Lessons Learned

This past weekend Jayson, Van and I took our first trip down to London. It was AMAZING!! The only reason I wanted to leave was because I wanted to sleep (not even the rain could keep us away!). We stayed in Bank which is where most of the corporate and bank offices are at. We parked at a tube station called Epping right outside of London and took the train everywhere else. The tax to drive through London can be pricey and after riding in a taxi there I never want to drive there. Our first learning experience when we got there is even the people that work at the train stations don't necessarily know where everything is. We told the ticket agent where we needed to get to and they told us to get off at a particular station so we did. Once there we realized that we were 2.5 miles from the hotel and walked all the way there to pass the train station we switched at (if that makes sense?) Anyways, we looked at it as a good sightseeing opportunity! We walked around the the area near the hotel for the day and had dinner then we went to check out the nightlife...and wow... It is definitely way different then in the states. I believe Jayson and I agreed that we are more of small pub people and not clubbing people. Yet again, just another learning experience. Jayson had two of his own learning experiences that night. The first being him and our friend Van had to use the bathroom and went to the first bar that had no line to get into. Well...they shortly realized that it was a drag bar and they weren't quit sure what to make of it at first but did their business and got out. His second was yet again needing to use the restroom and he had gone into a building nearby and told the person at the door he just needed to use their restroom. He went upstairs and some lady comes and knocks on the door and asked if he "wanted a good time", at this point the girl he had passed on his way in, wearing lingerie now made sense. So our lesson learned in the bar/club hopping, scope it out first. We had met two locals (David and Tom) that were on a mission to find a dumpling shop they had been to before but couldn't remember where it was. Unfortunately we were not successful in finding the dumpling shop. All in all it was a fun night. The next day Jayson and I went and go breakfast, he had a traditional English breakfast with sausage, baked beans, tomatos, mushroom, eggs, toast and hash browns, I had a panini with chips :) The first stop we made on Sunday was to Kings Cross tube station. This is the station where Harry Potter was filmed. Like in the movie, they have a platform 9 3/4 with a cart going into the wall that you can put on a Gryffindor scarf and have your picture taken. Our second stop was to Westminster to see Big Ben, and we had walked over to the London Eye. Unfortunately we were not prepared enough to go on it but it is a must for next time! After spending some time there we hoped on the tube to go to Hyde Park. We walked through the Princess Diana Memorial Walk on our way to see Buckingham Palace. It was absolutely gorgeous there! By far one of my favorite places so far! The park right across from the palace was so pretty. And the palace is huge! There wasn't a changing of the guard ceremony for the day so we missed that but it was still worth it to just go and see. Once we were done there we got back on the train and went back to Bank, picked up our bags from the hotel and headed back to Epping and back home. It was a wonderful trip that I cant wait to do again and explore more!