Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Weekend in...LONDON!

This past weekend was a long one for us. Monday, October 26th was the only holiday we will get this semester at UCD. In celebration of the Bank Holiday my roommates and I went on an excursion to London. My roommate Erika had a friend from Canada visit her named Andrea. She was so nice and fun to hang out with this past week.

On Saturday morning Erika, Andrea, Mariel and I set out for Dublin Port. We took a series of two buses to get there. Of course, it was rainy and foggy and dark outside and by the time we reached the Port we were soaked...the bus doesn't take you all the way there, only to the gates. Maybe next time (if there is one) we'll take a taxi:) We got onto the bus just in time to haul us onto the ferry. It was like a floating mall. We found a table in the food court to eat breakfast. Mariel and I ate our packed food while Erika and Andrea ate a full Irish breakfast for 10 euro each. Then we wondered about the ship to find a nice spot by the windows.

When we reached Wales the buses took us to the train station to begin our cross U.K. trek to London. I believe it took around four hours to get to Euston Station. It was so exciting to see the Tube and Underground this past weekend. We found the half price tickets vendor we had looked up before hand and bought tickets to Wicked for 20 pounds! It was such a deal because originally they were 80 pounds! We had about 2.5 hours until the show so we decided to head to the hostel in Northfield to change and drop off our baggage. We only got 3/4 of the way there before we decided we needed to hop in a taxi that instant to get back for the show. We had run into some unanticipated construction on our Tube line to the hostel. We checked our luggage in the coat check and were about 15 min late to Wicked. Really we were only 7 min late but they couldn't let us in until that point in time. It was one of the best shows I have ever seen! I've been fighting the Wicked craze for years, but I am sorry that I did because I absolutely loved it!!! I think I want to read the books now.

After the show we began our trek back to the hostel to check in. We got there at about midnight. We were supposed to meet up with Mariel's friend, Tessa, who had visited us in Dublin a couple weekends ago. We walked up and down the street of our hostel but there were no taxis out in the middle of nowhere. We asked in a pub and an old man called a taxi for us. We were waiting outside when his friend came out and told us not to go into London. We should go to the club down the street. Well, the cab came and we decided against going into the city since it was so late. He charged us 5 pounds to go down less than a block to the Spinning Wheel. It cost us 5 pounds to get in to this "club" where we found all middle aged men and women shakin their thing! It was one of the most entertaining nights of my life! And the upside was we didn't need to take a taxi home, after it closed we walked right across the street to our hostel:)

On Sunday we did some sight seeing in London. We went to Platform 9 3/4 in King's Cross Station...it was so MAGICAL!!! Then we met up with Tessa and her friend to walk around London. We did Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace, the Wellington Arch, the park, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, the House of Parliament, and then a night ride on the London Eye (the huge ferris wheel).

The next morning we had an unfortunate event in that our alarm was set to 6pm instead of 6am....so we (yet again) had to take a taxi into the city. There were so many close calls this weekend. But we made it to Euston in time only because our train was delayed from 8:50am to 9:10am. I really want to go back to London for about three weeks sometime so that I can see everything properly!!! It's such a beautiful city with so many beautiful buildings!

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