Headache

Hey, so I'm taking a break from planning. It's giving me a headache. I just thought I would write, and tell you about my weekend. It was fun, it involves a lot of London. Amaya's friends are here, Mara and Leslie, both from Virginia. They are both nice, a little quiet, but that's okay. Amaya and I went to go pick them up on Saturday. They got in around 10ish. So the bus ride into Heathrow was good, and after a little searching we found them. Their plane came in early, which caught us off guard, but oh well. In the airport, I had on my USM sweatshirt, and of course I had my scarf on, but as I walked by someone, I heard, "USM, you don't see that across the pond." I turned to the guy and nodded saying, "No you don't." Hahah, I was a little impressed that he could read my sweatshirt since my scarf was right over the words.

Anyway, we took the 111 home, which drops us off right in front of the Bridge House. It's a little longer than the 285, but since we have never taken the 111, we wanted to. The ride home was fun, I got to talk to Mara, she is also an English major, and right now taking Children's Lit. She told me some of the books she is reading, and yeah I like my selection much better. No Barrie, Lewis, just American authors. Nothing against American authors, but all the big classics are British. So we had a nice chat. We were sitting in one of the 4 seats facing each other, and the two people opposite us were bashing Americans so bad. They must have known, and the woman was saying that Americans are ignorant, rude, and have big mouths. That kinda described that woman though. I think it's very rude to be insulting another country when it's really obvious you have someone from that country sitting across from you, it's also ignorant, and she had the loudest voice, so yes a big mouth too. Argh oh well. She was fond of Canadians though...

Anyway, we get to Hampton Court Palace, and I get excited because I'm ready to be off this bus, when we just stop. There is traffic, a huge line of it from the ROUNDABOUT! Um like 1 mile and a half back up. We walked home, well we got off halfway home from the Palace. Argh, it was a little annoying. We were almost home, but then so far away.

So we got home, they did a few things, and then we went into London. So yeah, the weekend of hell. New Malden was closed, buses went from Kingston to Wimbledon to make up for no New Malden. Or you could go the long way around through Richmond. We went through Richmond. We finally got to London, and our first order of business was food. In Kingston we have a Slug and Lettuce, and I've always wanted to go to it. There is one right by Waterloo, so I said we had to go. We went, and yeah food service in London is slow, but this was crawling. It was so bad. We waited soooo long to get our food, and then our check. Argh it was annoying. Never going there again. So now it's like 3pm, and we have to back in Kingston by 6pm because Jenna, Danielle and Jason were coming over. Great. I took them on a quick tour of London- The Eye, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Downing Street, Trafalgar, and Tower Bridge. Tower Bridge was sooo out of the way, but they wanted to see it. Big mistake. The first part was easy, it's all in walking distance of each other. We stopped and took pics of the horses by the stables, and then with the guards, went through St. James Park, saw the Queen (just kidding), and at Trafalgar caught a bus to Tower. We got to Tower, I pointed it out, and then we left. They were jet lagged, and all our walking was killing them. So we go to get on the Underground at Tower, and it's closed. The District and Circle lines are closed for the weekend. Excuse me?? I'm not even sure how that is possible. So we get on a bus and go to Charing Cross (yes, we went back to where we started from), and take the Jubilee I think to Waterloo. We get to Waterloo, and we had to wait like a half an hour for a train to Kingston. We aren't getting on a train until 6pm. I texted Kathleen, and told her this, thinking that she would be home to entertain our friends. No, she and Jessica are at Vauxhall waiting for the same train. GREAT. Martin entertained Jenna, Danielle, and Jason. Oh well.

I did forget to mention that as we were boarding the bus to go to Charing Cross, Mara had her camera stolen. There was a lot of people getting on this bus, and someone nudged Mara, and someone else got the camera. She had it on top of her purse, or sticking out of her purse as she was getting her Travelcard, and yep stolen. As we were driving away, Amaya saw someone hiding a camera in their hand, and then slipping it into their pocket, and it looked very much like Mara's camera. I felt so bad for her. I mean, she's been in London just for a few hours, and her camera was stolen.

But anyway, we came back here, and hit up Lloyds for the night. It was a good time, there was so many of us, but party on.

Sunday we got off to a late start, got Jessica to Liverpool Street so she could go to Stansted, and then the rest of us got some food, and then went to the British Museum. Kathleen, Cassie and I went downstairs, and yeah I found more statues of Marcus Aurelius, and other Romans and Greeks. Love the British Museum!!!

Um so I have to go back to planning, but right now it looks like Sweden (Stockholm), and then Norway (Oslo and maybe Tonsberg), back to England, and then to Greece with Kathleen. And then after Athens and some islands, over to Italy where we will go to ROME, and then go up Italy visiting Venice, Florence, and sometime I will return to England. Happy times!