Jolene's Heidelberg Semester: Hello, Big Ben :)

So last month we took a trip to London, and it was fantastic. Let me tell you about it! First of all, we left Thursday afternoon after our German History course and made our way to the Frankfurt-Hahn airport to fly with Ryanair (this was October 15th). The only shuttle that would take us there on time got us there about 5 hours before our plane was going to leave, and two or three hours before we could even get into our gate! We spent some quality time in the shops and ate some yummy snacks. Then finally, around 10:20 PM we boarded our plane. At 10:40 we left and enjoyed the hour and twenty-minute long flight to the London-Stansted airport, arriving at midnight our time and 11:00 local time. Once we got to the airport and went through customs, we took the Terravision bus to Victoria Coach Station, in the middle of London. Our plans became a little bit more complicated, because I'd researched the bus schedules to our hostel from the other bus station option we had, but I hadn't planned on us arriving at Victoria station. Let me just say, we met a few really helpful people, and a few mean people... and after a long night of waiting for buses and drinking hot chocolate to get correct change for bus tickets, we FINALLY made it to our hostel at 3:30 AM. We'd told them that we would arrive by at least 2:00, so we were so surprised when the manager was still awake and waiting for us to get there safely! That was just amazing.

Anyway, let me give you a basic layout of our weekend. We slept in Friday morning and took the bus to Kensington Park. We spent all afternoon walking through the beautiful trees and gardens and fountains. Then we found our way into Hyde Park, which was just a bit smaller. We walked around the perimeter of it along the river and this took us to Buckingham Palace. After walking around there for a bit we headed back to Victoria Coach station, ate some yummy dinner along the way, and after yet some more bus complications we made it back to our hostel again! Then Saturday morning we checked out of our first hostel and made our way to our second one, which was actually much closer to the part of London we'd spend much of our day at. We actually met up with my friend Sarah there, who is an APU student studying abroad in Oxford. So then the five of us left the second hostel and went back to the center of the city! We saw Westminister Abbey, Big Ben, Parliament, and the London Eye. We got in a lot of walking that evening, and it was wonderful to see Big Ben lit up at night. Anyway, that was our last night in London! That night actually had some amazing complications, though... Jess's ticket had been changed by Ryanair to a flight that left at 6 or 7 in the morning, while the other three of us still had a flight at 3 pm that day. I was actually really sick that night, with chills and a slight fever and a headache, so I stayed in bed when Jekka and Tavia embarked on a journey to get Jess to Victoria coach station. They left at about 3:00 with the bus schedules written down and directions on how to get to Victoria. However, everything went wrong, and none of the right buses were going where they needed to go. So Jekka and Tavia didn't return to our hostel until 6:30 Sunday morning! London was full of complications, and was downright stressful at times. But we all got home safe and we definitely learned some lessons!

Overall... London was beautiful, and the accents were to die for. So none of us would trade this trip for anything.

Anyway, here are pictures!

The next morning we slept until about 10 and then found an amazing breakfast at a little cafe down the street. The food was just so yummy!