Day 7

I made it a week!
It’s hard to believe it has been a week already. I feel like I have been going non-stop every single day, and it really has flown by. Plus, daylight lasts WAY longer here than it does back home, so it confuses me into thinking it’s earlier than it is. As a result, I end up going to bed really late most nights and still get up early every morning. I guess it has something to do with the earth’s axis and England’s position on the globe, but the sun literally does not go down until around 9:45 at night and then pops up around 4:30 in the morning. I suppose it’s better than being here in the winter when it would be dark all the time.

So today was full of new experiences as usual. I’d been wanting to visit the British Museum since I arrived here, so we went and walked around there this morning.



That place is HUGE, and full of amazing and inspiring historical artifacts from all over the world. I definitely think anyone visiting London should at least go see some of it, particularly the wing with all the Egyptian artifacts and hieroglyphics.



There are actual mummies in the tombs, and you can view the Rosetta Stone. So I’ll admit, I didn’t know exactly what the Rosetta Stone was before I went there (I know I’m not the only one). Well, turns out it is one of the most important discoveries ever made. This stone was the key to translating all the Egyptian symbols, pictures, ect. that archeologists have found over the years, so that we can now understand what they mean. It’s a very popular item in the museum obviously, and you would think it was free money the way people were pushing and shoving to get close to it.





After the museum, we headed down Oxford Street (London’s 5th Ave.) to Selfridges. This store NEEDS to be in the states! It’s amazing. It has very high fashion-like pieces for reasonable prices. Then we went to a few other stores before deciding to get lunch at John Lewis. John Lewis is a department store, and yes, it has a bistro in it. The department stores in London basically have the same setup as ones in America; however, most of them have a restaurant or two inside of them. Which, in a way, makes since because the department stores aren’t in a mall. They are on the street, and they don’t want to give customers any reason to leave once they’re in there. You can walk into stores like John Lewis or Harrod’s and stay there all day if you wanted to. Anyway, the food I ate at John Lewis was hands down the best I’ve had here so far. I ordered a char-grilled chicken wrap and hoped for the best. (You never quite know what you will end up with when you order food here.) The waiter brought me the best wrap I’ve ever had! It had chicken, of course, but also things like squash and corn and beans. Anyway, it’s hard to describe, but it was delicious!

After that, Allie had class so Lauren and I decided to go to…HARROD’S! If you don’t know what Harrod’s is, google it right now. Yes, it is another department store, but this one I like to think of as an amusement park for fashion, food and fun! It is known all over the world as the epitome of shopping in London (or anywhere else as far as I’m concerned). This place literally looked like a palace when we walked in. Everything is gold and intricate in detail. We walked right into a candy/dessert room that looked like it belonged in Santa’s workshop.



It was like Willie Wonka had settled down right there in central London. We got cupcakes – obviously (it was the only thing we could afford in this place. We certainly weren’t going to be buying clothes).

After we looked around there some more, we decided to walk over to Hide Park because we were close and this was a part of town we didn’t get to often. It was, like all of the parks I’ve seen here, beautiful. There was a huge lake with paddle boats and canoes that could be rented, and a dirt track next to the walking path for people who wanted to ride a horse around the grounds. When we first walked up we got coffee and went to sit down and eat our Harrod’s cupcakes.







We sat right next to an open field were some school boys were playing what we thought was Cricket. It looked a lot like baseball, but we were never really quite sure. They had a bat and a ball and bases, but no gloves and they were allowed to bounce the ball to someone else. Then we walked the path by the lake for awhile and it started to rain so we decided to head back to Camden.

While I’m on the subject of weather, I guess I should warn anyone visiting Europe to do a lot of research on the area’s weather patterns. London has the most unpredictable weather I’ve ever experienced. It will be sunny for hours and within 30 minutes get cloudy and start to rain. Sometimes the rain lasts 5 minutes, sometimes it goes on into the night, but my point is that it’s hard to ever know what to wear here. I’m always comfortable for the most part, but there are days that start out bright and extremely hot and end gray and windy. It’s good to pack layers so that you’re prepared for anything.

The last part of the day was supposed to be a pub tour lead by Tony; however, we ended up leaving the group before we ever got to the first stop. I don’t want to go into exact details, but I’ll just say there are a few people here studying at AIU abroad that have no respect for the people, culture or customs of this city. It takes a lot to embarrass me enough that I would want to leave a tour of interesting places, and they managed to do it. It was somewhat upsetting that we missed out on the tour, but we figured we could get directions from Tony later and go check out the stops for ourselves another day. That’s the beauty of living here.
Now, I’m exhausted and ready to get some sleep before school tomorrow.

Here’s to week 2!