London

Two weekends ago (I know, I'm getting behind again...) Kristen and I left for London Thursday afternoon! It took a while to get there...we had to catch a train at 4 for Pisa, catch our plane at 6:50, get to Stansted at 8:10, take an hour bus ride to downtown, meet our friend Jacob so he could take us on the tube to his place. I don't think we got there until around 11 (oh and remember that England is an hour behind Italy...)

London was sooo cool though! One of my favorite places we visited this fall (if not most favorite). We packed a ton of stuff into 3 days:

Shakespeare's Globe, a reconstruction of the Globe Theatre

The Millennium Bridge! It was in the beginning of the 6th Harry Potter movie :)

Us on it, with St. Paul's Cathedral in the background

St. Paul's, which is really cool inside: huge mosaics and a Whispering Gallery around the inside of the dome where you can hear another person from across the other side (we tried it and it worked!)

We walked up to the outside of the dome and up to the very top and got some cool views of the city.

The London Eye, the tallest ferris wheel in Europe. We didn't ride it though cause we didn't want to pay 18.90 pounds.

The tiny stairs we had to climb to get up and down

Harry Potter!! We didn't see it in London, but saw it in Florence when we got back in English with Italian subtitles.

Then we visited the British Museum...

...which was huge!

The Rosetta Stone

Korea!

Porcelain

And traditional clothing

Mother of Pearl

Africa

Modern art

Venus

Ate dinner at Ye Old Cheshire Cheese!

Yum, meat pie and chips (we ate a LOT of chips that weekend)

London Bridge

Tower Bridge

Had a nice little walk the next morning and saw Big Ben

We took the underground, where I saw 2 rats scurrying...

Buckingham Palace! With one of England's cool taxi's

Next stop...Westminster Abbey

Memorial Poppies

Side entrance

The Cloister

Couldn't take pictures inside (as usual) but one part I really liked was Poet's Corner, where writers such as William Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer, Jane Austen, and Lewis Carroll are buried or have memorials.

The Prime Minister lives on this street

We made our way to the National Gallery, which was full of paintings.

 Some cool ones we saw were Leonardo da Vinci's The Virgin of the Rocks, Hans Holbien's The Ambassadors, and Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers

We had fish and chips for dinner! But had to get take away because Jacob had to listen to the State game

Jacob was SO excited we won

Before going on the tube, I had my full English breakfast, which included eggs, bacon, sausage, chips, beans, tomato, mushrooms, toast, and tea.

Nailed it.

Ok not really. There were other people waiting to go and cars trying to pass, so we had to quickly take this shot. But it's not bad.

Another famous residence

A fancy department store with 7 floors and 330 departments. There was an opera singer on one of those floors.

There was also a Lego man made out of Lego's

Making our way to King's Cross

Kristen's off to Hogwarts!

Platform 9 3/4!! Too bad there was some construction :(

Then we went to Carnaby Street for some shopping! Jacob did not join us

The decorations were cool

So were the ones on Oxford Street. I have to admit, the lights in Florence are slightly disappointing after seeing these

Our last dinner of meat pie with Brendan (who is studying abroad in Ireland this semester and just happened to be in London the same weekend as us...what luck!) and Jacob

Here's the rest of the pics:

London