London-Day 4

Finally!

So today was probably one of the best days, but really only in the morning. So after we got up we had to check out but we were allowed to leave our luggage locked up at the hostel. Some people made the foolish decision of going down to St. Paul's Cathedral for "mass" thinking it was a Catholic church. Nuh uh. Nope. Did everyone seriously fall asleep in history class and miss the whole Church of England/ Anglican thing? wow. But 4 of us did not go and instead went up to the Abbey Road Studios. It was really hard to get there because on the weekends they shut entire lines down to work on them and so we had to take this really roundabout way and we weren't sure if we were going the right way because this area was off of all of our maps so it was the blind leading the blind but we discovered how charming London can be when you aren't in the center of all the tourist craziness. We were in a neighborhood called... um I actually don't remember the name, but it really pretty. There was no-one on the footpaths and so we didn't have to worry about running into anyone or any pickpocketing us and the sun was out and the sky was blue so it was gorgeous. The neighborhood around it was quiet and it had the lovely lazy Sunday morning feel to it. When I go back to London I hope to spend more time up in that area. We saw the studios, which are pretty small actually... or atleast it looks that way from the outside. We signed the walls outside the studio and had our picture taken by this lovely French family as we crossed the famous Abbey Road crosswalk. It was kind of cool to think that we were walking on the same ground as the Beatles. 

After that we started walking down the street looking for a bus stop where we could hitch a ride to a tube station. We met this lovely English woman who helped us figure out how to get back to Knightsbridge, which is near Harrods which is where we were meeting for lunch. So we took a ride on the famous double decker buses and we got on a train towards Harrods. I actually had lunch from Harrods from their grocery store part (remember it's like Wal-Mart except for the exceptionally rich). I had a delicious piece of goat cheese and spinach quiche for 2 pounds. It was amazing. After lunch we walked around the area near Harrod's until we got too cold and tired to walk anymore. Again we couldn't find anywhere to sit and be warm at the same time so we hopped back on the tube towards our hostel and went to a patisserie near our hostel. We still had several hours till we were supposed to meet before leaving to go back home to Harlaxton so we just went back to the hostel and took naps in the lounge. We all met up again, had dinner at a little Italian restaurant down the street from our hostel and headed out for Kings Cross Station. Once we got there we had loads of time till our train so we went to Platform 9 3/4 which was lots of fun. We all had our picture taken and then relaxed until our train left. 1 hour later we were pulling up at the Grantham Train Station, platform 2. We had to wait a little while for our taxis to arrive, but we were all home in the manor by 10:20pm. 

So to recap: 11 kids made to London and back without the help of any adult, we walked the streets of London that have outlasted even fires. We saw that the queen was home and figured she was probably spying on us. We met more people who didn't speak English than did. I took exactly 336 pictures and I would have taken more had it not been so cold and my camera hard to access. We almost got run over several times and survived every time. We spent more money than we probably should have, but didn't spend nearly as much as the kids from school. We discovered some little known places and found some places we definitely want to come back to. We didn't even scratch the surface of London, but we know we'll be back. We had fun and we learned alot which goes to show that education really extended to outside the classroom. 

Speaking of classroom I have to go start working on my Shakespeare presentation, argh, so I'll leave you here. 

Enjoy!