Londra

Ciao miei belli amici! I suppose it's time to write a bit about London, or Londra as we say here. Our new flight was scheduled for Saturday morning at 10am. We were planning on leaving the villa at 5:15. Abe came and woke me up at 5:00--apparently I turned off my alarm--so I didn't get to shower. Anyway, we traveled to Pisa then got to the airport a little over 2 hours prior to our flight. The flight went well and we landed in London, FINALLY! Anyway, sparring you the boring details, we found our hostel...The Walrus. I picked that hostel because first, I think the walrus is a funny animal and secondly, I like the Beatles song that is was named after. Anyway, we tossed our stuff on our beds and headed out to get supper and explore the town.

With our limited time in Londra, we did a lot. We traveled by the tube to save time and get to most of the things we wanted to see. Here's a list of the wonderful things we saw in Londra (and keep in mind, we had like 30 hours to do this all):

-Hard Rock Cafe vault tour (we saw all sorts of great rock memorabilia stored in a vault under the gift shop).
-Met up with Amanda's friend who's studying in London and went out to a restaurant.
-Walked a lot, got a little lost.
-Mass, in English, which was a pleasant change.
-Saw the Notting Hill neighborhood and had amazing cupcakes there.
-Harry Potter's platform 9 3/4
-Abbey Road and the recording studio, from the outside. Of course, we took the signature Abbey Road picture.
-Cabinet War Rooms (This was the underground "lair" of all British operations during WWII. It was a great museum with a lot of cool stuff to see, and a lot of information about Churchhill.)
-Imperial War Museum (We only got to this a half hour before it closed...and it's a huge museum. This was a little sad; next time I'm in London I think I would reserve at least a half a day in the building, if not more, to see everything. It's also free!)
-A few meals
-Saw Big Ben
-Rode lots of escalators
-Saw Buckingham palace; we were there on the wrong day to be able to see the changing of the guards, but that's okay.
-Saw some sort of London Royal Navy Parade type thing--we still aren't really sure what it was.
-Got close to the guards. (No, mom, I didn't try and make them laugh like I've always wanted to. But, I'm planning an attack for next time I'm in London because I will make them laugh. I was just a little thrown off/scared of their large guns.)
-Walked around St. James Park and took tons of beautiful pictures, even some with a giant pelican that was sitting in the middle of the path.

This is all I can think of for now--and it's lunch time. But, I'll update the list if I recall anything else. London was great and I'll definitely go back there!

Oh, and did you know they drive on the wrong side of the road. But more on that after the Dublin post (because they do that there too!).