Day 14

Back to London:

So we woke up and headed out of Paris early Wednesday morning, London bound. We got back into the city around 6pm and were able to say our goodbyes (or not) and head over to a few of the more famous London attractions before the sun went down:

The beautiful London skyline. :)

Ahh.. the Queen is a pimp. Here's Azlan guarding her palace gates.

One of the goofy guards.

One of the not-so-goofy guards...

(I pictured him saying "don't mess, son" in his

pansy-brit accent... bahaha, pansy Brits!) :P

Buckingham Palace

Buckingham in its entirety...

The awesome statue of Queen Victoria in the palace courtyard...

(If that's what you want to call it.)

Loved the street signs...

they seem so... 19th century...

Westminster Abbey

Me and W. A.

Me and "Ben."

Soo pretty! :)

Yes. The movies don't lie. They really do still drive weird cars (like the one pictured here) and all of their buses are these red double decker kind!

me again :)

and again...

Okay, story: We were able to see the majority of the more famous London-attractions by simply taking the same Tube-line (Piccadilly). It went from LHR to Cockfosters (lol. yep.), and all of the main London sites (for the most part) were somewhere along that route, which made for very convenient and fast travel for us (which was good, since we really only had that one evening to see London). One of the stops on the Piccadilly line is "Kings Cross." Now, if you don't live under a rock, and if your anyone worth knowing/talking to, you've read/seen Harry Potter and know of King's Cross train station.

Okay, so, it was around 9 or 10pm and the Tube lines all run until about 11pm and then some of the trains stop running (but you never know which). We REALLY didn't want to get lost/stranded at a stop far from our hotel, so we gave ourselves an hour to get from where we ate (near Hyde Park) back to the hotel, but... I really really really really really wanted to go see Platform 9 3/4 (who wouldn't!?). Therefore, we headed to King's Cross Station (just one stop past ours) and we saw this:

I was so sad. I expected brick archways and train smoke and... owls and Hagrid...

(meh, maybe not ALL of that...)

Seriza decided we should walk down platform 9 and I whined and complained that it was pointless... she continued walking and I stopped somewhere down the platform and... seriously...I'm not making this up: a short old man appears from some doorway I hadn't noticed and OUT OF THE BLUE says (in the most magical/amazing British accent), "If your looking for Harry Potter, he's right around the corner." :O I followed him back the way we had come and turned down an alleyway, where he magically disappeared. Just passed these metal swinging saloon-style doors I discovered this:

And I walked to the other side :D

I was like a friggin' fat kid in a candy store!!!

UGH! I'M SOOOO HAPPY we did that!

And here is a picture of me and the thing that terrified me the most, 2 weeks ago (I was really terrified about the whole public transportation thing and figuring out how to get where/when at the start of all this). Happy to report: I TOTALLY conquered that beast!

"Mind the Gap" :)

Once we got back to our area ("Russell Square") we started walking to the hotel and saw a small shop that was still open (a miracle in and of itself, seeing as how London and every other city in the world shuts down around 8pm). We decided we would go in and look for a few last minute souvenirs. Once at the check-out counter, I glance to my left and see these:

WTF?!

What a wonderful representation of my overall food experience in Europe...

London in one word: Backwards

We left London at like 1pm (6am Vegas time) and had a HORRIBLE 10 hr flight from LHR back to St. Paul (aka Minneapolis, aka Twin Cities, aka "Land of 10,000 lakes," aka home of the Mall of America :) which included a crying ugly baby sitting right next to us and pain in the "A" old people who felt the need to kick our chairs CONSTANTLY throughout the entire flight (yeah, I turned around and told the old-b to cut the crap and she snapped back at me and I laughed at her...but mostly wanted to punch her. I was tired. Don't judge me).

We also had a 4 hour layover in St. Paul (what a dream) where we just sat and stared, fighting thru our exhaustion, knowing that if we were to sleep a bit in the airport, we'd crash and burn and never make it to our connecting flight.

I slept the majority of the flight from St. Paul to Vegas and landed 20 hours after leaving London at 11pm back home where our families met us at baggage claim and where my family began asking about/listening to non-stop European-stories and experiences! :)