continued....

Alright, so after shopping, I'm proud to say Kelly and I mastered London. We walked around a (really) small market, and got directions from some locals to the Hard Rock Cafe London, which was about a ten minute walk away. Considering how far we had already walked and that our feet couldn't possible hurt any worse, we headed that way. Along the way we stopped in a really cute (and expensive) chocolate/gift/tea/christmas type store that reminded Kelly of Treasure Island at home. When we finally made it to Hard Rock, we sat at the bar...and after showing our New Jersey licenses shared a drink! So strange that we can show our licenses and have drinks when we're still 20. After resting our feet and having a drink...we became even better masters of London. We conquered the Tube (or the underground). We found the nearest station..and figured out how to take it all the way to the Tower of London, even with switching trains. We were so good at the end of the day traveling by the Tube that we could have given directions out to others.

When we got to the Tower of London...we didn't actually think we were there. It should be called the Castle of London..or something. WHen we got off the tube, the first thing we saw was a really pretty building/castle. We didn't know what it was, so we just started taking pictures of it of course. Then Kelly asked a bus driver where the Tower of London was, and he, (not so happy by the way) pointed it out to us. It happened to be the building we were taking pictures of just a minute beforehand...yeahhh, that's what we get for not having a map, we make ourselves look silly to the locals. Lol. It was really funny, and it definitely didn't look like a tower. While walking towards it we saw the Tower Bridge, and walked about halfway across it. The bridge was so awesome! I always thought bridges were really cool, but this was literally followed after it's name (unlike the Tower of London). It was two towers made of stone, and had a drawbridge, plus pedestrian walkways. It was awesome to walk along it, and even better when we walked down along the river to see it from afar.

After this, we were extremely tired...I'm not sure what we were running on. We found the tube again and rode it all the way back to our hotel area. We ate in a small Italian place and I had pizza, which was much better than Baltimore pizza, but not as good as New Jersey pizza (naturally).

When we got back to the hostel, Kelly and I got ready to go out with some other girls. We ended up at this place called TigerTiger, which was a bar/club. We had a few drinks and tried to walk around, but it was really crowded. It was also expensive...but we were in London so we figured how many times were we going to be able to do that?

The next day (Sunday) was a little chillier than the rest of the weekend, but still nice. We took a day trip to Brighton, which was is a seaside coastal town. We took a tour of King Henry IV's party castle, which was strangely designed. He had it built to look like an Indian palace on the outside (Taj Majal) and Chinese/Oriental designs on the inside. It was also designed to have a lot of illusions in it. Not like tricks and things, but illusions to the type of materials it was made of. For instance, England didn't have access to bamboo in those days, and King Henry IV wanted bamboo in many places to go along with the theme, so he had people carve and design bamboo looking material out of things like metal and such. The tour didn't last too long and then we were able to walk around by ourselves for a while. Kelly and I ate lunch at a cafe and then walked down to the shore. There were shops, and vendors, and a pier with rides and games and food stands and lots and lots of bikers! The beach, if you can call it that, didn't have sand, it had stones/rocks! It reminded me almost exactly of the boardwalk back at home, minus the stones for sand and the hundreds of bikers. I took a few small stones where there should have been sand, as if they were shells from home! I'm pretty sure the water there was the English Channel as well. It was really pretty!

Alright...I figure I should do these posts in segments since there is an overflow of information. So far since we were back in Newcastle though we have started orientations and class registrations, which is really stressful. The system over here is ridiculous and in my opinion, more complicated than it has to be. Well, once the semester starts things should calm down a bit. It's 11:45pm here, and I'm super tired! Gotta shower and get some sleep, maybe read some of my book beforehand also :) Goodnight! xoxo