London Pt. 1

This weekend Cameron and I went to London to visit our friend from Texas, Lauren Bonds. We both know Lauren through the Undergraduate Business Council, and I'm really good friends with her cousin Jason from Country Day. Lauren moved to London full-time this past summer and now works for Royal Bank of Scotland. We got into London Luton airport on Thursday evening and took a train into St. Pancreas / King's Cross Station downtown. Lauren was going to be out of work real late, so Cameron and I hopped on the Underground and went to Covent Garden for dinner. We found a pub called the Long Acre and I got my fish and chips fix immediately. One thing that I initially noticed was that everything was so much cheaper than Paris; it was fantastic. I think I got a large fish and chips, a bowl of mushroom soup, and a pint of Staropramen for something like 11 pounds.


The next day we did primarily tourist things because Cameron had never been to London before. We strolled through Green and King James Gardens en route to Buckingham Palace from Lauren's flat in Notting Hill. We also noticed how, compared to Paris, London has exponentially more parks and public areas, which is really nice. We walked around the government quarter for awhile, going from Buckingham Palace to Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, then up to Trafalgar Square. We stopped off of Trafalgar Square for lunch, and I was able to have another English meal in a steak and ale pie. From there, we went back down the Victoria Embankment on the Thames and bought tickets for the London Eye. Luckily it was reasonably sunny and we were able to see everything from up top; that is, we were able to see all the places that we wouldn't have enough time to go see. By this point, it was getting close to sundown (we didn't have the earliest start to the day) and we headed back to Lauren's to take a quick nap and get showered and ready to go out for the evening.

We decided to forego the Underground on the way home and instead walked the entire way. In about a little over an hour's time, we walked back through the government quarter, back through King James and Green Park Gardens, and then through Hyde and Kensington Gardens as well. Definately made me jealous that (1) it's never warm enough to walk through Paris and (2) that Paris had the kind of gardens that London does.

That evening, after getting cleaned up back at Lauren's, we met her at Liverpool Street in the heart of London's financial district. From there, we went to one of her favorite Thai places for dinner, and then it was off to the Favela Chic club. We met some of Lauren's co-workers from RBS and stayed there for the duration of the evening. Just like Paris, though, the metros close at midnight and we were thus forced to take a very expensive cab home to the opposite side of the city.