London!

Running a little behind on blog updates, but better late than never! The last few weeks have been extremely busy, getting caught up on school work and traveling on the weekends:) On February 5Th we decided to spend the weekend in London, known in England as "The City" as Chicago is to us in IL. We left Friday afternoon and oh boy, did we have a heck of a time getting there. At first we had planned to take the train from Leicester to London which is only about an hour long train ride, only to find once we were at the train station that the price of tickets had doubled overnight! We said heck no and headed for the bus station. Only to find that the bus ride wasn't much cheaper and would take three hours to get there, soooo of course eager to get to London we headed back to the train station! This was my first time seeing the English Countryside, and I have to say it was absolutely beautiful everything that you would imagine it to be. Fields and fields of green, old wood fences and countryside homes. So much more interesting then our cornfields back at home. We arrived at St. Pancreas Station, and after getting lost for about a half hour we finally found our hostel. We headed out to do some nighttime sightseeing. Hoped on the tube(which has got to be thee greatest mode of public transportation ever), and headed to see Big Ben and Parliament. Both were absolutely stunning at night!


From here we went to Piccadilly Circus, which would be the equivalent to Times Square in the States.
Day Two in London was quite tiring, whoever said you couldn't see all of London in a day was wrong! Because, we saw EVERYTHING!

Trafalgar Square,Here we also went to the National Art Gallery Museum, where we saw paintings by Monet, Van Gogh, Da Vinci, Degas, and Rembrant it was breathtaking!



Then we were off to Buckingham Palace






Tower Bridge

After crossing Tower Bridge we went to The Tower of London, where many prisoners we held and executions took place. Today it is home to the Crown Jewels, and looks like a traditional English castle. After wondering around and checking out the different towers and torture devices we went to see the Crown Jewels. This was probably the highlight of my trip but unfortunately photographs were forbidden. But seeing the jewels and crowns that have been used in coronations for centuries was completely overwhelming, I had to go through the line twice to convince myself of what I was actually seeing. The Royal family possesses the world's largest diamond, all 530 carats of it..ladies, it was beautiful!
After we headed to St. Paul's Cathedral, where Lady Di and Prince Charles were married. This was yet another overhelming expierence, not only was St. Pauls beautiful on the outside it was stunning on the inside as well. When were arrived, the church was holding their evening service, so we sat down for a bit. I think that much jaw was hanging open the entir time. It was one of the must gorgeous things I have ever seen, I was floored.

Day three in London was much shorter and less tiring, we walked around Big Ben and Parliament to get some pictures in the day light. We also may or may not have snuck into Westminster Abbey to take some photos:)
All in all London was a great expierence, a must see to anyone considering it!