Weekend with Stephanie!

This past weekend, Stephanie visited and stayed with me from Friday through yesterday (Monday) and we covered a lot of the tourist locations I've already done plus a few more!

Friday:
My three study abroad friends left for Paris early before I even woke up, so I spent the morning on my own doing homework that was due that weekend before Stephanie arrived! Because her flight was delayed (there was some weird lockdown at DTW), that opened up my morning a little more but I didn't do much other than a few errands and getting food in addition to watching a movie for class and writing a paper. I left to go pick up Stephanie from the tube station, at which I waited for over an hour and a half! Turns out she fell asleep on the tube! Also somehow she and I both missed each other when she came up the escalator so I again was waiting a little longer. Luckily, she was able to find wifi to tell Jessica she was there, who then called me to tell me that she was sitting in a nearby pub!

After finally getting a hold of Stephanie, Jessica also came to Camden to meet us. After that I showed Stephanie and Jessica around the Camden Market, where I bought some really nice postcards! Hopefully I have some time to write friends and family notes and send them out! We also enjoyed market food near the end.

Finally, Stephanie, Jessica, and I headed down to Central London to go to Jessica's flat, where we got ready to go out together. I don't know how Stephanie was able to handle going out after having jet lag, but she managed to pull through! After clubbing, I was able to fulfill Stephanie's dream of riding home on a double decker bus, despite how difficult they can be to navigate! Granted, we didn't have much of a choice because the tube stops running after midnight.

Saturday:

Stephanie and I began our day by walking down Oxford Circus, and without walking into any stores! Well, we did go into some souvenir stores, but not for too long! Afterwards we headed to Trafalgar Square and sat by the fountain, where Stephanie ate her breakfast. We definitely got really lucky with the weather this weekend because it never rained once while Stephanie was here! Although, she was pretty upset by that because she had purchased a brand new rain coat specifically for visiting London!

After walking through Trafalgar Square, we got a hold of Jessica and met up with her for most of the day!

We walked through Parliament Square with Jessica and took some great pictures in front of Big Ben. We then wandered down the side streets around Parliament Square, where we found one of the guards on horses. I think it was actually some sort of calvary museum, but we didn't end up going inside.

I look like I was photoshopped in this picture, but I wasn't I promise!

After going through Parliament Square with Jessica, we headed to Trafalgar Square again with her and got a little snack from a Pret a Manger--which is probably my favorite little snack place here! From Trafalgar Square we walked down the street that leads up to Buckingham Palace (the one with all the British flags that I walked by the other day as well). 

After sitting by the fountain by the Palace for a bit (since it was such a beautiful day), we finally decided to head out and look for a pub to eat dinner in. However, none of us were feeling very well (I had a headache and felt kind of nauseous), so we decided against eating right away. After, I decided that I should take Stephanie to see Harrod's, at which point Jessica decided that it was time for her to go home. Stephanie was amazed by all the stuff inside of Harrod's, and we even got into a really long conversation with a guy who works there (apparently their discount is 33%)! Also, when we went to the Toy Kingdom, there was some fake snow that a worker was demonstrating, who didn't understand the significance of us being from Michigan that would lead us to say that it felt nothing like snow haha. Unfortunately, the store closed at 8 so we weren't able to look around as much as we might have liked to. 

After running around all day, Stephanie and I needed to pick up some stuff that we had left at Jessica's flat the night before, and then we headed home. We didn't get home until 10:30 PM and we still hadn't eaten dinner! We scrambled to find a place that we could eat, but the only place that seemed to be open was a BBQ place right down the street from where I live. As we walked into the restaurant there was a guy that was sitting at a table just staring at us when we were being lead to our table, and he said hello to us in passing. Once we were sat at the end of the restaurant, we noticed that he was still staring at us, and he whispered something to our waiter while they were looking at us (it was kind of creepy actually). Our waiter came over and didn't say anything about what the guy had said, but asked us what drinks we wanted. After ordering tap water, the waiter left and as he passed the guy, told him something that made him laugh.

When the waiter came back, we decided to ask him if the guy had said something about us because we could clearly tell he was staring while talking to him, and that's when the waiter told us that the guy told him that he would pay for any drinks that we ordered. Needless to say, we decided to take advantage of it and got the drinks menu! It also turns out that the guy who bought us drinks was from Italy!

Me with my free cocktail!

Sunday:

Stephanie and I really did a lot on Sunday!

To start off our day, we went to the Tower of London to go see the Crown Jewels. On our way to do so however, we noticed that in the moat (which is all grass now), there was a weapon demonstration, so we went to go hear about the swords, bows, maces, and what not that were used in the past. Actually, the guy who was telling us about it was dressed up as Chaucer! 

Ready for battle!

In the same area, they were also about to do a demonstration of the giant catapult by using volunteers to pull the ropes to use it. And guess who volunteered! Stephanie and I jumped at the opportunity since you have to be older than 18 to do it and it was definitely a highlight of the day! Basically what we had to do was there were two teams of four (one all men and one all women) and we each had to hold one of the four ropes available and pull down by just sitting on the ground at the end of a countdown. As we would sit down, we would see the waterballoon that we were trying to fling slowly lifting until it was thrown quickly across the field! We did it twice!

Step 1:

Step 2:

Step 3:

After the catapult, we started walking through different areas of the Tower and learned a lot about the history of the kings, people, and animals associated with the Tower of London until we finally reached the Crown Jewels. It was a fairly long exhibit for the Jewels (and in fact tickets for the tower in general were pretty expensive) but it was totally worth it! There was also a really interesting video of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation! All the crowns, jewelry, and other items associated with the royal family were really gorgeous. There was even an ENORMOUS punch bowl that was completely gold--apparently a king ordered it to be made for him but it took so long to be made that he died before it was finished!

After leaving the Crown Jewels, we were pretty set on everything we did in the Tower (we were in there for at least a couple hours) and decided to head out--but not before getting a picture with one of the guards in the beaver hat! It was pretty funny though because there were some children who were shouting in front of him and it was very obvious he was trying to stifle a smile!

Stephanie and me in the Tower, in front of the Bridge!

After leaving the Tower of London, we obviously had to go to the Bridge next! Stephanie and I got some more pictures in front of the bridge by the water, and then we got ice cream to take with us across the bridge (it was about 75 degrees that day!). While walking on the other side of the bridge, we also happened to walk through a festival where we sat down for a bit to listen to the band that was playing. 

We decided shortly that it was time to get food, so we ate dinner at an Italian restaurant by the water! We also wanted to make it back in time for a service at Westminster Abbey, so we left from that area to get to the London Eye stop BY BOAT! It may not have been a boat tour, but it was still a lot of fun :) Once we got to Parliament Square, we went inside Westminster Abbey for the service which only lasted about a half hour. I think it was good to experience a service at Westminster Abbey, but I think I will need to purchase a ticket (despite how expensive it is) to see the rest of the Abbey!

After the service, Stephanie and I impulsively decided to ride on the London Eye! We were really surprised to see that it actually didn't take that long to get on the Eye--there was no wait AT ALL! As can be guessed, the sights were beautiful! Luckily, I will also be able to see what it looks like at night because I will be going with my study abroad friends at night time later on this trip!

Me on the Eye!

Monday (Yesterday)

Stephanie, Katie (1), Lizzie, and I started off the day by going to see the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, but unfortunately we didn't have the best view so we got bored pretty quickly. Maybe we'll be able to get a better view some other time! Afterwards we made our way down to Abbey Road solely for the purpose of imitating the Beatles picture!

My name signed on the Abbey Road wall

After going to Abbey Road, Stephanie and I went shopping down Oxford Circus! I didn't buy anything, but we spent a long time going through a LOT of the stores, and she bought a raincoat from Zara, a scarf from a street vendor, and some other miscellaneous stuff like souvenirs! We had to hurry home so that we could get dinner with Jessica at a pub before going to see Wicked at the Apollo Victoria Theatre! Wicked, by the way, was an AMAZING show! It was definitely a good way to end the weekend with Stephanie :)

 I'd say a pretty successful weekend overall, wouldn't you?