Tombs, the eye, laying in the street, and pear cider

Today was such a good day!

The first thing on today’s agenda was to meet up at Westminster Abbey for a tour at 10:00 this morning. Half of our group was going to tour the Abbey with Warren, our great guide from several other tours before, and this other lady who took us on our “literary London” tour who looked at our chests when she talked and nearly coughed up a lung. Naturally I made sure I was in Warren’s group. The tour was so great and once again Warren was jam-packed with information and obscure facts. We walked through the tombs of Queen Elizabeth I, and Mary Queen of Scots just to name a few. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside; Westminster Abbey doesn’t allow any kind of photo or film other than for documentaries. Warren told us that the Davinci Code wasn’t actually filmed there, but in another church! We saw the tombs of great Kings and Queens, memorials for poets, writers, architects, and soldiers. What surprised me the most was the fact that Charles Darwin is buried in Westminster Abbey! I saw memorials for Lord Byron, Emily Bronte, Charles Dickes, Shakespeare, DH Lawrence, and so many other great writers! It was so neat. We walked through Henry VII’s chapel inside the Abbey and saw a hole in the wall that was made when shrapnel from a bomb during WWII. They actually left the hole and covered it with glass and turned the area into an Air Force memorial to remind them of the war. Very neat piece of information! There’s even a memorial to FDR right near the Winston Churchill memorial near one of the entrances. The only down side to the tour this morning was the fact that Westminster Abbey was SOOO CROWDED! People were pushing me and stopping in front of me and speaking in other languages trying to figure out how to aggravate me even more. Five more minutes in there and I swear I would have smacked somebody in a house of God.

We said goodbye to Warren today—he was such a fun guide! I told him to come to Blacksburg and that I’d give him a tour of Virginia Tech.

After that most of us went back to our flats to eat lunch and just relax for a little while. Then the group of people I’ve been hanging out with most (Patrick, Kendall, Kathleen, Caitlin, Alex, Sara and Sara) decided to head over to Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. It was such a gorgeous day again today and we just took our time strolling around. We watched the ducks again and saw lots of people rollerblading through the park wearing absurd amounts of spandex. We also saw the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens—it’s this big statue with a gold statue of the guy just perching in the middle. I wanted to see the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain but either we couldn’t find it or it was the thing under construction behind some walls. But we did find the Peter Pan statue and bought tickets to see the play in Kensington Gardens under this huge, amazing tent! Can’t wait for that! We got front and center third row seats for the show—and apparently it’s absolutely amazing!

When we left that area we went back over to Westminster to take a ride on the London Eye! The whole group went but we were divided up into two cars. The London Eye is like a giant Ferris wheel that takes you up 135 meters (442.9 feet) over the River Thames and you get an AMAZING view of the city. We could see all of Parliament, St. Paul’s Cathedral and countless other things. We also took a ton of goofy pictures—it was great! On our way out after that we happened to see people on bungee cords and harnesses bouncing over a big wall near the edge of the river, so we checked it out. It was one of those things where you get put into a harness with bungee cords at your sides and you jump on a giant trampoline and do flips in the air! Alex, Kathleen, Kendall and I did it and it was so much fun! I tried so hard to do a back flip but it was so hard! My arms already hurt from it.

The coolest part of today was what we happened to run into. While we were up on the eye we heard and saw a lot of police cars and sirens at the edge of the Westminster Bridge. Assuming it was an accident, we didn’t really think much of it. Then when I looked closer I noticed that it was a protest that had blocked the whole bridge! Double-decker buses and cars were doing U-turns to get off, and we had to walk across that bridge to get to the Westminster tube station to get back to Angel. It was SO cool! The whole bridge was shut down because of this protest and we just walked and ran in the middle of the street. There were a ton of people on bikes—the protest was of an environmental nature and the people were protesting the use of cars and airplanes and other fuel guzzling modes of transportation. We used it to our advantage to take pictures in the middle of the street and to get even better pictures of ourselves with Big Ben as a backdrop. It was just awesome to be able to do that! The protestors had music going and there were so many pissed off police officers…

After a fun tube ride back to Angel, talking about how lucky we were to get to take those pictures, we went to a pub near the tube stop called The Angel. That place is cheap, close to home, and has a pretty good selection. I’ve been seeing commercials for pear cider ever since we got here, so after trying Patrick’s first (thanks Pattycakes) I ordered my own. Yum! I hope I can find it when I get back to Blacksburg! We had a great time just sitting and talking to wind down the day.

Once again, I’m exhausted and I have to get up early for a day full of class, the British Museum, and a tour all about architecture. I can’t wait for my head to hit the pillow! But first, a laundry update: I’m currently staring at my clothes hanging on a drying rack. I got them washed, but that devil machine will not switch into drying mode and some of my white clothes are unexplainably blue. At least I got my clothes “clean,” one girl’s clothes are locked in her machine and she can’t get them out! Devil machine…

Until tomorrow,
Whitney