Day 14 - London!

 Forget Dublin; I’m moving to London!  We eagerly left the ship behind us, walked 1.4 miles to the train station, and 1h19m later arrived in the heart of London.  Emily and I ditched the rest of the group and traveled as just the two of us.  Every few steps was a new breathtaking sight, and the city is so enormous that the sights never end!  We leisurely wandered the streets until we found our hostel, located in a shnazzy upscale shopping district along Oxford Street.  We had booked an entire room for four girls.  When we got into our room, we found boys’ underpants hanging off lamps and bed railings.  Interestingly, all of their stuff was locked up in the lockers (locks not provided, by the way), and only their underwear was left out.  Seems they were to switch rooms that day, and a guy at the reception desk came to take care of the mess for us.  Using a plastic bag as a glove.

We tried to do London the cheap way.  We tried, and we failed.  Everything in London is very, very expensive, but well worth it.  We ordered theater tickets through the hostel on our way out, then walked through the Piccadilly theater district, wandered through some side streets, went into a free Paralympics showing in Trafalgar Square and picked up some free British flags (as if we didn’t look like tourists already), and ended on the Embankment Road along the Thames.  We crossed over, walked past the London Eye, took in some fantastic views of Big Ben and many other examples of London’s royal beauty.  We had a tradition fish & chips lunch at a café where we talked up a bartender from Latvia.  Then we crossed back over another bridge and walked up to the spectacular, gold-laced Big Ben.

Attached to Big Ben was Westminster Hall, where government hearings and debates take place.  We walked around it and found an entrance for ticketholders, which did not include us.  We walked up and asked about tours.  Tours were only available on Saturdays (the day we were to depart), but the man gave us passes to go in and listen to a hearing.  We were giddy as we entered the large – I mean enormous – spacious entry hall.  We walked through hallways adorned with portraits of royalty and statues of knights, walked up staircases with pictures depicting the history of the building, and finally made it into the balcony from which we were allowed to view the hearing.  The debate was over the housing crisis.  Several members on the floor were either asleep or very near to it.  The balcony was separated from the floor by panes of thick glass, and speakers were cleverly hidden inside ornaments in the backs of the pews.  It was a spectacular experience, and we were very sad to leave, but we had to run to catch our play!

Right across the street from Westminster Hall was the Westminster Abbey, which is another impressive piece of architectural art.  We were running late for our play, and we still had to run across town to get to the theater, but we couldn’t resist lingering to look at the abbey.  Nor could we resist any of the other buildings around us.  We made a rule to just put our cameras away and come back later – a rule that we broke many times.  This city is just too hard to resist!

We arrived at St. Martin’s Theater with five minutes to spare until the start of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap.  Apparently this has been the longest running play ever, having been produced for 60 years!  The play was great, of course, but I can’t tell you who did it, so don’t ask!

We walked back to our hostel just a few blocks away, picked up some chocolate and tea on the way home, and chilled with our Australian hostel-mates until well past bedtime.