Cheerio, London!

I love London. This could be due to the fact that I love the royal family, the British accent, or the fact that I could understand everyone. Whatever the reason, London may now be my new favorite city.

Our 2-week Spring Break started this week. Unfortunately, I have class Monday-Wednesday next week so I am spending the first week jet-setting all over Europe. I left Thursday afternoon for the first stop on my trip: London!

I was excited and ready to go so I hopped on an early bus to the train station. Turns out there was a train leaving to Basel (the airport I was flying out of) within 5 minutes of me purchasing my ticket so I jumped on that one as opposed to waiting 30 minutes to take the original train I had planned to take. After successfully transferring trains in Zurich and finding my bus from the Basel train station to the Basel airport, I had arrived. Security was a breeze; it surprised me how much less strict it was than in the US. The TSA guy (if that's what they're even called here) didn't even check my passport, but simply scanned my ticket to go through security. Since I had my passport out and ready to go, it got thrown into the bin along with my jacket/liquids/etc. Apparently it was pretty obvious that I was not from the area (probably since I took my shoes off to go through security) because the security guy grabbed my passport just to see where I was from before exclaiming "Ahh, an American!" The sun setting through the window, I walked through the scanner, and while waiting for my bags to come through, the other security agent told me that I had brought the sun with me. What nice guys.

Since I am my mother's daughter, I arrived at the airport two hours before boarding time. Granted that's what EasyJet (the airline) said to do for international flights. Well, since security took all of ten minutes, fifteen minutes after arriving at the airport, I was at my gate...with no wifi. First world problems. So there I sat, at my gate for two hours with only the Solitaire app on my phone to entertain me. That, and listening to the accents of the British people who decided to sit by me.

Typically in American airports, you'll hear an announcement when the gate is closing for a flight. In Basel, they not only did this, but also listed off the names of the passengers who were "about to miss their flight." Which I guess would be helpful if you were one of those people. I just found it funny. So did the British people by me.

The flight was quick and easy. Border control was kind of freaky though. The agents were very intense and asked tons of questions about why I was in the UK, where I would be staying, who I was staying with, how long I would be staying, etc. But they decided to let me in, which was good. From there, I got pounds out of an ATM and went and found a train into London. It took me directly to one of the tube stations, where I purchased a tube ticket from a nice lady behind the counter who gave me a map and highlighted exactly where I needed to go. It took me about two hours to get from the plane to the hostel; I was sure my friend Miller (who is studying abroad in Paris but traveled London with me) would be waiting for me at the hostel.

LOL nope. I checked in and then proceeded to wait over an hour for him to arrive. Our planes landed at approximately the same time, but at different airports, which is why we agreed to meet at the hostel. Apparently it took him about an hour to get through border control. We were both tired and hungry so we set out at about 12:30am to go find food. It was the most bizarre thing that everyone spoke English, and it was even stranger that I found it bizarre. I quickly realized that this was the first time since arriving in Switzerland that I had left the German speaking region. I naturally wanted to say "danke" (thank you) when we got our food. I cannot even begin to describe how odd the feeling was.

The next morning, we got up to explore. The London Eye was about a five minute walk from our hostel. From there, we crossed the Thames and saw Parliament, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, and Trafalgar Square. Since I am currently typing this from my friend's computer in Madrid and can't upload pictures, you'll just have to trust me when I say how gorgeous it all was. We ate lunch at Chipotle and it tasted like God's gift to the Earth, partly because I was hungry but mostly because I've missed American food.

The next day, we toured Wimbledon. It was absolutely amazing. And also weird to think that I've been to Wimbledon before I've been to the US Open. We also saw the Tower of London, Tower Bridge, London Bridge, the Globe, and St Paul's Cathedral. We literally ran all over London for two days so it was no surprise to either of us that we were exhausted on Sunday (our third and final day in London). We met up with Kate, another McNair Scholar who's studying abroad in London, and saw the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross Station, and Abbey Road. It was funny to watch others take pictures at Abbey Road. It's an actual street, with quite a few cars driving down it, and people would run out when there was a break in traffic to take a picture of them crossing it like the Beatles. There was even a city employee there telling people how to stand and when it was safe to take their pictures. Of course we took a picture as well.

Miller and I then rode the London Eye at sunset. It was absolutely gorgeous and we got to see so much of London from the top. After that, we went back to the hostel to call it an early night since our alarms were set for 6:10am to catch our train through the Chunnel (the tunnel under the English Channel) into Paris!