Kristy's First Trip to London!

Ahem, attention everybody… Kristy would now like to tell you about her exciting first trip to London! Everybody listen up! Beuller! Ok. This past Wednesday we went to London (my very first time!) London has been one of those places I never really dreamed I’d see for myself. It has that behind-the-television-screen-type awe to it… and I got to see that it all really does exist in real life! Good to know it all isn’t some Truman Show-type conspiracy by the government or anything like that.

And what is better than a trip to London? A trip to London for free! We got to ride down in style on a pair of first class train tickets that a friend gave us all for the low, low price of nothing! (Evidently, he gets loads of free tickets from the amount that he travels down for business. Thanks, Mark!) We started out by having some train troubles, though, and had to be re-routed, so it was about 3:30 before we rolled into St. Pancras Station. No problem. We were still ready to have a killer time (as they say in Napolean Dynamite).

We decided to take a walk past St. Paul’s Cathedral on our way across the mighty Thames. Unfortunately, they were doing construction on most of the outside, so all we got to see was the covering paper, which, funnily enough, was covered with a dot-matrix-type printout of what the exterior was supposed to look like. If you got far enough away, you might actually be able to fake to yourself that you were looking at the real and actual St. Paul’s Cathedral in all its glory.

After trotting across the Millennium Bridge and snapping a few photos, (unfortunately, since it gets dark here by 4pm, all of our pictures can collectively be called, “London at Night”) we headed on to the Tate Gallery of Modern Art to stroke our chins at some Andy Worhol and pictures of naked people. After that, it was into town for some exploring.

It is so cool when you can go to a place and find things you didn’t expect. We wandered down one of these alleyways to find a huge plaza decked with Christmas lights and a huge Christmas tree sided up to an ice-skating rink. Very Dickens-esk! Later, while walking through the government district near Big Ben, we saw this royal soldier guy with a saber opening a gate for an official-looking car. We got our value as tourists! Ian describes him as having a coat like the Spanish inquisition with a huge crazy red hat with tassels. He even did the walk - like he was stepping over huge puddles. Later, when he was standing guard, we wondered if he was one of those guards that aren’t allowed to talk, itch, or blink, and what he would do if we tickled him.

We had a match between Starbucks and McDonalds while we walked to Trafalgar Square. Unsurprisingly, Starbucks won with about eight sightings while McDonalds lagged behind with only four (it’s a new era, isn’t it?). After paying tribute to Big Ben and Westminster Abby (which was creepy looking in the dark – “Just as a good church should,” quoth Ian), we jaunted up to Soho, where they have Broadway shows advertised on every corner. Hopefully we can get down again to see one sometime. For dinner, we stopped at a little Japanese place creatively called “Little Tokyo” for some curry udon and donburi. Our last stop was Piccadilly Circus; then we were back on the tube to the station, and then home again. What a great day!