There's No Place Like London...

So, we are now at Oppa's flat in Wokingham and very much jetlagged. I have to make this entry quick because Oppa has important work to do, but let me online to blog. Try to keep it short.

The plane ride was long, as expected. I think the flight attendants (except for one) hated us. The theory is that it goes back to when Gianni couldn't remember what country he was from when she was trying to give him a landing card, but we don't know. They were rude in general though. Other than that, the flight was fine. I watched Penelope and Definitely Maybe. Also an episode of Pushing Daisies (yay) and two episodes of the Office. Slept for maybe three hours. Not good. Also have been reading the book Into the Wild.


We got into Heathrow around 9 ish. Threw all of our backpacks into Oppa's rental car (not before Andrew broke his and sent Oppa on a day-long trip in search of a replacement). After that, he dropped us back off at Heathrow so we could take the Tube from there. We had somewhat of a stress trying to get the day passes for whatever reason. I don't know why. I usually get it from the Reading train station, so it caught me off guard.

The train ride in was long, but whatever. We managed to convince Andrew that Big Ben was demolished to be replaced by condos, though. That was fun. Anyway, our first stop of the day was Buckingham Palace. We made it just in time to see the changing of the guard (or part of it until we got annoyed with the crowds), which is why I wanted to see it first.

After that, we took Andrew to Big Ben to make up for our mean joke earlier. We also took pictures in front of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. Tickets to Westminster Abbey are 12 pounds now! So...even though I wanted to go in because I really like that place, I knew that we were going to have to skip that one.

Mia took pictures next to security guards in front of the Parliament and wanted to go talk to the protesters in front of it, but we didn't end up doing that. Instead, we walked across the Westminster Bridge to go check out the Dali Museum for Gianni. We decided we didn't have enough time to actually see the museum (and tickets were also 12 pounds), so we went to the gift shop instead. Andrew also bought a soda from the Cafe. Let's see. In that area we also chased some guy dressed up as a Jedi to get a picture with him, but he disappeared. I think it must be his powers?

Anyway, by this time it was 1:30 and we were starving. We wanted to have an authentic pub experience and there was nothing in the area. We decided to do Covent Garden. We found one across the street from the subway station we got off at, but they didn't have fish and chips Instead, we walked a little down the street and found one that did. We were still thinking about going (and flirting with the idea of checking out London's Chinatown instead), but then this drunk guy outside of the pub told us that it was the best pub in London and that we HAD to go. So, we did. And they were very good fish and chips. Every once in a while that drunk guy would come up and take pictures of us with our camera and give us a thumbs up for choosing the pub. On the way out, we saw him eating with this young couple who looked very unhappy to have him eat with them. We got a picture with him and he told us that he was a billionaire. I don't know. He was kind of awesome.

Anyway, after the pub experience, we went to Covent Garden, where we walked through the little Jubilee Market thingy and Mia bought a scarf. Another one. We did a quick stop at Picadilly Circus to take pictures with Eros and to check out the CD store that used to be Virgin Megastore and is now something else.

We stopped by the Kings Cross station to get the goofy Harry Potter platform 9 3/4 picture, which made Andrew really upset.

We were going to stop by Bakers Street, but we didn't. Instead, we just went straight to the Paddington Station to catch a train to Reading. That was an adventure. We bought tickets that ended up being round trip. We went back to exchange them after we found this out. The guy at the desk kind of looked at us strangely and told us that it would only be a 5 pence difference per ticket. Somehow in my tired and jetlagged mind, this came out as 5 pounds a ticket, which was a big deal, so I had him trade in the tickets. Then we got 20 pence and I felt like a doof. Oh well, I used it to go to the bathroom.

Anyway, we got to Reading around 5:30, Oppa picked us up a little later, drove us to his flat and made us dinner. Right now we're cleaning our smelly disgusting travel clothes. Anyway, I'm going to go so that Oppa can do work now :)