My latest adventure has brought me to the foggy city of London. Although it wasn't foggy at all when I was there. Haha. I had a lot of fun on this trip and went with my friends Leslie and Nick. Then we met up with my friends Ben and Cierra. It's been about a month since I was there, but we left for the weekend on that Friday. When we got to London, we arrived at Paddington Train Station and set out to find our hostel. We eventually went inside a hotel to get a map of the city, which helped out a lot. We ended up walking right by it because we didn't know that it was actually over a pub that ran the hostel as well. We checked in and set off almost right away. We met with Ben and Cierra at the Marble Arch on the northeast side of Hyde Park. We ended up just walking around to see different parts of the city. We walked to Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square. Then we made our way down to the Queen's Jubilee Bridge and went over to the London Eye. I was really scared to actually go on the Eye, but ended up sucking it up and went on it. I actually had a lot of fun on the ride and wasn't scared of how high it went either. I'm really glad that I went on it and would defintely do it again. After facing my fear of heights we ended up walking back towards Oxford Street and ate at the only pub on Oxford Street, as the sign said. Haha. It was a great first night in London, but it was also sad because we walked by all the different clothing shops without going into one of them. Haha.

The next day we got up early and went to get this thing called the London Pass. This was supposed to be very similar to the iamsterdam pass that was offered in Amsterdam. We thought it was going to be a good deal because it wasn't supposed to be activated until the first place that we went to and it included entry into places such as the Tower of London, The Globe Theatre, St. Paul's Cathedral, etc. So we got the passes. Apparently the passes were activated right away instead of at the first place that we went to, but we didn't know. We ended up going to Westmister Abbey, Parliament, and Big Ben right away. We didn't want to go into Parliament and Wesminster ended up being closed for some event. It was close to the time that the changing of the guard was supposed to take place, so we headed over to Buckingham Palace. We got lucky because it was going on and Nick and I braved crossing the street to get to the center fountain to get a closer look. We stayed there for the whole ceremony realizing afterward that we could have left after the first 15 mintues. After that we headed towards St. Paul's Cathedral. Once we got in, Ben, Nick and I climbed the hundreds of stairs to get to the dome. Although going up all the stairs was awful, it was worth it. Then we tried going into the Tower of London, but we wouldn't have had enough time in there before they closed. So then we went to see if the HMS Belfast was open, but it was closing in a half an hour and you had to take the guided tour and we just missed the last one. Then we ended up going on a tour of London Bridge. Thankfully we were able to get in that one.

We later went on a boat cruise of the River Thames. It was cool to see some of the buildings at night from the river. We then ate and went back to our hostel. Cierra and Ben came to the pub for a little bit to hang out. There ended up being karaoke in the pub and there were a lot of older ladies that were singing the songs very badly. Then Nick, Cierra, and Leslie all ended up singing songs. I of course documented that by recording it on my camera. The best part of the night was an old man that was very drunk. He was dancing around and just looked like he was lost. It was great. The next day, we went to the Tower of London straight away and found out there that our passes were expired. So we ended up paying a good sum to go in. It was pretty cool, partially because you got to see the crown jewels. Although, I was slightly disappointed by them. Then we crossed the Millenium Walking Bridge, which was super scary to cross, and went to the Tate Modern Art Museum. I loved this because it was free and it had a lot of great and interesting art. Then it was time to go to the British Museum across town. It was cool, but I was really tired. I walked around a little bit, but sat most of the time. Then Leslie, Ben and I hauled over to Paddington to catch our train back to Swansea. All in all, London is a pretty awesome city and I can't wait to go back!