There’s No Place Like London

It's my turn.

After six hours of flight through the night, the assassins finally made it to LONDONTOWN, a little exhausted and dehydrated but a lot ready to take advantage of our one day in England. We arrived at the wonderfully posh Meininger Hostel bright and early, locked up our luggage, and headed out to explore the city. We broke up into two separate groups and hit the town.  My group decided to grab a quick bite at The Zetland Arms (established in 1740!) and rode the tube to Waterloo station to ride the London Eye. There Lily, Brian, and I took copious amounts of adorable pictures one of which is featured below.

Though jetlag reared its ugly head, the assassins persevered and visited the following locations in a single afternoon: Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Parliament, St. James Garden (where some serious duck feeding action went down), Queen Park, The V and A, The London Eye, The Globe, Horse Guards Parade, and the West End among other historic and (beautiful) places. We all met up for dinner at a lovely Italian restaurant called Wildwood, where four people ordered the mushroom ravioli and all twelve us had at great time trading stories about the day.

After Wildwood, the assassins ventured into London for a little exploring and found themselves wearing parkas at a restaurant entirely made of ice. Then something incredible happened.  I spotted the UK’s favorite bronze medal winning Olympic diver Tom Daley out of the corner of my (completely star-struck) eye. Brian and I proceeded to complete lose our minds, while the rest of the assassins blankly stared at us, confused as to why we had turned into thirteen year old fan-girls. We proceeded to track down the extremely friendly Tom Daley and take what will hence be known as “THE. BEST. PICTURE. EVER.” featured below.  A truly amazing time was had by all.

Satisfied and sleepy the assassins returned to their hostel, getting a well deserved night’s rest before heading to Edinburgh via a train taken from King’s Cross station (yes, that King’s Cross).

Fun facts about London:

New York, take note: There are basically no trashcans in site but, amazingly, there is no trash.

You don’t get food “to go”, you get food to “take away”.

No matter what he says, Casey Kolb almost got detained at the airport… but it wasn’t his fault.

Pat Rounds is awesome at reading maps.

Shifty Londoners with small children will attempt to steal the seats you reserved on the train to Edinburgh, only to be thwarted by friendly train conductors and their own stupidity.

Platform 9 and ¾ is not all that. Really… it’s actually pretty disappointing.

I’m obsessed with everything british.

Until we meet again,

Lee Harvey Oswald