Loch'd: London and the Royal Wedding!

Alright. Last one, for a while, I swear. Oh wow, this will probably be my last one before my closing statements, haha. Wow. Okay, so London. The Royal Wedding! Me and Becca came back from the airport from Amsterdam on Wednesday April 27th, only to get on a train down to London like 5 hours later. We just came back to our rooms to eat, repack and shower. It's about a five hour train ride, and on the way down we switched trains once, in Crewe. We got into London at about 8:00pm and then had to take the tube from the train station to our hostel. I had written down which tube stop was nearest to our hostel, and Becca had been to London before, about 3 years ago, so she was a lot of help =] We made it there with no problem, and I really loved the London underground. It was so clean, and not really that hard to figure out, it was, of course, much bigger than the Chicago 'el' system, but just as easy to figure out. Becca (who goes to Vassar College, about an hour north of New York City) says the London underground is much easier to figure out than the New York subway system. We were really tired when we got to the hostel, so we went straight to bed so we could get up sort of early in the morning and try to squeeze all of London in in one day! ha One of the cool things about our London hostel was that the beds had curtains you could pull closed, so that it was all dark in your bed and no one could see you sleeping. I liked it. ha

We woke up, ate our breakfast at the hostel (they had cereal and toast for us each morning), and then headed out on the tube. We got day passes, which were 6.60, which isn't that bad because we were going to use them a lot that day, but it is kind of expensive compared to at home. But I suppose that's why it's so clean and nice on the underground. The first place we went to was Buckingham Palace, and this was a day before the Royal Wedding, so there were people in tents camped out along the mall, which is the road that leads to the Palace. It wasn't that crowded that day, so we walked along the mall and took pictures. On our way back down the mall we saw a lot of people queuing (the British word for lining up) up along this street that came from the mall, it seemed like they were waiting for something. We thought maybe we would hang out and see what it was all about. Eventually some cars came whizzing past us, we really had no idea who they were, but it really looked like one of the women in the car could have been Kate, or Pippa. So that was sort of cool, ha. We also saw lots of press setting up for tomorrow, they had a huge stand in front of the palace already. We then went to Piccadilly Circus, Becca said that was she was in London her and her parents found some cheap theatre tickets there. We had been seeing posters for 'Chicago' the musical and really wanted to see that. I love that movie, and the music is awesome. I'm listening to the soundtrack right now, ha. And we did find relatively cheap tickets for it! It was amazing. I'm so glad we went, and we were pretty close to the stage too, in the dress circle. We dressed up, wearing the same dresses that we wore to the wedding the next day. I'm so glad I saw a musical in the West End, it was great. Before the play, we went and saw all of the other famous sites: Big Ben and the houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, the London Eye, the Thames, the Tower Bridge and the Tower of London (we didn't go in, but we saw it). After all of these, we went to Abbey Road Studios to take the obligatory picture in the crosswalk, and to add something to the wall outside the studios. It was definitely cool to be there, and not hard to get to, it's not far from the St. John's Woods tube station.

The next day was the wedding! We wore our dresses, and headed down to Trafalgar Square. We tried to get into the mall, but I guess they closed it at dawn because there were so many people there already. Crazy. So we joined the crowds in Trafalgar Square, where the parade and the wedding were broadcasted live on a big screen. The energy was really great, with everyone cheering and waving their Union Jack flags. We even got programs, so we could follow along with the prayers and hymns during the wedding. We got flags too of course, with William's and Kate's faces on them. Our spot in the square was sort of right behind a fountain, so at times, we could only see one side of the screen, but it was a pretty good spot anyway. I got some good pictures and videos of the wedding, the Queen arriving and Will and Kate's vows. At the end, when they were officially married, they released red white and blue confetti in the square and everyone was cheering like crazy. They were also selling Champagne in the square, but it was 6 pounds, so that's a little to much for us, ha. After the wedding, we were really hungry from standing for like 4 hours, so we went and got some food in Piccadilly Circus and watched the kiss on TV with the rest of the folks in the cafe. After eating, we went to the Palace and the mall, which had cleared out, since the kiss and fly by (which apparently in the phrase they use for a military fly by of planes from the Royal Air Force) were done with. We mingled with the crowd that was still there, and took more pictures of the palace. We walked out through the park next to the palace, which was populated with people eating picnics and drinking. And a swan! ha We went back to Trafalgar Square after this, and there was a street party going on there, with a band playing and people dancing. Lots of people were drunk already, at like 4:00, ha. We decided to head back to our hostel, grab our stuff and go to King's Cross Station, where our train was leaving out of to go back to Edinburgh. So we got to see Platform 9 3/4, which was pretty awesome. And we picked up a newspaper with nothing but Royal Wedding pictures and articles in it, even if only like 5 hours after the wedding was through. That's a good collectible as well. Our train this time was straight through, no changes. But it seemed like a much longer ride than the way down there. We were really tired, but went out even after we got home at midnight! It's not often you're in the UK for a Royal Wedding =] It was also a friend of ours' birthday celebration, so that was fun.

AJ was supposed to have gone with me to the wedding, and I really wish he would have been able to, but I know we'll have a lot of opportunities to travel Europe together in the future =] Maybe even see another Royal Wedding? Harry's and Chelsy's? heh.