London

I can see it all over the London papers:

'Geekiest moment in history: 21 year old anonymous male runs up to platform 9 3/4 at the King's Cross Station and puts his backpack and jacket in a trolley that is half-embedded into the wall and pretends to walk through it, all the while giggling uncontrollably and trying to speak in a British accent.'

As you can probably guess, that was me, and I felt like a goof, but not for the first time and certainly not the last.

Last weekend I went on another excursion with my fellow band of travelers who went to Paris with me last month: Jenna, Rachel, Jim, and Jeff. We went to London via Ryanair, a cheap airline here in Europe. On Thursday, the 6th, we caught the Hahn Express (an inexpensive charter bus) to the Frankfurt Hahn airport and it was a 2 hour drive to the airport. It is a very small airport because it used to be a military airport, but now serves Ryanair and other cheap airlines. It was fun because we had to walk right up to the plane and go up the stairs into the plane rather than most airports that have an enclosed walkway to the plane. Since Ryanair is so cheap, the airline makes cuts on certain things like luggage amount, free food, leg room, and assigned seats. We had to just run in and grab a seat, and luckily we were all together, but it was very cramped and I was very glad that the flight was only an hour long.

We took off from Frankfurt at 11:40 pm, and got to London Stansted at 11:50 pm (The U.K. is in a different time zone than the rest of Europe). Once we got there, we had to go through customs and we were questioned and scrutinized, but finally allowed to pass. By this time, it was really late and we were in danger of missing the last bus to get to our hostel. We got on it ok, but it was also really cramped and BOILING hot (the driver had the heat on way too high and refused to turn it down) and we had an hour drive into downtown London. Once we got there, we had to walk for an hour to get to our hostel. We got there at about 3:30 AM, and fell into our beds exhausted.

We woke up Friday morning at about 8, had breakfast at the hostel, and then went to the Wellington Arch to meet up with our first free guided tour. It was a beautiful, sunny day and our tour guide asked us if we could name that bright thing in the sky. He said that we were really lucky to have the sun because it rains so much in London. The tour was the same company that did my free tour in Berlin, and it was really great. We went on the Royal London tour which took us to: Hyde Park Corner, Buckingham Palace (the queen was IN!), The Changing of the Guard, Churchill's War Cabinet Bunker, The Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar Square, Nelson's Column, Wellington Arch, St. Jame's Park, Horseguards, Whitehall, Big Ben, and some more. It was a 3 hour tour and when it was done our group split up and did separate things. Jim and Rachel changed into nice clothes and went to a fancy place for afternoon tea. Jeff went walking around by himself, and Jenna and I went and got lunch and then went on the London Eye, the largest ferris wheel in the world. It is not really a ride, as it is so slow that you can barely tell you are moving. It is 135 meters high, and it takes about 40 minutes to ride it. Each pod fit about 20 people and it had amazing views of ALL of London, and we got some great pictures. After that, we all met at the Royal Festival Hall for the London Philharmonic concert that we had tickets for. Our seats were right behind the orchestra, in the choir seats. It was amazing because we were really close to the musicians, and we got to see the director really well and it felt like WE were the ones he was directing to. They played Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 2 and Tchaikovsky's Suite No.3. This was by far the best concert I have ever been to, partly because of the location, the music, and where our seats were, but it was also just incredibly performed. After the concert, we headed back to our hostel and went to bed tired and beat.

The next day, Saturday, we got up at about 8 again, had breakfast (which was in our hostel again, and we basically just went into a kitchen and grabbed whatever we wanted; cereal, milk, toast, etc.). The weather on Saturday was drastically different than Friday. It was POURING rain most of the day, and we got soaked even when we were using our umbrellas. We went to the meeting place of our tour at 10 AM, and took our second free guided tour of the Old City of London. In this tour we saw: St. Paul's Cathedral, London Bridge, Tower Bridge, The Tower of London, Shakespeare's Globe Theater, The Millennium Bridge (The Wobbly Bridge), The Church of the Knights Templar, Mansion House, World War II Blitz, Convent Garden, HMS Belfast, and some other stuff that is lesser known. Despite the cold and all the rain, this was a much better tour than Friday because our guide (Paul, or "Pool" as he said it) was funny and more entertaining. He even made our whole tour group sing "London Bridge is Falling Down" when he was giving us the history of all the London Bridges. When the tour was over, Jim, Jenna, Rachel and I went to do some of the really touristy things while Jeff met up with a friend. We went to find the largest bookstore in Europe (Waterstone's) so that Jim and I could buy the original version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. We got there, to find that it didn't have the book in hardback! Baffled, we were referred to another large bookstore a block away, and there we were able to find exactly what we wanted, and what's more, the bookstore was the one that the queen goes to, supposedly. So after Jim and I were satisfied sufficiently geeked out, we all went to the Hard Rock Cafe for lunch. From there we went to Harrod's, the HUGE (to put it mildly) mall, store, thing to buy some souvenirs. Everything was really expensive so I didn't get anything, but Jim and Rachel bought some stuff for some of their friends.
From there we hopped on the London Underground, or "The Tube" (which, by the way, was the way we got around the whole weekend, and it was really fun and easy). We decided to go to the Baker's Street station to pay tribute to a personal hero of mine: Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who lived on 221b Baker Street. Rachel is also a big Sherlock Holmes fan, so we had a lot of fun taking pictures next to all the Baker Street signs, and ALL over the station there were Sherlock Holmes silhouettes on the walls, and there was a huge statue of Holmes outside the station on Baker Street. It was really fun, and you can see more in the picture album I will have on facebook. From there we went to the King's Cross station to seek out Platform 9 3/4, the famous platform from Harry Potter. Now, platforms 9 and 10 are not next to each other like they are in the movie; that is, there are two tracks between them, so the Harry Potter tourist site of Platform 9 3/4 is in the general area, but not exactly between the two, but close enough for us geeks. From there, we split up and Jenna and I went to Shakespeare's Globe theater so that I could call myself my mother's son, but it had closed! So I was unable to to buy anything, sorry mom! At least I got to walk around the building.... By that time we were so exhausted that we went back to the hostel and we all went to bed at 9 because we had to get up early the next morning.
Sunday morning, at 3:30, we took a cab from our hostel to the bus stop. It was so much fun to ride on the other side of the road! And taking the bus to the airport was trippy because the slow lane on the freeway was all the way on the left. Weird. We then had an uneventful flight back to Frankfurt, and then the 2 hour bus ride back to Heidelberg, getting home at about 12:30 pm, exhausted. It was fun though, and I highly recommend London.
Here is the link to my Facebook album: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2068865&id=56902422