In the home stretch and then I can go back to posting boring shit like my new haircut and pictures of Zoe being adorable.
Thursday February, 18 2010:
So Thursday morning, I didn’t feel so good. I woke up with a terribly sore throat and I couldn’t swallow because my glands felt so swollen. I decided to sit out the trip to the VNA Museum and meet up with my parents and Katelyn as they were finishing it. I met up with them in time for the gift shop and we were off to visit Harrod’s, the ginormous, famous and ridiculously expensive department store. It was pouring rain and cold again that day. Harrod’s was both awesome and depressing. Awesome in the sense that it was 7 stories of shopping in every single area you could imagine, including pets & books. They had this amazing section of their food court that was just all chocolate and sweets. Depressing in the sense that 98% of the things in the store probably cost more than one month of my paychecks lol. We did a little more window shopping in the area before moving on to Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square and did even more shopping at Convent Gardens. Convent Gardens was way more in my price range than Harrod’s.
We spent a while at Convent Gardens. We decided to visit The Admiral Coddington’s Pub (aka The “Cod” I guess?) for dinner. The Cod is famous for being where Princess Diana had hung out before she was Princess Diana. Sadly, we discovered that they didn’t serve dinner until 6:30pm and it was only 4:30pm at the time. So we had a drink and left Pub #1 and headed to Pub #2, which was some place by the South Kensington Tube Station. I don’t remember the name but I was underwhelmed by the food (not that pub food is supposed to be great but the other places we ate at all had good food). I had the biggest pint of Hoegarden at Pub #2. Mmmm. We went back to the hotel to rest up for a little while and then headed back out to Pub #3, which was right down the street from our hotel on Queens Gate and a recommendation from my mom’s cousin who used to live in South Kensington. As you can imagine, we were definitely exhausted after our third pub visit of the day and only stayed for an hour before going back to bed.
Friday, February 19, 2010:
Friday was a more laid back day. We said goodbye to Christie in the morning, who was leaving for Wales that afternoon. We went back to the Big Ben/Parliament area to take more pictures and cross over the bridge to the other side, where the London Eye is. The line for the Eye was too long at that point and since I was the only one who really wanted to go on it, we decided to move on. We walked down along the Thames River, went in some tourist shops, and crossed another bridge to go back the other side. From here, we walked up to some big book store that I cannot for the life of me remember what it was called. It was across the street from a closed-down Borders Books. After that, we headed back to South Kensington for dinner at another Italian restaurant right near the Tube station. I think it was a chain (Bella…something) but it was really good.
Saturday February 20, 2010:
On our final day in London, it was sunny and “warm” (aka like 40 degrees) in the morning so we walked around Kensington Park and up to Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park. Here’s where I have to gush about Kensington Park and that whole area. I’m so happy we went back there in the sunlight instead of the pouring rain we walked around it in previously. If I lived in that area, I’d be at that park all the time.
After that, we went back to the very first place we ate when we got to London: Gourmet Burgers. DELICIOUS. Go to there if you’re ever in London. It’s a chain of awesome. Then we went back to the hotel, gathered our luggage, got on the Tube and headed back to the airport. I have to say that I was very surprised with the security at Heathrow. I was wearing tall boots and didn’t have to take my shoes off. My dad accidentally left his Swiss Army Knife in his carry-on bag (instead of packing it) and they didn’t pick up on it. We got there very early because we anticipated possibly having to do one of those full body scans and never encountered one. I will say this, however: Heathrow has awesome Duty Free shopping there as well as plenty of expensive stores (Harrods, Tiffany’s, Burberry, etc.). It’s a way more fun airport to hang out in than LaGuardia or JFK.
On the plane ride home is where I started to feel sick. My head hurt, I had a lot of aches and pains and it was just impossible for me to even think about closing my eyes to sleep. I did however finish reading “Dead Until Dark,” the first book in the True Blood series and I watched the pilot of “The Good Wife,” which was pretty good. It took us 30 minutes to get through customs upon arriving back at JFK & an additional 40 minutes to get our luggage. I was dying at this point & my ears were all clogged up. Finally, around 12:30am we stumbled into the house on Long Island. I left for Raleigh at 8am the next morning.
Trip: Over.
