Week 11: Easter Weekend

For Easter weekend, Chelsea and I went to London! The trip started out with us getting on a super crowded bus at 5AM to get to get to the airport. I only got a couple of hours of sleep that night so I completely passed out on the short plane ride to London. When we landed, it was still early morning and we were still exhausted. All we wanted was to sleep at that point but we couldn’t check into our hostel until afternoon, which kinda sucked. We explored the area around our hostel and found the Wellcome Collection. Started by entrepreneur Henry Wellcome, the museum houses his collection of medical artifacts, art, and other oddities from various cultures. It was really interesting and unusual! When we finally checked into the hostel, we both took very long naps. We woke up to go eat burgers and then went back to sleep (obviously not a very eventful first night).

The next day, we spent a few hours doing a wonderful free walking tour of the city! We learned a lot about the main tourist-y sights like Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Tower of London, London Eye, Westminster Abbey, and Trafalgar Square, as well as a few others. Our tour guide was wonderful and we decided to join him for his Grim Reaper tour that night. He took us around London’s East End, going to the sites of Jack the Ripper’s murders and other sites of execution, prostitution, and poverty.

On Sunday, I went to Easter mass in the morning at St. Patrick’s Church, which was really nice. I didn’t go to mass this semester as much as I would’ve liked just because I traveled so often or when I actually stayed in Bonn for the weekend, I was too caught up with school work. Chelsea and I also went to Camden Market, where vendors set up stalls selling handmade goods. We both spent way too much money on trinkets we definitely didn’t need. There was a lot of street food there too and I had a delicious pulled pork burrito and an espresso milkshake. That night, we went up to the top floor of a building nicknamed the “Walkie Talkie" and enjoyed drinks at the Sky Garden overlooking all the twinkling lights of the cityscape at night. We felt super fancy!

Then on Monday, I spent most of the day by myself wandering around Shoreditch, an artsy/kinda hipster-y area of London. I had a bagel at a really popular bagel place (that I can’t remember the name of) and hung out in a cool coffee shop. I walked around a lot admiring all the vibrant street art and even found one of Banksy’s pieces! Then I met up with Chelsea and we went to the Natural History Museum. We didn't have enough time to go to more museums, but I wish that we had since entrance to all museums (except for special exhibits) was completely free. It should really be like that everywhere!