London

ok, so i will try and keep this one a bit shorter. even tho London was more fun than Amsterdam. Part 3 of the Euro Trip and Matt and I are still having a blast

So we arrived in London at like midnight and on the completely wrong side of town. So the first task was figuring out transportation and quick. a lot of the bus lines were closing for the night and so was the tube. But no worries, i talked with a bunch of english people and we got it all sorted out and made it to the hostel by 1am. So we slept in the first morning and then decided it would be a great idea to walk into town instead of spending money on a bus pass. We walked for and hour and a half until we got to Tower Bridge. Long walk, but it was great to see everything by foot. You get more detail than you would just riding by on a bus. So on this day we saw; Tower Bridge, London Bridge, the Tower of London, the Bank of England, the Swiss RE Tower, and a whole bunch of other really cool buildings and monuments. Outside of the Tower of London they had a huge ice rink, and we must have stayed and watched people wipe out flat on their butts for half an hour. Literally within a minute somebody would have their arms flying in the air and then, thud. we laughed so hard. But alas we did not come all the way to London to see people fall down. We kept just wandering the city and exploring. This place is way bigger than i thought it was. So after we walked for a good few hours, we walked back to the hostel in Southeast London.

This Hostel was definitely the best out of the 3 we were in. I mean the beds were nothing special, but the sense of community that we got there was amazing. sometimes we would come back to the hostel just to chat with the people from all over the world. we were the only americans there, and everyone else was from about 10 different countries. We got exposed to a lot of different cultures. We heard so many interesting stories and really learned a lot from them. but i got to say there was a tv in the room, and boy does british television stink (so does most all of french, but we will get to that later)

So over the next couple days we kept being tourists and toured the city. we bought a bus pass for the city double deckers and also one for the Big Bus Company (tour bus). this allowed us to see Millennium bridge, Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Big Ben and the houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Marble Arch, Hyde Park, Madame Toussards, and many other places. It was really neat, we could hope on and off the buses as we pleased for 48 hours. When on the bus we would get cool info told to us about what we were seeing. i would suggest it, but only if you are going to wake up early and get the full use of your 2 days. We checked out some other places in more detail like; the V and A museum, Shakespear's Globe Theater, and the Tate Modern (interesting art in here, and the word art is debatable) The museums in england are free to the public, fyi.

overall, i really enjoyed London, and i cannot wait to go back and see all the things that i missed. it definitely takes some time to see it all.