To London and beyond!

March 20, 2008

So here I sit on a rickety old train headed towards Mannheim. I survived my solo trip to London with no major bumps or bruises. But to sat it was smooth sailing would be handing out too much credit. Like I said in my last entry, it was rainy and cold whether… the entire time. Luckily there were a few bright things that happened to help me not hate the rain quite so much.

When I went to drop off my luggage at the hostel on Sunday morning, the kind people let me go ahead and check-in. I got all settled in, relaxed a little, got ready, then headed out to be brave in huge, rainy London. My plan was to walk around for few hours, okay like five, then head to church. But after about on hour of freezing my Rastafarian Nae-naes off, I opted for plan B… free museums.

When the time arrived, I headed across the street for Church, only to find out that they had Stake Conference earlier that morning. There were a couple out-of-towners there though, and I ended up meeting to American girls that let me wonder around with them for a few hours. That was a lot more exciting than sitting by myself. I also found out about FHE and hit that up on Monday night. After parting with the sisters, I decided to head back to the hostel and kick it there. This is when it gets good…

While I was waiting in the reception area to get on the internet I overheard two girls asking about getting a power adapter. After they decided not to buy one at the outrageous price the hostel was selling them for, I had my moment of bravery and offered the girls mine. This led to that and at breakfast the next morning they invited me to do some sightseeing with them. Of course I jumped at the offer and an hour later I was standing in front of Madame Tussads. That my friends, was this awesome gallery/exhibit thing full of exact wax replicas of some of the worlds most famous (and infamous) people. And when I say exact, I mean exact. I was scared to touch some of them for fear that they would be real people. Creepy. Anyways, that was a lot of fun. The girls, Sandra and Tina, and I spent the rest of the day doing who knows what. I do know though, that it was a really fun day.

Tuesday… Well this day began again with breakfast and deciding to go on a free walking tour of London with the girls and their new male friend that joined up with us (I can’t remember his name, so obviously he left a huge impression on me, huh). That tour began at The Duke of Wellington’s monument and Arch thing. From there we went to Buckingham Palace, and were able to see the Changing of the Guards. That was cool, but not as impressive as it always sounds. We then went and messed with some of the guards. That of course, was enjoyable. And yes, I was a typical tourist and got a picture. Let’s see, what else did we see? Um… Westminster Abbey, of course. Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. Trafalgar square, think Mary Poppins and pigeons. I think from the tour, those are the places of note. After the tour we went to a little pub and got some Fish and Chips. I won’t lie, I wasn’t very impressed. But I think we just choose a bad place to get them. Plus, I’m not a big fish fan.

That night was the big night! We went and got free makeovers before heading to see LION KING!! That was such an awesome play. I loved all of it. The costumes were the most fantastic things I have seen. And their voices, hello! And I have to mention the dancing. It was all fabulous. So we didn’t have reservations or tickets, but for only like 12ish pounds, we were able to get in. Now, for that price the only tickets we could get were Standing Tickets, but it was still awesome. I would have enjoyed sitting down after such a long day, but the play made it all worth it.

Well, Wednesday was not nearly as eventful as Tuesday, but still a lot of fun. Wednesday morning we headed out to do a little more sightseeing, hitting up the big places we didn’t see on the tour. We saw the London Eye (if you don’t know what that is, you definitely need to look it up. Fantastic), St. Paul’s Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Tower of London, Globe Theater, and then a couple other things. After that we went to the Northern side of London and hit up the shopping in Camden Place. Man, I am telling you, if you want some good flea market shopping, and just little shops, that is the place to go. I was really wishing I had more to spend on shopping. Oh well, it was still fun to look.

After Camden Place we headed back to the hostel for the day. The girls were flying out that afternoon and had to head to the Airport. I was so glad that I was able to meet them. They were so much fun and made my trip so much more enjoyable. Hopefully I’ll be able to go visit them down in Vienna sometime.

Well, after they left I went and freshened up for my dinner with a fantastic-looking Australian. Oops, did I forget to mention meeting Steve. Hehe. We met Steve one morning at breakfast and invited him to go see the sights with us. Unfortunately he turned us down, but the next day he agreed to go to dinner with me after the girls left town. I actually thought he stood me up, but he eventually came through and we went and ate at a little pub. It was delicious! And it was a lot of fun to just sit and talk with him. I think I kinda have a thing for Australians now! Hehe. But really.

The next morning I just walked around by Hyde Park a little more and killed time before I had to head back to the Airport for my flight. As it was STILL freezing outside, I went into a couple of the museums right around there. Man, London knows how to put some pretty cool stuff on display, I’m telling ya.

March 25, 2008

The rest of the week and weekend were really good and went by really fast. I stayed with the Senior Missionary couple on Thursday night when I got back into Heidelberg. Then I spent Friday night and Saturday and Sunday with a friend of mine and her family. It was a really nice Easter weekend, and a perfect ending to my vacation.

Now I am sitting back in my bedroom having just cleaned the house. I’m ready to get back into the routine of work and craziness. I know this post is really long, but I hope it wasn’t too boring and you were able to stick with me. I’m going to put up some pictures to illustrate some of the things I talked about, so I hope that helps to perk up the stories.

Thank you and peace…

Catching up...

I am so very sorry for not have written for such a long time. I really can not come up with a good explanation so I am not going to even try. I’ve been keeping a little ‘travel-log’ thing on paper, so I thought I would just type that up and put it on my blog. Now granted the entries are a couple weeks old, but they still sum up what I’ve been doing. I’m going to put the dates on the entries as well so you can get a little feel of the time frames and what-not. I’m warning you now that they might get kinda lengthy, so grab a snack and get comfortable. I’ll try and make it a little interesting so you don’t dose off while reading.

Well, here goes...

March 3, 2008

Exactly a week from yesterday I head off for my vacation in London! I’m having very mixed feelings of excitement and nervousness. I’m actually really proud that I am actually going to brave it alone. I think it will be a good experience for me. I really want to be more open and outgoing and confident, so I figure this is the best time to start. I’m pretty much sure that the week/couple of days will not be perfectly smooth, but it will still be awesome. Whoo ya!

I’m planning on staying in a really cheap, but convenient, youth hostel, while I am there. It actually looks like a pretty decent place, so I hope that goes well. I am also hoping that I can be lucky enough to run into some people that will let me tag along with them so that I don’t have to do all the sight seeing alone. Cross your fingers!

So my German… Well, I think it has gotten so much better in the two months that I have been here. I realize no how little I really knew before. I would tell myself that I could speak the language, but that was a lie. Luckily my ‘family’ is very patient with me, and my course is actually helping me a lot as well. I really want to speak pretty decent German when I go home, otherwise these couple months will be a waste in that sense. I think it will be okay though.

March 16, 2008

Well I just made it through my first night in London… in the airport. I had a room booked at a hostel somewhere in London, but my flight got in so late in the evening I decided it would be easier/safer to just kick it in the airport. I’m a little sore, but other than that it was a good night.

I was pretty impressed with myself and my ability to get from Weisenheim (the town I live in) to my check-in at the airport. I did have to ask a lady for help once (in German), but even that went pretty good. Holy cow! Can I just say how HUGE the Frankfurt airport is? It was outrageous. And I was pretty surprised how drabby Heathrow was, or at least Terminal 1. Oh well, they still got their jobs done.

I am now on Heathrow Connect heading towards central London. I’m planning to drip of my luggage at the hostel then maybe go see about some St. Patties day celebrations. We’ll see!

Oh p.s. It is super cloudy and rainy. Joyous!