Last Saturday I took a second trip to London. I love how easy it is to make day trips to London from Hatfield. I went with Andrea, Mike, Tyler, Jen, and Grayson and it was definitely my favorite trip yet. We got up early, took the bus to Hatfield station, and got a round trip ticket to London that includes a travel card (which lets you use the tube all day) for eight pounds, which is really good. Rode my first train in England! I couldn’t believe how fast they go, or how much your ears pop when you go through tunnels!
It took about 15-20 minutes to get into London, at which point we had to make a detour to Platform 9 ¾ to take about twenty pictures. Then we crossed the street to the tube station, where I was devoutly thankful to be there with people who can navigate well. Tyler wanted to go to Camden Town Market. I had my doubts about it but the market turned out to be very cool. We’d gotten warnings to be on guard for pickpockets, so I was extra wary as we wandered around the stalls. The people selling things are very pushy, but you have to know how to work them. I got a dress at a stall for 13 pounds, but as Andrea said I probably could have gotten it for ten if I’d haggled a bit better. The trick is to put the item down and start to walk away, and then they’ll quickly relent and give it to you for the price you want. Oh well!
There was a lot happening on the streets, including some interesting shops like a place that sold flashing light-up T-shirts. They also had multiple indoor areas selling anything from jewelry to scarves to paintings and photos of London. One of my favorite parts (predictably) was the outdoor area lined with food stands. It was freezing out and we were starving by that point, and a lot of the stands were giving away free samples. I must have went up and down those rows about 4 times getting free food—they had lamb and chicken wraps, fish and chips, hot churros with caramel or chocolate sauce, traditional English pies, huge brownies and cakes, and there were also odd things like Peruvian food (no idea what that would even be) and an “exotic meats” stand selling antelope, ostrich, zebra, etc. Weird! Anyway, once the Greek giving out the free samples recognized me and said, “You been here before, yes?” I decided I should probably actually buy some food from the man. I got a lamb wrap, which I probably would’ve thought sounded gross if I hadn’t had that sample. It was so good and tasted extra delicious because it was so cold out! Andrea got a big bowl of homemade mac-and-cheese, which also looked great. We ate and looked out over the river, where people were kayaking (what were they thinking? It was freezing!).
Then we hopped back on the tube and popped in to the Natural History Museum. It was free and full of cool stuff to look at (and best of all, warm inside). We split up for an hour and tried to see as much as we could in that amount of time, which probably wasn’t much considering the size of the place! It reminded me a lot of the Museum of Natural History in NY, but it was still cool in its own way. They had a dinosaur exhibit that I didn’t have time to see, a mammal exhibit with a giant blue whale, an earth exhibit, and much more. I think my favorite part was the earthquake room in the earth exhibit. It’s set up to recreate an earthquake that happened in Japan, so it looks like you are standing in a Japanese grocery. I was really confused at first, but then the floor started to shake and they play sounds and footage from the actual event. It was pretty cool!
I really wanted to see Westminster Abbey, so we headed there next. Unfortunately, it closes early on Saturdays so I didn’t get to go inside, but we did take a ton of pictures of the outside, which was beautiful. There is a quiet little close just behind or to the side of the abbey that we wandered into, which was set apart from the bustle just outside and very peaceful. There was a little cave-like entrance there that looks like it leads into the abbey, but we hadn’t gone very far in before a policeman told us to clear out because it was closed. Dang.
By that time it was getting dark, so we walked over to Covent Garden to look for a place to eat. Sadly the rest of London had the same idea, and we must have looked at four or five different pubs/restaurants but all of them were packed. One of the ones we walked into was extremely posh—we immediately felt underdressed when we walked in. I don’t want to know how expensive that place was! Finally, we found a Pizza Hut and decided to go for it because everywhere else was so busy and pricey. As it was we still had a 30 minute wait! Londoners love themselves some Pizza Hut. There was a line going up the stairs by the time we got seated. It was actually pretty fancy inside, with bottles of wine lined up on shelves and nice decorations. It took us forever to decide, but we got 3 large pizzas and split them so it wasn’t too bad. Mike had a funny incident where he walked in on someone in the loo, a story that got retold a LOT as the night went on. After that we decided to head to a nearby Canadian pub called the Maple Leaf (no one there was actually Canadian), where we had some drinks and Mike got us poutine, a Canadian dish that’s just fries, cheese, and gravy. Wish I could’ve eaten more of it but I was still so full from pizza! We sat near an older Irish couple, who chatted to us a bit even though I could not for the life of me understand the man. I did catch that they had flown in to London for the weekend and that the man recommended we visit western Ireland if we got the chance. It was nice of them to talk to us, anyway. Later on I chatted to two British women who asked me what American high school was like and if it was anything like Mean Girls, haha. It was sort of hard to explain what DHS was like but I did my best!
After that the boys wanted to head back, but Andrea and I insisted we make a run to London Bridge and take pictures. It was definitely worth it, even though it was cold. We goofed around there for a while just taking pictures. We asked a passing couple to take a picture of all of us, and then the woman randomly handed each of us a rose from her bouquet! It was so sweet and out of the blue. So there’s a ton of pictures of us dragging roses around the streets of London at midnight. We had a bit of a panicked rush through the tube back to the station, but we managed to catch the last train to Hatfield at about 1 a.m. Phew! It was a long and busy but very good day, and I can’t wait to go back!
No comments:
Post a Comment