London

So this weekend, me and a couple of my friends made the trip up to London for a couple of days. We left Rome on Thursday morning on a 6:30 AM flight, putting us in London at around 8:30. We got settled into our hostel, which ended up being a really nice place. The hostel had two nice common rooms, one of which had computers and a large projection screen to watch movies on, which became a great way for us to meet people. That first day we began to explore London as much as we could as three people who had never been to the city before. We walked around and ended up seeing Big Ben, Westminster, and Trafalgar's Square. We found a good place to have lunch right near the square, and of course had to have some fish and chips for lunch. We went back to our hostel for a little while and rested before going to catch our reservation on the London Eye at sunset since we had been told it was the best time to go on it. The view and "flight", as they call it, was amazing. It's so amazing to be above London in a fully glass capsule as the sun sets over Westminster Abby, Big Ben, and Buckingham Palace. After our flight we went out for some dinner at a pub near our hostel, and then called it an early night since we had been up all night the night before to catch our flight.
Friday morning we had heard about a free tour that left from Greens Park tube station at 11 Am, so we decided to give it a shot. The tour ended up being awesome. Our tour guide Gregg was the owner of the company, Nonstoplondon.com, and started it recently because he didn't like the way that other tours were run. All tours are tips-only at the end, and he worked for every pound that he got. he took us through the parks, to Buckingham Palace and the changing of the guard, St. James, Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, Trafalgar's Square, Westminster Abby, Big Ben, 10 Downey Street, Churchill's Bunker, as well as many other places. The changing of the guard was fun to see, and we managed to get pretty close. He gave an excellent 3-hour tour, and we quickly became friends with the people that were on it. A few of us decided to get together again later in the night for Gregg's Jack the Ripper tour, which was also amazing. Before that tour we went to the Tower Bridge and explored the city some more. On the jack the Ripper tour, we followed the footsteps of the infamous serial killer and learned about the top suspects and the victims in detail. After the tour was over, Gregg offered to take us to the pub that Jack and most of his victims believed to frequent. The pub was left the same as it was at the time of Jack the Ripper, with tiles on the walls that are hundreds of years old. We enjoyed seeing the pub and talking to everyone that we had met, and eventually made it back to our hostel to rest up for our third day in London.
Saturday we woke up pretty early and headed to the Globe Theater, which has been reconstructed to look exactly like it did in Shakespeare's day when he put on his plays there. From there we went to St. Paul's Cathedral, which was beautiful to see. We ran over from there to the one spot we all insisted on going to, which was Abbey Road. We saw the Abbey Road Studios, and made our own desperate attempt to imitate the cover of the album by walking across the road, even though it didn't come out too well because we were trying not to get hit while doing it. We grabbed some lunch at the original Hard Rock Cafe, and made sure to act like tourists and take pictures of all of the memorabilia. Since we were in the right area, we then went over to Hyde Park, and Harrod's. Hyde Park was amazing, and reminded me so much of Central Park in NYC, but it was not as good in my very biased opinion. Harrod's was amazing as well. We all were stunned by the store that was really the original one-stop shop, with everything from cars, to clothes, to steaks, to electronics. We spent some time in there before heading back to our hostel to relax for a bit. After a nice nap, we all met up with our friends from our tour the previous day at a nice pub, and talked about our travels. We ended up saying our goodbyes and going back to our hostel to grab our luggage and head to the airport, since we had to catch a bus to the airport at 2:40 in the morning for our 6 AM flight. We got back to Rome around 9 AM and ended up sleeping pretty much all day.
Although London had the worst possible exchange rate and was insanely expensive, we had an amazing time, and managed to live on a budget pretty well, although that meant not going into some of the places that cost 10 pounds for entry. As of today, I have exactly three weeks until I land back in New York, assuming I manage to make it through Heathrow's Terminal 5 in one piece. This coming weekend one of my friends and I are going mountain biking in the Dolomiti Alps, and next weekend five of us are going canyoning in Terni in the Umbria region of Italy. Time is really flying by now, and I hope that all is going well at home. I'll see everyone soon.

~Mike