I’m in London!! Got here yesterday early in the morning…it was abnormally sunny for the city, which was actually a nice thing to arrive to. The plane ride was seriously the most fun air trip I’ve ever taken…each seat has a TV attached to it so the person behind you can see…and you can pick from a bunch of movies and TV shows and stuff to watch.
They give you TWO meals and pillows and blankets and come around all the time with water, coffee, tea and wine. They also give each person a little plastic pack of cool stuff on their seats…with a toothbrush, ear plugs, sleep mask, and a couple other cool things that I’m totally keeping. I hope I get another one on the ride back!
I’ve never been on a big plane like this so it was awesome. I’ve been on several overseas flights but never on one for so long. Apparently the trip back is supposed to be like 8 hours or something, yikes…but oh well! We’re flying the same airline back so I know what movies are available…Lemony Snickett mooooovie for sure! :D
Yesterday we toured around London seeing all the big sights: Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and the London Eye.
We didn’t ride the Eye, just glanced at it, hehe…not enough time and too expensive. For those who don’t know what the Eye is…it is this ginormous Ferris wheel type thing that has several capsules instead of seats that hold around 25-30 people each. It circles you around the wheel for about 30 minutes and the whole time you are getting a fabulous view of London, apparently. Must check that out the next time I am here, whenever that is, hehe.
At the palace we got to see those famous guards! But unfortunately they were inside these big gates so we couldn’t mess with them or anything, lol. They did a sort of “marching” show for a few minutes and then went back to standing. There were only two of them, but it was still cool. I wonder if the Queen was at the palace…but yeah yesterday was so tiring…I was literally falling asleep at dinner and then on the train back afterward. So I was the first one to go to bed.
Today we all woke up sore as hell from all the walking from yesterday, I took Advil. :P Had breakfast where I ate a billion pieces of toast…then traveled over to Southall, which is this area of London that is heavily populated with Asian people. Not talking Chinese or Japanese, primarily Indians! I think sometimes people forget that Asia encompasses all of the continent and not just the Orient. ;)
We were able to tour a Hindu temple as well as a Sikh temple…both very interesting. We ate lunch in the Sikh temple, they have this communal meal thing that symbolizes the “equality” of all the classes…a very interesting religion. We all had to take off our shoes for both temples and then cover our heads for the Sikh temple. They had scarf things for the ladies and these bandanna-type things for the guys to wear. I wore a green scarf! It was purty.
We were able to walk around the marketplace of South Hall a bit…and I bought an Indian CD! Thus the title of my entry…hehe, Fantasy 17 is the name and it has some pretty wicked tracks. The cover of it is a little risque, I’m gonna change it out because I’d rather not have to look at some half-dressed girl that is probably not even a featured singer on the disk, hehe. But the music rocks! I’m listening now…I will have to transfer to my comp when I get home on Thursday. I wanted to buy some cool jewelry from the stores but we ran out of time. Hopefully we’ll have more time later to souvenir shop.
We also went to a pretty cool inter-cultural church service in the afternoon and then had a potluck dinner with the church folk. Then we “tubed” it back to where we’re staying. Since I’m about to pass out, I will sign off! :)
