The Xchange: London Calling

Successful first weekend in London! We got in at around 6pm on Friday and experienced opening the door to our hostel room for the first night... super interesting, lemme tell ya. I was picturing a kind of a 1940's hospital room scenario (as in a bunch of beds just lined up?), but we walked into a very small space with four bunkbeds for the eight of us. I was so happy to be travelling with my eight flatmates. I don't think I could have handled sleeping with strangers with just a little weird curtain separating us.

We decided Friday would be a little bit more low key because we just got in and wanted to explore a bit - we made our way to Piccadilly Circus on the tube. The tube is stupid expensive, but we bought day passes and I think it saved us a decent amount of money. Piccadilly circus is incredibly cool - the building are all beautiful and old, but have tv screens and advertisements all over them. I'm surprised I liked the contrast, I feel like that's something that would normally annoy me. We found a little pub after a bit of wandering and grabbed dinner - I had a chicken pot pie and a cider - all delicious.

After reuniting with Ben, who had joined us from France, we explored the city. We saw Trafalgar Square, Big Ben, and about a million beautiful old buildings. I probably saw other monuments but wasn't quite aware what was what. Regardless, everything was beautiful lit up at night. I've seen a thousand pictures of Big Ben, etc. but it's really cool to see it for yourself. There is so much detail in the stonework, it's amazing. There is also about a thousand statues of men on horses - I could name very few of them but I'm sure they were important.

Properly exhausted about walking about for [probably] hours, we retired to our hostel. It's less creepy when you're exhausted.

Saturday morning we had our generous breakfast of corn flakes and white toast, and the most horrific instant coffee known to mankind. But, free is free and it got us through the morning. We made our way to the British museum. The majority of London's museums are free, which I find incredible and awesome. We saw a ton of artefacts from Egypt, Rome, etc. We saw Cleopatra's mummy, and some bodies that were preserved just by the way the sand/elements were even though they were too poor for a proper embalming. Many gorgeous vases, plaques, anything you want. Pretty sure you could spend a week there and not see everything.

For lunch Elena [our mom and tour guide] took us to Camden Market. It was a very large open market with toooons of food, clothes, trinkets, and vintage clothes. Very cool to look around and take it all in! There was a little open cafe with a chandelier over it. There was a wall with horse statues coming out of it?! We also did some shopping on Oxford Street, where there are way too many people with nothing better to do than shop. Four floors of everything. We went to a few until we were all walked out. I met our other Exeter friends at a bar right beside the hostel for dinner and drinks, which was cool. I really like them all, and half of them live across from me but I never see them. Should probably get out of my bubble once in a while.

So we wanted to avoid enormous cover fees (20 pounds in Piccadilly Circus is not okay), so we took a tube down further into London. We went into a place with no cover, but that is because it was an old people bar playing old people music. The boys tried to convince us to stay but thaaaat was not happening. We went back a few blocks and found a place with a not horrible line and cover. It was a cute place, kind of house looking and places to dance or just stand around. DJ was super into his list, watched his chug an entire beer when a song he really liked came on. He played a lot of Missy Elliot which was kiiiiind of awesome! England has it right music wise - I love being able to sing along when I dance, and that's almost exclusively what they play (cheesy 90s, really popular 90s/2000s, songs from a year ago I've heard enough times to know). Anyway we realized it was 3:30 at some point and some people wanted food, so food & hostel & bed.

Sunday was fun rousing the troops, but we managed to get out for 10am check out. We attempted the National gallery, but a few of us did not have the attention span for religious and pastoral art in large volumes. About half of us stayed there while the other half (of which I was a part of) went and had lunch at a lovely little Thai place. I picked out my usual chicken with cashew, Elena and Jess got a great green curry chicken, and Ben and Natalie got a noodley dish then we all just spilt everything. Yuuum. We attempted more museums afterwards. Natural history was the most beautiful building of London, I've decided, and was decently cool inside as well. We didn't want to wait in line for the dinos (there were children everywhere - who were extremely well behaved, by the way) so we moved on to the science museum. We did a short walk through of the science museum and then of course we went shopping again (poor Ben). We popped into a Starbucks and became delirious - Elena completely fell asleep and the rest of us laughed at anything and everything. Also no one could form a sentence, so that was helpful. "We'll go to the thing.... and then the thing... and then the thing." "Okay, yep." We trained home after a bit of relaxing at the hostel and then back into school by Monday morning!

Hostel Room