Flashback Friday: London
Happy Friday to all my wonderful friends! Once again, I am going to go for a Flashback Friday post. I think most of you enjoy reading those over the "fun facts" and they are more fun for me to come up with and write. It works out nicely. 🙂
About a month ago, Peter found this in one of our closets.
It completely motivated me to do some flashbacks of what is written in those leather bound covers. What is it? None other than my personal journal from the almost 2 months I spent backpacking through Europe!
total goofball even back then
It may be cliche, but people do it for a reason. It can't be beat. That was one of the BEST vacations of my life. One of the pluses of getting hit by a car as a pedestrian and having lawsuit money to help pay for college + summer before working full time. 😉 I absolutely cannot wait to go back, but I know that won't be for a long while so the flashbacks will suffice. Time to get packing!
We started our Europe trip in London because we were seeing some of my friend's family for her cousin's high school graduation from a boarding school there.
Since we started the trip around familiar people, it didn't seem REAL that we were in England. Even after hitting up Windsor Castle with her family it wasn't quite real I was in another country.
Maybe seeing the guards helped a little bit. 😉
Eventually, we left her family to start the true backpacking experience and head to our first stay at a hostel. Haha. I think every place we went has an interesting hostel story. This one was sharing a room with a chick that laughed and talked to herself...all.night.long! After checking in first thing that morning, we set out to explore downtown London. We visited Buckingham Palace and showed up just in time to witness the changing of the guard. All that pomp and circumstance was pretty interesting.
We also made sure to walk around for the traditional sight seeing hot spots.
Tower Bridge
London Eye
Big Ben
Westminster Abbey
There is something surreal about seeing things you had previously only seen in pictures. I remember both of us watching all of the London episodes of Friends before we left. We ended the first day crashing in our bunk beds. That first day, we walked over 16 miles! You will hurt in places you never knew after doing that suddenly. All of you runners who run that much at once...you're crazy. And I say that with the utmost of admiration. 😉
The next days we continued with the sight seeing to things like Hyde Park and the Tate Modern, as well as (window) shopping in Harrod's and (really) shopping in H&M. This was before they were common here in the States, so that was like heaven. We also got some of the "must-have" shots in London. Like this one for example.
We also took a trip down the Thymes River to head into Greenwich.
The Maritime Museum and Meridian Line are located there, along with a cute little town. I did two things I had never done before in Greenwich.
Stood in Two Timezones at Once
Ate Fish & Chips
The homesickness started kicking in towards the last of our London days. It was more just a surprise missing of people. And for me, the biggest surprise was missing Peter. We had only been dating for a month before I left, but I missed that boy like no other. We say my trip helped solidify our feelings and speed the remainder of our relationship along (engaged 7 months in, married 6 months later, etc). Absence does make the heart grow fonder.
Even with not even an entire week, I had already experienced a more exciting vacation than I could have imagined. And it only got much, much better. Stay tuned for future Flashback Fridays to read on about my trip. 🙂
- Where is the best place you have ever traveled? Mine = Barcelona!!!
- Where are you dying to go? Australia or Greece!
