Traveling for a Month Part Six- London

So we did a quick stop in Milan so that some people could catch a night train to Rome and then headed back to Paris so that I could catch a train to meet my parents in London.  Spent a little time in Paris going to the Musee d'Orsay and wandering around.  The morning I was taking the train to London, I met up with my friend Katherine again for breakfast and she went to the train station with me.

The day before, there had been an issue in the Chunnel between Paris and London and so many trains had been delayed or cancelled so the train station was overrun with people trying to get on trains since they had missed theirs the day before.  There were about 4 steps in the process of getting through ticketing and security and I was barely through the first one when my train was supposed to be leaving. Luckily lots of other people were in the same predicament as me and so they held the train and I made it with just a few minutes to spare.  The ride was pretty unexciting and we made it to London only about 20 minutes late.  I had looked up what tube station I needed to get off at to get to the apartment we were staying in and how to get there from where I thought my train was coming in.  Of course the train I took went to a different station and this station had no maps and the station didn't have wifi either.  I decided I would get on the tube and just get to the station I needed to be at and figure it out from there.  At the stations I knew they had mini maps of the surrounding area and I just hoped that i would be able to look on that and find where I should be.  I got to the station but the street we were staying on was not on the map.  I figured that I would go outside and see if I could find wifi.  I saw a Costa Coffee which always has wifi and I was a little hungry from not eating lunch.  I decided to go in and get a sandwich; when I asked for the wifi password they informed me they had just opened and would not have wifi for two weeks.  I ate my sandwich and decided to wander for a while and see if I could find the street.  Eventually I gave up and got a cab and used 10 of my 15 pounds on the cab ride.

Train Station

London Bridge

London Bridge

The apartment we were staying in was right by Tower Bridge and was really nice.  I was there first so I just relaxed until my parents showed up about half an hour later.  It was the first time I had seen them since I left so that was great!  They had seen a Papa John's across the street so my mom and I headed over there to pick up a pizza for dinner since they were tired from traveling from Ireland.  While we were waiting for the pizza we stopped next door and got some groceries to get us through the week.  The next day we decided to go to the Tower of London and took a tour around the tower as well as looked in a few of the buildings ourselves and saw the crown jewels.  After exploring the castle we met up with my friend Chris who was studying in Coventry for the semester and had been in London visiting other friends.  He stayed the night and then came to Easter service and the play with us the next day.  We went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant near our apartment which was very good.

View from Tower Bridge

Just inside the first gate

The houses the Yeoman Warriors live in

The oldest building in the London Tower complex

"Traitor's Gate" which leads to the Thames

The next day was Easter and we got up and headed to Westminster Cathedral for mass.  It was a high mass so it was about 2 hours from start to finish and the Archbishop who had just been elected a Cardinal presided.  We headed to the West End to get some tickets to the show "The Commitments" and grabbed lunch at a pub before the show started.  The show was set in Dublin and just hearing the Irish accent made me want to be back in Ireland and also really excited to get back.  We said goodbye to Chris at the tube station and headed back to our apartment.

Westminster Cathedral

Show in the West End

The next day we took a day tour to Salisbury, Stonehenge and Bath.  We went to the cathedral in Salisbury and had lunch in a pub.  We went on the audio tour at stonehenge which was cool because, well stonehenge is cool, and because some of the stuff I have learned in Archaeology was mentioned in the audio guide.  We went to the roman baths in Bath and stopped by another church while we were there.  We got back to London very late and spent the rest of the night relaxing.

Salisbury Cathedral

Medieval Clock that still works in Salisbury Cathedral

The pub we ate at in Salisbury

Stonehenge

Roman Baths in Bath

The front of the Roman Baths

The next day we went to the Borough Market which was near our apartment and was full of good looking food! We ate big lunches and then walked to the Tate Modern to culture ourselves with some art.  After the Tate, we headed to see Big Ben and walked around to Picadilly Circus and to Buckingham Palace.  We ate near the West End and then headed back to the apartment for the night.

Nice seating area near the booths

Live music while we ate

Inside the Tate Modern

The outside of the Tate Modern

Buckingham Palace

The next day was our last full day in London and we went to the Borough Market for lunch again because it had been so good the day before.  We took the tube to Soho Square and sat there for a little bit.  A friend of mine had told me about a cupcake shop near Soho Square so we ventured the streets to find it and they were some of the best cupcakes that I have had.  We went on a Beatles walking tour for a few hours ending at the intersection where the Beatles crossed the road for the Abbey Road album cover.  We stopped at Harrod's and wandered around there for a while and then had dinner across the street before heading back to the apartment.

Soho Square

The Hummingbird Bakery

Abbey Road Studios

The next day we packed up, checked out and headed to the airport to head back to Ireland together.

Traveling for a Month Part Five- Swizterland

We left Munich early after stopping at the grocery store.  We had decided we wanted to run across the country of Lichtenstein because one of our fellow study abroaders had said that it was only two miles wide if you wanted to run across.  We spent the first part of the drive pumping ourselves up and enjoying the scenery, when we finally got to the border we pulled into a gas station for a bathroom break and snacks and water.  We double checked the GPS because that road was supposed to stretch across the country and into Switzerland.  What we found was that in fact Lichtenstein was actually four miles across.  We all then made the decision that that was way too far (in my case, the others probably could have run it easily haha) and we didn't want to run that far so we enjoyed our break and decided to just keep driving.

We decided to stop and take a closer look at this lake and lakeside town right after getting to Switzerland.

Our first stop in Switzerland was Zurich for the day.  We had to start our time in Zurich at the bus station meeting up with the 6th person in our group who had taken a bus.  We had a hard time both in finding a bathroom and finding money while we were waiting.  We went wandering in the neighborhood around the bus station for and ATM and food, but were unsuccessful.  As we decided to head back to the bus station we realized that the gas station across from where we had parked exchanged money.  A few of us exchanged a little money and then the next issue was the bathroom.  If you didn't know, in Europe, you often have to pay for bathrooms or you have to purchase something from a store/restaurant before you can use the bathroom because they have a keypad outside the door you need to enter a code on to get into.  Eventually someone gave in and paid probably close to $8 for a Starbucks drink so the group could get the code to the bathroom.

This was really nice car that everyone was stopping to take pictures of, it seemed to be custom made, and was named "Desire"

Once we had been reunited we decided to take our groceries to a lake that we had seen and ate on the boardwalk area.  We quickly realized that there is a lot of money in Zurich and everyone drives fancy cars.  We decided to wander the city center area, because none of us really knew what there was to do in Zurich.  We were able to find an ATM, we also saw the Lindt Chocolate factory.  Another realization quickly dawned on us that Zurich is definetly a shopping city, but only if you have lots of money.  We found a park over looking the city and sat up there for a little bit.  From there we saw there was a church with two towers and it looked like people were on top, so we decided to check that out and then head to Interlaken where we were going to be staying for the next few nights. 

We had a little trouble finding the chalet that we were staying in, but when we found it, it was perfect.  We had a view to the side of a mountain of a forest and the inside was so cute!  We relaxed and ate some food that we had picked up that morning and then made a campfire outside.

Our Chalet

The next morning we met up with two other people from our study abroad group who were finishing their time in Switzerland that day and then decided to hike.  There is a big platform at the top of one of the mountains surrounding Interlaken that you can hike to and walk out on so we decided to do that hike.  The hike was named Harder Klum and took us a little over two hours to hike up about 1500 meters.  It was a difficult hike but definitely worth the views that we got at the end.  Then we hiked down and walked around the city a little bit, but many of the stores were closed because it was a Sunday.  We stopped at the grocery store and got some more food for dinner that night which we cooked at the Chalet.  We had another campfire that night in the beautiful evening and just sat around chatting.

At the top of Harder Klum

Views as we hiked up

The platform at the top

View from the platform

The next day we went back to Interlaken with the plan of walking around for a bit.  The day before we had seen a lot of people landing from Paragliding in the big park in the middle of the town and I decided to try it!  I got all suited up and drove up to the top of one of the mountains where you do that launch from and walked to the starting point.  By the time we got up there though the wind had picked up and changed direction so we weren't able to safely take off.  We waiting up there for a while to see if the wind changed, but sadly it didn't and we headed back down to town.  It was disappointing that I wasn't able to go paragliding because I had worked up all the courage to get excited about it, but at least I got to see a view that not many people get to see when they go to Interlaken.  They said we could keep checking in with them throughout the day to see if the wind changed later in the day, sometimes it dies down around 4pm but every time we checked they said that it hadn't changed.  

We drowned our sorrows in a chocolate show that we had been planning to go to.  This means that you go to a chocolate factory and they show you how they make all the different types of chocolate that they sell and give you samples!  The chocolatier showed us how they make chocolate shoes and I immediately thought of my Aunt Joan who loves shoes and I wanted to bring one back for her, but sadly it wouldn't fit in my small suitcase I was using to get around for the month.  We then decided to get dinner at the restaurant connected to the chocolate shop, which was really good!  We ended the night relaxing in the chalet playing games and catching up on reading, journaling and blogging (this is where I wrote my blog about Dublin and Paris).

Chocolate Shoes

Making Caramel filled Chocolate mountains

Finishing off the shoes he made

Yummy chocolate truffle thing in true Minnesotan style all the way in Switzerland (on a stick!)

The next morning we cleaned up and packed and then got into the car for the journey to Milan.