London

We have finally got the blog up and running, but a few days late so I will cover what we've done so far!

London started with a giant slap in the face from jet-leg. For some it was our first real experience with the bitch, but hey we managed to push through it. Justin, Drew, Darrick, and myself (Leah) arrived in London before the rest of the crew. We waited around for a bit until we decided we needed to get out of the airport and get moving. We quickly scratched the idea of taking a cab after we found out how much that would cost to our far destination. The Tube (subway) was our next option and luckily we figured it out fast. Arriving in London ended up being a good first destination because it allowed us to get ahold of the tube system quickly and understand foreign ways, but in english.

Our hostel, St. Christopher's Inn's, located in the Shepherds Bush district was decent yet small. We all fit into an 8 bedroom dorm (minus Sam who started in Amsterdam) plus a strange random from Aussie. The hostel had a great bar on the main floor, and required hostel registration at the bar. After all was settled we hopped back on the tube and went downtown. We all walked up from the underground and had our first aw-struck moment with the amazing buildings and New York style bustling city. We wondered aimlessly around the area and eventually stumbled across Big Ben, leading us to the House of Parliament and Westminster Abby. As delirious as we were, we couldnt believe we had finally made it and were looking at things we had only ever seen in pictures (besides Justin who is our experienced traveler).

On our second day we got up early and went back downtown. Drew needed to buy a Eurail pass and we all needed to book a night train to Barcalona. We finally found the right building but realised Drew and Keagan forgot their passports at the hostel (surprise?). We then wondered over to Buckingham Palace to watch the changing of the gaurd. It was grand but nearly impossible to see the show with the thousands of other tourists. Afterwards Drew and Keags went back to get their passports and the rest of us went to Westminster to go in. Little did we know it would actually blow our minds once we were inside. It was 13 pounds to get in with a student ID and included a voice tour. The place was so big we couldnt finish the entire tour. The gaudy interior was magnificent and the amount of historical figures burried their is uncomprehensible.

That night we succeeded to get our second nights sleep of about 4 hours... The next morning we were up at 5 (thanks to Darrick) and on our way to catch a train to Paris. As Keagan put it, we were Lon-and-done.

Note: Mitch couldnt stop calling the the double decker buses, 'cheesy double-deckers,' referring to taco bells famous double-decker (If only they were yellow he would have been obsessed). He also came up with a international conversion for rating girls (another surprise?)