Ello London

We’re getting worse and worse at updating you guys. And for that, we are SORRRYYY. We’ve just gotten busy and most importantly lazy. Oops. Well anyways I am here to update you on the American Girls fabulous adventure to London. We set off on an unexpected 12 hour travel to England. It was the four of us, our Austrian friend Verena, our German friend David and our Spanish friend Carlos. After a bus, train, bus, plane, and bus; we arrived on Sunday evening. We then had to drag our 20 kilo bags through the London Streets to find our hostel (we rode the Underground train station for the remainder of the trip, which was extremely cheap and convenient). This was not an easy task… but we eventually stumbled upon it. By stumbled I mean stood on a street corner looking confused with a map while a couple walked by and said “Hey, are you looking for the Generator Hostel? We’re going there now, it’s this way!” lucky break. We got in our room to find a tatted up middle age man laying in one of the vacant beds in our 10 bed room. This was a shock to us since we’ve never had to share a hostel before (it was a bigger shock at 7am… I’ll get to that later). So we locked up our stuff and headed down the street to get the most disgusting burgers of our life. We found a cheap restaurant that advertised a deal on “triple burgers” with patties suspiciously about 3 inches across, yellow and hard. We’re convinced they were plastic. I guess you get what you pay for. Exhausted from the day, we went back to our room to find two girls sleeping in the last vacant beds. Seriously Europe, this sharing a room with strangers thing is really weird.

Our Hostel

WARNING: RANT AHEAD. The next morning we were viciously awoken at SEVEN IN THE MORNING. The girls, who we found were Russian due to the unnecessary small talk with the tattoo guy (AT 7AM), woke up and continued to get entirely ready in our small hostel room. Instead of gathering their things and using the bathroom they continued to unzip, rezip, unzip, rezip, unzip, and REZIP their bags then shuffle through numerous plastic bags for the next HOUR AND A HALF. If anyone knows me, they know that nothing makes me angrier than getting a rude awakening when I have ample time to get sleep. Okay rant over, we got our revenge.

We eventually woke up and decided to go on a free tour the hostel advertised. The tour was a walking tour hosted by a very enthusiastic inspiring actress. She was amazing; she made the tour very interesting by telling historical but funny stories and took us to the most important sights in London. We saw the Wellington Arch, Buckingham Palace (where we almost witnessed the guards change, there we’re hundreds of people so it was difficult to see), Piccadilly Circle, Westminister Abbey, Big Ben, London Eye, and where the Olympic beach volleyball games will be held. We then did a little shopping on Oxford Street and had a much needed sit in the grass at Hyde Park. Surprisingly the weather was gorgeous which made the day that much better since we feared it would rain the whole time. We headed back to the hostel to find the Russian girls sleeping in their bed. We felt it was necessary to open our bags up a few times.

Olympic Beach Vollyball, London Eye

 Westminister Abbey

Big Ben!

London Telephone Booth

The Group! (Photo Bomb)

The weather was beautiful the next day as well. We spent the day souvenir shopping, fashion shopping and finding the famous Tower Bridge (London Bridge). We also saw St. Paul's Cathedral and rode around on a double-decker bus. We all even purchased matching “I <3 London” T-shirts, and we vow to return since we loved it so much! For the American girls, it is unanimously our most favorite trip we’ve taken so far.  Not to mention, hearing and seeing the English language everywhere was a big bonus!

St. Paul's Cathedral

 Tower Bridge

We love London!

-Shanda