Spring Break: From the Best to the Worst Part: London

Once we arrived in London, the first thing we did was look for an ATM in order to get money. I decided to only pull out 100 pounds, hoping they would last me for four days. The problem was that from those 100 pounds, half were going for the hostel. After retrieving money, we decided to look for an information booth in order to get a city map and try to localize our hostel. This time we felt so good that we were able to ask for information in English. When the information lady told us where we had to go, we asked her for walking directions. The lady was shocked to hear us asking this since the hostel was three miles away, maybe even more. Me and Paula had discussed this before. Since we were trying to save money, we were going to try to find this place walking. After all, we had practically walked about the same distance or even more in Paris. I have to admit the experience of having to walk so much was not bad at all because we got to see London's night life. Yes, we got tired, but it was a price to pay in order to see London at night. However, I was not amused by what I saw. After approximately two months and a half of seeing such beautiful architecture over here, going back to seeing buildings just like those back home in America was not exciting. To top that off, this place was full of places similar to the ones we have in the USA, so it was just like if we were back home. There was one difference, though. People in London drive backwards, that is, they drive on the left side of the road and the steering wheel is on the right side. It was hard to cross the road since I was used to looking always to the left for coming traffic. After a while, I just gave up and decided to look both ways. After walking for like 2 hours and having cramps in our legs, we finally reached our destination. The hostel was gigantic and beautiful, but we had to stay with other 26 people in the same room. That worried me because I was afraid my belongings were going to get stolen, but they ended up being safe. That night, we only planned our next day and then completely knocked out. The next day, we decided to start our day with a free tour of London. We saw the house of the queen, who was actually there when we were there, and then went to go see the house of the prince. After that, the tour guy showed us other important houses around. I really enjoyed this tour because the guy gave us a lot of history and purposes of many traditions aside of being funny. After the tour, our next destination was the Eye of London. The view up there was simply fantastic. We were able to see many important places in London such as the Big Ben from up there, a sight I will never forget. Even better, once we got down, we decided to visit the aquarium. I enjoy looking at animals and learning more about them. In this aquarium, we learned about many groups in England and around the world who are trying to save turtles, sea horses, and mantle rays from becoming extinct. Once we were done looking around, we decided to look for China Town in London. This place was relatively small compared to other China Towns, but we did enjoy a delicious dinner along with one of the best pastries I have ever had, a mango cake. After going souvenir shopping, we decided we had walked a lot (we did not use the bus at all) so we decided to go back to the hostel and rest for the next day. On Friday, we decided to make it our museum day. First, we went to the "Great British Museum", which is basically a historical museum of the whole world. You practically need a whole week in order to enjoy this museum. We had decided to spent only about two hours there, but by the time those two hours ended, we had not even seen half of the first floor. We decided to leave in order to go to the "National History Museum". This place was not as big as the "British Museum", but it still took us a while to see what they had. It was basically a museum of the history of London, and personally, I did not enjoy it as much. Then we decided to go to St. Paul's Cathedral, but did not go in since they had a fee of 18 pounds to go in. I am still satisfied I was able to see it from the outside and take pictures. Our last stop was the Tower Bridge, one of the most famous bridges in the world. We didn't only get to cross it, but we got to climb one of its towers and learn about the history of this bridge. Just knowing how it works mechanically amazes me since back then, they didn't have the same technology we have today. Once we were back at the hostel, we decided to eat there and just chill. I had a typical Londonish plate, fish and chips, and a Londonish beer. It was probably the best meal I had in the entire trip since it was warm and we got to sit down and just relax. The next day, we first went to Abbey Rd., a road made famous by the Beatles. Then, we saw our final museum destination, the "Museum of Science". Again, this place was huge, so we really had to decided carefully what we wanted to see since we had limited time due to us leaving back to Bonn that afternoon. We saw several things, but we decided to dedicate most of our time in the fourth floor, the floor where they had the history and science of medicine. I was able to see many things I have learned so far in my history of medicine class, but what I liked the most was the section of veterinary medicine history. Even though it was the smaller section out of all the medicine part, I believe I spent the most time there just reading every sign and trying to imagine how life was back then for veterinarians. This place made me be glad that veterinarian medicine has advanced so much. After spending a good amount of time in that museum, we started heading back to the train station, but not without first stopping at a big market in where I tried Brazilian food and bought my England flag for my collection. Once we arrived at the train station, I felt a great relief because I thought this whole week of torture was over. Not torture because I did not enjoy it, but torture because we literally walked all over three different cities with hardly enough money. Regardless of that, it made me learn a really valuable lesson. We are blessed to be able to have means of transportation whenever we needed and to have the guarantee that we will be having a good warm meal at least twice per day. There are people out there that do not have all these, but they still manage to go around and be happy. We should enjoy our lifes more instead of going around complaining about every single problem we have that is most likely not a big deal. I was excited to finally go back to London, but our trip back was not that enjoyable. First of all, we were leaving London at 7pm and not arriving at Bonn until 8am. This 13 hour trip ment that we had to change trains not just once nor three times, but like five times. This ment that we hardly got any sleep since we had to be paying attention for our stops. During the time in between, we had to wait a good while in the cold. At one of the stops, an old guy was nice enough to allow us to stay inside one of the trains while our train arrived. I thank God for that since it was snowing in that city, the station was closed, and we were going to need to wait for four hour. To make my trip even worse, during our stop at Brussels, my laptop bag got stolen with my laptop and important documents inside. I put it down next to me in order to eat, thinking it was safe since I could see it, but (this is my theory) during a moment of distraction, someone managed to take it from my side. I have no words to describe how I felt. Once back at Bonn, all I could think about was how glad I was to be back after such a horrible night. But I did learn another valuable lesson at the end. Never pick a train trip that has so many changes even though it is way cheaper and also, if you do not have to, do not remove your bags simply to eat!