Tourists

Jeana and I packed this weekend full of lots of fun things to do here in London. We definitely kept ourselves busy with all the touristy things. On Thursday we decided that in order to take full advantage of our weekend we were going to plan the entire thing out. We created a pretty epic weekend for ourselves, but as I have mentioned before nothing ever really goes according to plan here in London. As I go through the highlights I may share a few of the lessons we learned from this weekend.

First off we headed to Portobello market on Friday morning. It was a pretty nice day out to start with and then it started pouring after we had been there for about an hour. The market itself was probably the best one we have been to so far though because it had everything you could possibly want to find at a market. We had fun walking around for a while but got tired of the rain after not too long and when it began really coming down we decided to call it a day. We think that because of the weather all of the vendors weren’t set up so we might venture back some time to check it out. The nice thing about the bad weather was that hardly anyone was there so it was easy to walk around!

In the afternoon we had planned to go to the Tower of London. Since we got drenched at the market we headed home to warm ourselves up and put on some dry clothes. We had to print off our tickets for the Tower at the Library and figured that would only take a minute but we were wrong about that. It’s not worth the effort explaining how their library system works but basically it took us a half an hour to print the sheet and finally be on our way. That put us behind schedule quite bit. By the time we got to the Tower it was 4:00 but we didn’t really think anything of it. Not realizing the Tower closes at 5:30 we just leisurely wandered around and took our time taking pictures and reading the signs. We hadn’t even gone into many of the displays because we were just having a good time looking at the outside. We really wanted to go on the beefeater tour so we found one and asked when the next tour was only to find out that the last one had started at 3:30. To say the least we were really disappointed but we decided to just check out everything else. We went into about two exhibits and then someone came in and informed everyone that the place was closing in 10 minutes! We had only seen a few things but we really wanted to see the crown jewels so we scurried over and checked those out before the place closed. All in all we left disappointed but intrigued so we plan to go back some other time…after we are absolutely as to when it opens and closes.

Then we were off to meet up with two of the other girls as we had planned to go out for a nice dinner together. The tube station we met them at ended up having some delays so we had to wait around for a while. When they caught up to us we headed to the restaurant only to find out it was closed. Then we spent a while walking around just looking for a place to grab sandwiches. In the process we saw this man painting some pictures so we decided to stop and have a look. It’s always fun to encounter random things you don’t expect to see. There was music playing in the background. He painted the face of whomever it was who was singing the songs. It was a pretty fun thing to run into.

Our final stop for the evening was the London Eye. We wanted to do it at night because we get to see the city during the day all the time. Being able to overlook the entire city was pretty neat but I wouldn’t say it was my favorite thing we have done by far. Going on the London Eye just seems like one of those things that you have to do but probably wouldn’t regret it if you didn’t. It was an experience though and we had a good time. There were only about nine of us in our pod so we had plenty of room to walk around and really enjoy the views which was nice.

One thing that did brighten my day was that we got to see a puppy and the owner let us pet it! Always makes your day a little bit brighter when you get to pet a puppy! While I’m on the topic I may as well share with you about London and dogs. Owners here do not keep their dogs on leashes (for the most part) and the dogs just trot alongside them. It’s weird to see because I always think the dog is a stray but then its owner will appear out of nowhere. And dogs are allowed on the tube. The other day Jeana and I were on the tube and all of a sudden we see a black lab just walk off the train. It was the weirdest thing to comprehend. It just didn’t make sense. It was like the dog had gotten on and off the tube all by itself…of course its owner was around but the way it got off made it seem like it knew what it was doing and this was just another day out on the town. But that’s enough about dogs :)

Since Jeana and I ran into a few problems on Friday planning wise we decided to go home and make sure that our day was going to run smoothly. We ended up going to Kew Gardens which is one of the largest botanical gardens. The place was huge and absolutely beautiful. We got there a little before 1:30 and ended up staying until it closed at 6:00. You would think this would be a long time there but there was so much to do! We hardly got everything we wanted to done but we had just enough time. By the time we left we were completely tired and I’m not sure if we could have stuck around any longer. I really loved the place. We are around the fast paced city life all the time so it was great to get away from that and enjoy the outdoors without the sounds of cars and sirens passing by. We also picked a great day to go because it was the only day this weekend that it didn’t rain so we were really lucky in that regard!

We didn’t pencil in much time to relax this weekend so we decided that we should keep Sunday more low key. In the morning we headed to St. Paul’s for church. I really enjoyed the service. The choir was really good though it was sort of hard to understand what they were saying sometimes because of the echo. St. Paul’s is the most beautiful of the three churches we have been to so far in my opinion. I loved how open it was compared to Westminster which was so packed full of stuff it seemed cluttered. After church Jeana and I ate at a little café and then headed to Little Venice where they were giving a free tour. We met up with Janet there and were really enjoying the tour when the rain began. We got absolutely soaked as none of us had prepared for rain. We were planning on sticking out the tour but we decided it wasn’t worth it as we were soaked, it was freezing, the tour was free and we all had things to do at home.

Thank goodness we left the tour early because when I got home I realized that I had to do my shopping for class tomorrow before six as the store closed then! So Elena and I scurried to figure out where the store was and headed there to complete our shopping. We were supposed to go to two stores right next to each other but the one had already closed. Poor planning on our part…this is why I’m not usually a procrastinator! We got about half of our grocery list and found out we did really well compared to most people so that made me feel a little better at least! The store was adorable but expensive so I won’t be doing my regular shopping there! Elena and I might go back for a treat sometime though because they had a really cute tasting area. I’ll save more information on the shopping exercise for later though!

That pretty much highlights my weekend…maybe more than highlights! It was a great weekend overall even though almost nothing went exactly as planned!