LONDON

First I'll start you off with some background information. Kira's brother studied abroad in Madrid last year, and lived with a girl from London named Harriet...which is who we stayed with this past weekend. Now, Kira and I arrived in London at Harriet's house at like 1:30 in the morning on Thursday night. Greeted by her mom who got us glasses of water, and then took a quick tour of their 7 story home! (yep- 7 floors...absolutely GORGEOUS!) Harriet was at her university in Bristol and was coming home for the weekend to be our tour guide the following day, so we just went to bed and woke up early the next morning. Since Harriet wasn't arriving in London until 5 p.m. and Harriet's mom was leaving for the weekend, we ventured out into the city after breakfast with maps and some help of Harriet's mom's suggestions/directions. We went to Piccadily Circus, Trafalgar Square (the heart of the city) which had fountains and Nelson's Column, saw the National Gallery, Horse Guard's Parade, St. Paul's Cathedral, Leicester Square, Covent Gardens, Platform 9 and 3/4 at Kings Cross (for all the Harry Potter fans!!), shopped at Spitalfields markets, and finally Notting Hill. We met Harriet back at her house where we ate lasagna and drank wine out on her rooftop terrace that overlooks the city...absolutely amazing. Afterwards, she took us to a ¨Pubby Pub¨ (an authentic Pub where Prince Charles likes to hang out!)...we didn't see him :( haha. The next morning, we woke up bright and early to go around London and see the tourist attractions of the city. Starting at Saatchi Gallery (really cool modern art collection- my favorite was wax old men on motorized wheelchairs!) then Buckingham Palace, we watched the hour long CHANGING OF THE GUARDS! It was sooo cool and I've never seen so many people in my life! We got really lucky and somehow ended up right in the front among THOUSANDS! Next we walked through St. James' Park and headed towards Westminster's Abbey (a giant cathedral where all the kings and queens are burried- beautiful). Next to it is where Harriet went to high school so she showed us around, and it was also where part of the DaVinci Code was filmed! On our way to the London Eye, we saw Big Ben, Houses of Parliment, and crossed the Thames River. We then bought tickets for the London Eye (London built the world's largest ferris wheel as their Millenium project) which is a giant ferris wheel overlooking all of the city - it's about a 35 minute ride :) and it was awesome. Afterwards we headed to Chinatown and had really good Chinese food for lunch (Don't worry Alycia...it was not as good as Number 1 =] miss you<3) Moving onnn.. we saw Bank of London, Tower of London (Castle where they used to keep people before they were beheaded), and the Tower and London Bridges! Still more! Then we did a little shopping at Primark and fiiiinally ended up at Harrod's (a massive/gorgeous department store that has anything and everything you could possibly imagine) At night, Harriet took us to Brick Lane - a street that has tons of curry restaurants where the owners haggle over you to come to theirs, and you pick one depending on the best offer - we chose free bottles of wine and a birthday cake for Harriet's birthday that was a week from that night - and obviously ate curry. We stayed there pretty late due to the fact that we could not go to sleep. Kira and I had to get to a bus station at 3:30 to take us back to the airport for our 6:30 a.m. flight. Everything went A LOT smoother at the airport this time around, and we were back in Madrid at about 10 a.m. Obviously I immediately went to bed :)


The exciting part is that Kira's brother and HARRIET are coming to Madrid to stay with us this weekendddd!