our time in Antilla was wonderful...so be on the look out for that blog soon. ;)
Your wholly thankful and partly exhausted traveler,
Brittany :)
No comments:
Post a Comment