London. London, England

Alright so moving right along on our trek across Europe we went to a more modern city (at least compared to Rome that is). London!!! Thats right, double deckers, Queen Elizabeth and her guards with the funny hats, Big Ben, and of course musicals! This was probably my favorite part of the trip because we had time here to not rush everything and just relax a little while we saw the sights. Warning: This entry might be long because when I get excited about something I tend to write a lot....haha


The first day we did the hop-on, hop-off tour bus around London. It was a double decker with no top on it (we call it a drop-top decker). Basically how it works was they take you to all of these sites around London in a big circle and there is a tour guide that tells you about everything. At any point when they stop at these sites you can 'hop-off', check out the site, and then wait for the next one coming and 'hop-on' again (they ran about fifteen or so minutes so the wait wasn't long) or you could just ride the thing all over London and never hop-off. We rode it around all day and saw soooo much stuff, Big Ben, Westminister Abbey, London Tower, London Bridge, the London Eye, Buckingham Palace, and more. It was such a nice day outside, lots of sunshine and warmth! In the middle of the day we took a boat tour on the River Thames which was really cool.


One of the other cool parts of that tour was doing the London Dungeon. Its this sort of haunted house tourist trap that has actors that take you through the horrible history of London. Everything from torture, plague, witches, Jack the Ripper, and early surgery (that was hard to watch, ewww). It was this maze sort of thing, where people dressed up all ghoulish and stuff would take us through. There were two rides that we got to go on, one was a boat ride through a dark canal that had people jumping out at you (Liz and I swear that the guy behind us actually did pee his pants) and then the simulated hanging ride...This one was cool because they strapped you into this row of seats and then the lights went out and you were brought up and once you got to the top these spotlights came on to a noose hanging right in front of you and then this creepy guy read you your last rights and the lights went out and the ride dropped you. There was a picture machine that took our picture as we were being dropped and Liz and my picture was priceless we both looked like we were going to be the one's peeing our pants this time haha.


That night we went to Wicked...this was most definitely my favorite part!!! The music, the lights, the dancing, everything was soo mesmorizing! I couldn't even breathe or blink because I didn't want to miss a thing. Liz's mom said I was sitting there the whole time on the edge of my seat with my mouth hanging open haha I believe it. I got a T-shirt and a poster which were pretty neat.


The next day we just floated around the city, just took everything in and loved being there. There were sooo many people and things to see that I was overwhelmed but loving every minute of it! We took a tour of the globe theater and saw the rehearsal for Romeo and Juliet and also visited (get ready all you Harry Potter fans) Platform 9 and 3/4 at King's Cross station (we were pretty immature there (not me, of course...haha), Liz and Emily fashioned wands out of sticks which somehow turned into swords and Liz got poked in the eye, oops)


That night we saw the musical Spring Awakening, which is about teenage sexual exploration in conservative Germany in about the early 1900's....lets just say mothers would probably not appreciate this....haha I loved the music but when the ticket guy said it was graphic he wasn't kidding, we all walked out of that theater and turned to each other and had the look on our faces like 'What did we just witness there?...." it was pretty funny


The next day we saw the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace. It was the Scottish guards leaving and the English guards taking over (they do this every few days or so). It was a huge production, with bands and marching for about an hour it seemed. In my opinion, the Scottish band (in their kilts and equipped with those fantastic bagpipes) kicked the English's band butt in the coolness factor, we loved it when they played! Unfortunately Queenie Lizzy did not make a cameo in the show but none-the-less we saw her face plastered over all the money so we saw plenty of her.


Alright its time to say hasta la vista to London and move on to a place with more of those awesome kilts....


-abby


**don't forget to check out the photo album for this awesome trip on the right-hand side**