After I was done in Toulouse, France with my work week I boarded a plane to London for the weekend. This was my first time out of the country (other than a mission trip to Mexico, which I don't count because we actually stayed the nights in Brownsville, TX) so I wanted to see as much as I could cram in. I was very fortunate to have my good friend, Jason, as my travel companion for the whole trip. We have very similar interests when it comes to traveling.....including the 10 minutes we walked through the National Gallery (famous London art museum) just so we could say we have seen a Di Vinci painting, but then we were more than ready to leave even though the travel book said that even if we only have one day we should dedicate an hour and a half to this place.
Anyway, upon my arrival on Friday evening we headed down to Piccadilly Circus (not an actual circus....to my disappointed). This place is a very popular point in London, which could be compared to Times Square but much smaller. Walked to the queens quarters (Buckingham Palace) and through Hyde Park (very similar to Central Park in NYC). In fact, London is very similar to NYC except over 1,000 years older.
On Saturday we woke up and grabbed a quick (non-traditional) English breakfast and headed to the real touristy spots.....Big Ben and the Parliament and got to glance down the street where the Prime Minister lives (nothing compared to the White House......I bet he doesn't even have room for a basketball court). These were amazingly towering old buildings that had very intricate detail on the architecture of the building. At this point I wish I knew a lot more about London history, because between the two of us Jason and I couldn't remember much.
After seeing the large clock and the old buildings we headed down the river and saw the London and Tower Bridges. Not really sure where Fergie got the inspiration for the song, the bridge didn't do too much for me.
After a long day of walking I was very happy when we walked into our hotel restaurant for dinner and saw the OU/Texas football game on TV. Reminded me of home.
I woke up very early the next morning for my 8 hour flight. The great part about heading home so early and the time change was that I landed in Chicago around 10 AM Sunday morning. Since I had all day, and felt pretty rested, I headed to Columbus to see my family for the afternoon. Although it was short it was very refreshing!
On my travels I learned a couple of things.
1. (I am sure it is just my American way but) contrary to popular belief I don't think learning another language is all that important. Nearly everybody speaks English around the world.
2. Time zone changes mess me up more than I thought. There was a 50 hour time period where I only had 7 hours of sleep. Part of this was because OSU played at 2:30 AM where I was, but non the less a very exhausting week. This caused me to live on espresso's for most of my waking hours.
3. I feel completely naked without phone service. Since my phone wasn't compatible with European service I couldn't do anything on my phone. Usually when I travel I just get off the plane and type wherever I want to go in the GPS function of my phone and I am there.
4. OSU is probably going to win the Big 12 South. (I know this isn't related to my travels, but I learned it while I was traveling). I am not saying OSU is great, or even better then they have been in the past few years but I keep posing the question.....who? Who is going to beat us? I think the most probable answer is ourselves. Of course we could get blown out by Nebraska, Texas or OU, but after seeing all three (especially TX and OU) I think we have a pretty good chance.
5. If you have particular eating habits (both kinds of food and times) you should probably bring lots of snacks to Europe. Everybody here eats dinner around 9 or 10 at night. The first couple of nights we were discussing dinner plans with the people that were hosting us and were ready to go. They kept insisting that we had 3 hours to spare and we said we were ready to eat right then. He said that isn't possible, because most restaurants don't open until 7:30. We always showed up at 7:30 and were the only people in the place, but sure enough, between 9-11:30 every restaurant was packed.
Where would one find the original London bridge?
ReplyDelete