London Town!!

Oh my goodness!!! This weekend was fabulous!! London is such an amazing city; if I went there every weekend for the whole semester I would still not be over it.
My traveling buddy, Paige, and I set off Friday morning from Lausanne, and after a train ride to the Geneva airport, security twice, a flight to London Gatwick, a train ride to central London, Figuring out how to take the tube to South Kensington and a short little walk to 56 Princess Gate, we were finally at the Pepperdine house in Central London. We were so fortunate to get a spot in the house, or else we would have had to find other means of lodging…whew! So we dropped off our stuff in a hurry and we were off to meet the rest of our group at Big Ben!! We met up with them and went to the London Eye, and on the way there saw the original London Bridge, we almost missed it because it just looks like every other bridge in London. We all wanted to see a show while we were there, some of us wanted to see Wicked and some of us wanted to see Les Miserables. We try to find the theaters that are playing our shows, and we ended up at the Chicago Theater. We walk inside and find out that there is a show in 30 minutes, with tickets for 25 pounds… sooooo we saw the show! But we definitely were starving by this time, so we were looking for someplace to get a snack when we came across this little bakery/café called Candy Cakes. I’m not even lying….when I walked into this place I felt like I was literally in Candy Land, everything looked absolutely fake, but was so delicious!! I ended up sharing pesto pasta and a double chocolate fudge cupcake (Mom, I thought of youJ) with Anna. Then we saw Chicago. The actors were not quite up to par, but I guess it was the experience that counts. After the show, we found a little Italian restaurant called the Spaghetti House, and we ate great Italian Food there. We were utterly exhausted by this time, so we just went home and right to bed.
The next morning we got an early start, and went straight to the Tower Bridge. Tower Bridge was so so beautiful! The railings are blue and it just made me feel like a little princess!! It was amazing to actually be there. We then went to Buckingham Palace. We were on the wrong day for the changing of the guards, but we did see the guards, in their little fuzzy hats, but we couldn’t get close to themL. So we went to St. James Park and walked. I felt like I was in 101 Dalmatians! It was so cute. Next we went to Notting Hill and walked all up and down Portobello Street, the Portobello Market was enormous. We also found the Traveling Bookshop, from the movie Notting Hill. I have never seen the movie but one of the girls was really excited about it…so we went along. The next goal is to check out the tickets for Les Miserables. We got to the theater and in order to get cheaper tickets we all had to split up, which was okay. We got our tickets and then we were off to Harrods!!!!!! We finally found it, it was amazing, like a museum!! As we were leaving Harrods the door man was talking to us and we asked him to point us in the direction of a little English pub. He sent us in the direction of the Tea Clipper. This was such a fun dinner, where Anna and I just had to get fish and chips, it was delicious!! Then we separated and went to see our shows. Les Mis was marvelous. I was sitting in the front row next to this little old couple from Exeter, England, they were so cute! We had one last goose chase of our trip…we had to find platform 9 ¾ from Harry Potter!! We tried to find it ourselves, finally asked a man in the train station, followed his advice, and that got us a little ways. Then a scary conductor with 3 teeth popped out of at train and asked us if we needed help, while following his directions we ran into a crew of construction workers who finally just took us there! Oh my.. it was crazy, but yes, it does exist!! We get back to south Kensington, finally, and we kind of wanted deee-ssert, so we went to the “pink berry” of London, it was called Snog. I opted for the “Naughty Snog” with brownie pieces and a shot of espresso! It was deelish. We walked back to the house and got to hand out with friends form the London program for the rest of the night.
The next morning it was snowing! I got on my first public bus, and went to the London Luton airport, and came back to Lausanne, where it was still snowing and had my first chicken and lamb kebab! WHEEEEWWWWWW!!! What a weekend- wouldn’t trade it for anything!!