Londres: Mind the Gap

To continue my Jewro trip, this weekend brought a slightly impromptu viaje to....London!

By far one of my if not my favorite place that I have visited so far. If it weren't so cold and dark, I'd be packing up and moving there tomorrow.

For one, they speak English. We didn't get lost on the underground, not even once! I didn't expect it, but after having not spoken Spanish for 4 days I really had difficulties speaking in Spanish after coming back.

I already know that I want to go back. We spent a lot of time just seeing things, which you have to do when you first visit London. We went to Portobello Road, saw the Millenium Bridge, saw the houses of parliament and Westminister Abbey, St. Paul's Cathedral, etc.

One of the things we actually went into was the reconstructed Globe Theater. I enjoyed my nerdy Shakespeare moment so much. The tour was a little stupid and kitschy, but we happened to come in during a rehearsal for "Romeo and Juliet" (they have no actual shows on right now because it's too cold). I basically tuned out and glued myself to this rehearsal the whole time, taking about a thousand pictures, and could hardly contain my excitement.

 We also went to the Tate Modern, which was a little bizarre but I really enjoyed it. The picture is of their temporary display...that's not a rug, folks. That's an exhibit, of millions of individually hand crafted sunflower seeds. They also had a room of Soviet Bolshevik propaganda, which was bizarre but awesome. The museum looks out over the Thames, so we went up to the top floor and had a coffee and enjoyed the gorgeous views.

We also did the London Eye, which moves much slower than I thought it did. Not much interesting about it, other than that it's very pretty. The Spanish tourists there were extremely obnoxious.

That night we went to a pub in a nice area of London, tucked away in a hill and absolutely gorgeous. We had an amazing meal, and I take back everything I ever said about the English having horrible food. The English pub was so cute and so enjoyable. Also, they actually serve vegetables in Britain...something that we really appreciated, considering that the Spanish have no idea what vegetables are.

One of my favorite things that we did was the Tower of London, which is an old castle right by London bridge. It's gorgeous but has a gruesome history, and also includes the royal jewels and the royal armory. I adored the historic aspects and also the gorgeous old architecture. They also have these creepy ravens that can't fly so they just awkwardly hop...they've clipped their wings because there's some story that England will fall if the ravens leave the tower....iiiiiidk.

We finished up our trip with a walk through St. James park and to look at Buckingham Palace. A great way to finish up the trip...sunny and gorgeous (rare for London).











Overall, I love London. The people are so friendly and nice, everything is interesting, and I've made it a summer goal to learn about the English royalty. And their accents are wonderful :)