First Day in London!

Since we stayed up SO late last night, we slept in so that we would be well rested for the rest of the weekend. I think we ended up getting up at around 11. We had planned on going out to lunch today so we skipped breakfast. Caitlyn gave me a little tour of her neighborhood. It's called Little Venice and is really cute. There is a little river that runs through and there are even houseboats on it! We bought three day passes for the tube/bus since Caitlyn said we'd be using them all the time. As we were walking down the street we saw Amy Cranford, a friend from Elon, waiting at a bus stop. How random! We talked for a few minutes and then Caitlyn and I got on the bus. We went to a place called Wetherspoons. They have a special for Fish and Chips - 2 for 7 pounds. Pretty good especially since one order is 5 pounds! Luckily the water was free! Of course they were nothing like Fish and Chips from the Bowpicker, but they were really good. While we were eating one of Caitlyn's friends came in to meet me/chat. Her name is Amy and she also goes to Elon. Actually, Caitlyn is in London with an all Elon program.

After lunch we headed over to Buckingham Palace. On our way we walked through a beautiful park. I think it was called Green Park. We weren't there for the changing of the guard ceremony, but I still got to see where all of that takes place. We took quite a few pictures and then moved on to find the London Bridge. I've heard that it really isn't anything exciting, but you've gotta see the London Bridge after all these years of sining about it! We did in fact see it and also got to see the Globe Theater. Didn't go inside because the tours were expensive, but it was cool to see it from the outside. We then went into The Tate Modern Museum. Pretty cool place, but I just have a hard time understanding art. There was an entire floor dedicated to a crack in the ground. I still have no clue what that was about! We checked out a few of the exhibits and then decided we'd seen enough. We took a walk across the Millenium aka Wibbly Wobbly Bridge. The view of the Thames was just beautiful and St. Pauls Cathedral was the focal point on the other side of the river. We hopped on the metro back to Caitlyn's where we started cooking dinner. Her roommates really like making this chicken broccoli caserole. All of Caitlyn's roommates were out of town except for Kirsten. She also had a friend visiting for the night and we got to hang out with her too. We all talked for awhile after dinner and then got ready to go out to the ABSOLUT ICE BAR!

Caitlyn and I had bought Bacardi Breezers earlier, but we didn't have a bottle opener. So Caitlyn used the wine opener and put a hole in the cap. And that's how we drank them! Since there aren't laws about drinking in public, we all took a drink on the Tube. The Breezer hardly tasted like alcohol and I think there was very little in it! Caitlyn had made reservations at the Ice Bar for 11:45 and we pretty much got in right after we got there. The cost was 15 pounds but it also included one drink. Before we could go into the bar, they put a really warm eskimo-like jacket over our heads. They even had gloves! After taking a lot of pictures we ordered our drinks. My drink was WAY too strong. I could hardly even drink it. So after trying for awhile and letting the others try it, we decided to ask for something else. I didn't think they'd actually give me a new drink, but maybe that they'd add a little more juice or something. But the girl offered to make a new sweeter drink. It was much better! My favorite part about this place was that the cups were all ice! They even had ice tables, chairs and a Dj stand! We could only stay for 40 minutes since it's so cold in the bar. We had a lot of fun, but it wasn't really what I was expecting. The whole bar was only one room and not 100% ice like I had thought. But I did enjoy it and thought it was still pretty cool!

We thought about going to another bar after this, but ended up just going home instead. Caitlyn let me sleep in her bed and she slept in Lindsay's (also an Alpha Chi!!) It didn't seem like we did a ton today, but we had a lot of fun just hanging out together. I was exhausted and fell fast asleep!