Exploring London Continues

The past few days have been a lot less stressful, mainly because I’m starting to run out of money so I have just been going on the class trips and taking it easy otherwise. This weekend we are going to Stonehenge (on Friday the 13th, no less) and Bath, which I am super excited about. I really just want to get outside the city and see some nature again.

Class is mostly guest speakers and field trips (which is pretty awesome) and the assignments are pretty easy (a blog post and a photo essay), so I’m not super worried about that. We had a guy come in yesterday to talk about his work at the BBC and what it has been like for him to work all over the world.

On Tuesday we went to Olympic Park, to see where the Olympics are going to be at. Surprisingly, it’s a really run down part of the city. They’re hoping that having the Olympics there will improve economics and create jobs. However, the tour guide told us that most other Olympic Parks have been neglected and are just eyesores in the city. So hopefully the London one will be different, considering a lot of people were forced to leave their homes so the city could build it.

We also went to the Prime Meridian line so I got to stand in two hemispheres at once. Pretty cool.

Today, we went to the British Library and saw original manuscripts of the Bible, Beatles’ songs and Handle’s Messiah. We’re also going to see a play tonight… 39 steps. Which I have seen before and hated it, so hopefully the traditional English version will be a lot better.

Anyway, just a brief update. Hopefully after Stonehedge I will have a longer one.

 

Accidental taxi rides and technology woes

So, I planned to update this every other day or so but the whirlwind of things going on have made it near impossible. I finally have some free time to update this this weekend.

 I have no idea what it is about London that makes all of my technology go to hell, but literally nothing seems to be working. Since I’ve been here, my phone self destructed, my credit card is no longer usable and gets declined and my computer refuses to connect to the Internet. If it werent for my IPad I would be pretty screwed. I’ve also been spending wayy too much money in the last few days and I’m trying really hard to cut that down. 

But on the bright side, I finally got my international phone! Which already works a lot better than tmobile ever did.

But I’m finally starting to really enjoy London at least, even with all of the various things that have gone wrong. We went to the Tower of London yesterday , which was a really cool and historical place where much of the famou beheadings throughout history have happened. I would have some super exciting pictures ( if my computer was still working).

After that we intended to find this art museum, but ended up stumbling across the Borough Market! It was this sweet little market of every food imaginable , from Hundreds of little vendors. As silly as it sounds, I finally felt connected to London and excited about any other little thing I could find in my adventures.

Oh and that’s another thing… I don’t get why people complain about food here so much. I’ve mostly been sticking to Indian and Italian food, but everything I’ve eaten has seriously been awesome. They also make prepackaged fresh meals at the grocery store.. Like pasta, amazing sandwiches ,  fruit, veggies, etc sell them for s pound or so. It’s so college friendly  and also means that I don’t have to cook and can actually eat pretty healthy. 

So after Borough Market, I ended up going to the “ice bar”, a bar where everything, including cups , is made out of ice. The bar is freezing and you’re only allowed in for 45 minutes, but it was seriously awesome . After the bar, I started to get really sick ( no, I wasn’t drunk. I got really bad stomach pains out of nowhere) so I ended up leaving the night early.

Now a normal person would have been able to find their way home. But I am not a normal person. The tube had just closed and I couldn’t figure out the bus schedule for the life of me. I considered taking a cab, and after trying my best to take a bus, I missed getting hit by one by a couple of centimeters. So I figured a cab was m best option.

An attractive man on a bicycle cab saw my predicament and offered to drive me back for 20 pounds, and said that a normal can would drive me for 25. Since I had no other clue where to go, I took him up on his offer. 

I’ve totally always wanted to ride one of those and during it, I decided it was a good decision. I mean… How many people get to ride on the back of a bicycle, while an attractive man rides them through downtown London?

And he drove me, the fare suddenly changed to 30 pounds. And I paid him, because frankly, I was tired, not feeling well and I wasn’t in the mood to argue with him. I’m still mad about spending that money, but the ride was still a lot of fun.

And yea, that’s been my adventures so far. I might take it easy today so I don’t have to spend any money. Ps- sorry about typos. Autocorrect doesn’t make writing blogs easy