DAY 2: LONDON

Thursday, July 27th, 2006

At the hotel’s English breakfast, I was just happy I was ok with eating eggs…because they had a lot of them. Scrambled egg whites, regular scrambled eggs, dunken (sunny side up) eggs, and hard boiled eggs. They did have a variety of meat such as patty sausage and regular sausages, but personally, I don’t prefer eating red meat. All it does is cause heart disease! So basically that left me with eggs, bread, and cornflakes. It was an ok breakfast, but I was partially glad when it was over.

Next, we went on a sightseeing tour of London. A few of the major sights we saw included Buckingham Palace, the Parliament Buildings, Big Ben, and Trafalgar Square.

I hadn’t heard about the history of any of these sites before the trip so it was nice to have Pete (our Tour Manager) explain some of the exciting tidbits behind the places. Pete informed us that the most common misconception about Big Ben is that “Big Ben” actually refers to the 13 ton bell inside of the tower, not the clock, as most people believe. oooh aaah.

A small group of us decided we wanted to ride on the London Eye. After walking for a while, we got to the central square. There were performers in the square trying to get people to listen to their corny jokes, and also people that had costumes and their faces painted who would move or dance everytime someone tipped them. Otherwise, they stood completely still except for blinking.

It was a nice sunny afternoon, a little cooler than yesterday, thank goodness. We saw there was a huge line to get on the London Eye, but we decided to see how much it cost…30 POUNDS!!! AHH!! No way were any of us going to pay $60 for a trip on a Ferris wheel. Everyone just about ran from there, and we enjoyed another long walk back to the hotel.

We entered a restaurant called Porter’s and ordered. This was our first group dinner and everyone began socializing. The waiters even asked our group to tone it down a little because our group was talking too loud, but we didn’t really care because we’re loud American tourists…what can you expect right?

After the alcohol started to kick in, everyone started to open up even more. A guy from our group named Geoffrey started singing around dessert time, and everyone thought he was extremely drunk. The funniest thing is…he had only had one drink, and the next day, he announced he was sober and he is just naturally extroverted. That is just the beginning of my fantastically enjoyable encounters with Geoffrey.

Overall, I would rate the food in London a 5/10, much worse than the food I eat in the U.S, much more expensive too. I am hoping the food will get better once we arrive in FRANCE! The best part about London was bonding with everyone and having fun at the same time. It was a great couple days in London!