London, United Kingdom: I can show you the World

Wow, I'm about to start the last semester of my undergraduate program and in less than a week I'll be traveling to Haiti. I suppose it is probably time to tell you all about my 10 day journey with my older sister, Abigail, through Europe since I'm sure you all have been in suspense since June waiting to hear about it. Plus, you'll have Haiti to look forward to reading about come February! Don't worry, I took really good notes at the end of each day when I was traveling with Abigail so I remember lots of it, and some of my notes are just complete gibberish that I do not understand.

Onto London though!

So I arrived in London extremely early. Not like early in the morning early, but before Abigail early. I believe I thought we were going to get in around the same time but it would take us over an hour to meet up, however Abigail's flight was extremely delayed. The airport workers for Icelandair were on strike so they were only letting one plane out every so often instead of letting the airport run as per usual. While I waited around for her to arrived, I visited a nice park square near our hostel in London and then just walked aimlessly around. I spent almost a full hour in a bookstore, which I absolutely loved the book stores there. I kept trying to get wifi off the places I walked passed to get in contact with Abigail but it was almost impossible since I didn't want to stop walking so I kept walking out of the wifi zone. Once Abigail arrived though, we got all settled in at the hostel, okay I settled in before she actually arrived but same thing. That night we headed to watch Aladdin the musical. It was unbelievably amazing. Absolutely perfect and I'm so glad that we were able to see it.

After seeing Aladdin
Photo Cred: Abigail

After seeing Aladdin
Photo Cred: Mildred

The Genie was absolutely hilarious in the musical and definitely took the whole show. I'm pretty sure they painted his whole face in glitter too for the role. The magic carpet scene was extremely awesome too and very well done. I would love to go see Aladdin again because it was just that amazing. Once the show was over we went and got some ice cream before heading back to the hostel to prepare for the next day. Down in the kitchen, we poured over the map that the hostel had provided us to decide what locations we were going to go to. Some British boys gave us pointers, telling us we had to go see Parliment while we were there and that trying to see London in one day was just ridiculous and they didn't think we could do it. We had a plan though and we were not going to be held back!

Harry Potter Fix of the Day
Photo Cred: Abigail

Harry Potter Fix of the Day
Photo Cred: Mildred

At 7:30 the next morning, we left the hostel to go pop over to King's Cross in order to see Platform 9 3/4. We were the only ones there to take pictures, no one else was in the line even so we got to take our time and make sure we got real good ones. Then we found the Harry Potter store right behind the Platform sign and went to work on splurging on the money that we had taken out for our London trip. We had taken out way too much money so it only seemed right to splurge on Harry Potter goodies. I bought 3 different Harry Potter charms, the Slytherin coat of arms thingy, the snitch, and the deathly hallows sign. Once I got back to school for fall semester I made the charms into a necklace. After we had our Harry Potter fix, we headed back to the hostel and had a quick breakfast before going off on the next adventure.

After that, we headed over to Hyde and Kensington Park. It was two different parks, but I'm not really sure at what point it went from being Hyde Park to being Kensington Park. I don't remember if we walked all the way there or not upon entering the park we saw a memorial for animals that had died in wars. I would post a picture of this awesome memorial/monument thing, however Google Drive has now decided that I don't have permission to download my own pictures. I'm a wee bit frustrated now, luckily I can steal pictures from Facebook though.

Hyde Park: I don't wanna be near this birds
Photo Cred: Abigail

Hyde Park: Look at the babiess
Photo Cred: Mildred

Anyway, we saw a lot of naked statues wrestling about on the fountains and then one of the last things we saw in Hyde and Kensington Park was the Princess Diana monument. That was an awesome monument to see. These pictures of swans were on the way to seeing the Princess Diana monument and you can tell we both obviously have different views of birds. I'd prefer to not be super close to them, I was somewhat trying to keep them from swimming away and somewhat just not wanting to be near a mama swan and her babies. Whereas Abigail was all for getting close to the swans and they didn't seem to be super scared of us as I was expecting. Anyhoo, the Princess Diana monument was awesome because it was sort of all about for the people that came to see her. Since she was seen as being such an accessible princess when she was alive, they made the monument so you could wade in it and contemplate. I just thought it was awesome that they allowed people to wade in the monument. The monument also had two different streams of water basically that clashed together in order to show the happiness and turmoil during Princess Diana's life. They had signs all around explaining why the monument had been built the way it was, and I'm all about knowing why so that was awesome too.

Princess Diana Memorial Fountain
Photo Cred: Abigail

Those are Abigail's shoes
Photo Cred: Abigail

By the time we were leaving the park, which we spent most of the morning in, we were already getting tired and ready to find a place to eat lunch. We couldn't find anywhere to eat though! Eventually we came across Buckingham Palace, which I wasn't all that impressed with. You couldn't even get a good picture of it in all honesty. We also stumbled upon the Palace during the changing of the guard which was pretty interesting and I didn't realize it was such an intense process that they did. Then we eventually were allowed to walk around again, they had everywhere basically blocked off because of the changing of the guard, and ended up by the mounted guard's changing of the guard as well. That was a lot more interesting to watch if I do say so myself. At some point, we finally managed to find food and we actually ate Spanish food, Tapas supposedly, for lunch instead of finding some food that was very England. Then we went off on more walking. We found an m&m store that had four floors of just m&ms. Then we came across a Nickelodeon store and a comic superhero store. They were all pretty cool places to just walk around in. I have a note written down called "forbidden planet" but I'm really not sure what it was supposed to mean. I googled what Forbidden Planet is and I'm thinking it was probably the comic superhero store that we went to.
So after we were completely exhausted from walking around, we headed back to king's cross station and hopped on a bus there to get to the airport. The traffic in London was terrible and the bus driver was actually telling us about how so many people get run over because they don't pay enough attention when crossing the streets. Since the traffic was terrible, one lady who hadn't given herself enough time was super concerned about missing her plane. We got to the airport and ate a huge meal because we still had a ton of pounds left. One guy near us was throwing a fit while we were there because he had eaten something he was allergic to, and had purposely done it. It was very entertaining. Our flight to Barcelona was super delayed and we arrived 2 hours later than planned.