January 22nd

Well it's been a busy week. I had another long adventure after my last post and focused mainly on Westminster. I started out by taking the Victoria line to the Victoria station and I walked towards Westminster Abbey. I was on Victoria St. and I walked by a mansion with a nice courtyard and a gated entrance. The gate was open...and my curiosity took over and so I went in and snapped a few pictures.



On my way out, I noticed that the gate had closed and that I was locked in. I looked around for a way to open the gate, but wasn't able to find anything. Thankfully, one of the residents of the place needed to get in, so I thanked her and carried on towards Westminster Abbey. As I got closer to the River Thames, the buildings got taller and more impressive. While I was in the area, I saw:

Big Ben:


The House of Parliament:


Westminster Cathedral:



Westminster Abbey:


St. Margaret's Church with Westminster Abbey in the background from across Parliament Square:


After seeing all of that, I walked up to Buckingham Palace. Unfortunately the guards weren't changing when I was there, but it happens every other day, so I'll definitely be going back there. Here's a few pictures of the palace and the Victoria Memorial, which is just outside of the palace.



After that, I walked over to Trafalgar Square and passed by Admiralty Arch on the way.

Admiralty Arch:


Trafalgar Square:


I then left Trafalgar Square and walked through Soho to get to Oxford street because I wanted to find a store called Primark, as I'd heard they carried hangers. Soho looked pretty cool, but I was getting tired at this point, so I pretty much just kept walking and didn't stop much. I got to oxford street and it was pretty terrible...people were everywhere and I couldn't walk fast. I finally made it to Primark though, and thankfully they had hangers. Primark, aside from being packed with millions of people, seemed like a good store with really reasonable prices. If I have to do any clothes shopping while in London, i'll probably go there.

Since I was right by the Marble Arch at this point, I decided to stop by. It really wasn't that great, but here's a picture of it.


Then I walked back to my room, and unfortunately it started raining about half way through my journey back. I stopped in this place called Eat for a coffee and to wait out the bad weather. Thankfully it didn't take that long. Here's my route for the day.



After those two days, I'm pretty sure my legs wouldn't fallen off if I had walked anymore, so I decided to take a few days off.

My room mate came on the 20th. He's from Washington and goes to Western Washington University. He's nice, but I do miss having my room to myself.

Orientation started yesterday and it was okay. I met a lot of people and went out with 6 of them last night which was fun. Kate, Diana, Oliver, Brent, and my roommate Tyler are Americans and the other member of our group, Natalie, is from Sweden. We started out by walking around the Kings Cross area and we found a pub, the Yorkshire Grey. We had a drink there (I had a London Pale Ale for 4.75) and got some food and then continued on to the Railway Tavern on Liverpool St. We stayed there for an hour or two and I had an Abbot Ale. It was good and cost 3.95. Then we headed back to Kings Cross and I finally got a normal nights rest. Today was the second day of orientation and I got my classes. I'll be taking Personal Finance, Art in London, Theatre in London, and Organisational design and management. Those'll start on the 27th.

That's about it for now, I'll post more another time. Hope all is well with all of you!

London - January 15th

Well, after staying up until around 6am yesterday morning (the 14th), i spent most of the day sleeping. I woke up around 4 and ended up meeting one of my neighbors shortly after getting up. He's from Pakistan, and I can't say that i remember his name, but he was very friendly and he studies at the University of Central London. I told him I was going to go to the store to get some toilet paper and food, and he told me he'd prefer if I didn't go because it was unsafe. He even offered me some of his toilet paper...I declined and walked to the store anyway, as I was more interested in the walk and experience than buying food and T.P. I walked to where google maps said the store was, but it ended up not being there. So I took a slightly different route back to my apartment and ran into the store I was looking for, which was closer than I thought it was, so that was good and will be nice to know for future trips. It also had a way better selection than the market I went to the other day, which was a Tesco express. Tesco apparently has different varieties of stores: Extra, Superstore, Metro, and Express. Those are ranked from largest to smallest, with Extra being the largest and express being the smallest. The first day, and the one that's closest to me is an Express, and the the one I went to yesterday was a Metro, which was still relatively close to me. Metros and Expresses are by far the most common and it seems like there are only a few Superstores and Extras in London and that they are kind of on the outskirts of the city.

After I got back to my place, I talked to Kate for a while and she's doing well. We used this app called Viber, which basically lets us make phone calls for free through VOIP (voice over internet protocol). It's through the app so you have to set up an account with it, but essentially it lets us connect through the internet, whether it's wifi or a data connection, and it's worked pretty well so far. So if we ever want/need to talk on the phone, that may be a good option in addition to google hangouts, skype, and a number of other apps.

I was pretty hungry at this point, and didn't want to cook, so I went to this place called Honest Burger that was about a two minutes walk from my place. I walked in and wasn't greeted, so I just sat myself and caught the attention of the server that was in my section. It was kind of hard to understand him, he had a really thick accent, and after my interactions with him, i'm pretty sure I was supposed to be seated by a host or something, but I got my food quickly and everything worked out. The burger and fries were great and i'm sure i'll be going back there. They played the temptations and other older american music, which I really liked. Total for the meal including a drink was about 11 pounds.

I found several bars that are showing the 49er Seahawk game this sunday, so i'm planning on going to that. Actually, I'll probably go for the Denver N.E. game as well. I'll have to figure out some of the bus schedules for that though, because the tube stops running before the game ends. Glad that it's being shown here though. Maybe i'll meet some other people from the states.

Here's a couple of pictures of the view from my room.

The really impressive looking building is actually the St. Pancras station, and the Kings Cross station is connected to the clock tower that you can see on the right hand side of the photo. If I understand it all correctly...St Pancras offers international railway services whereas kings cross does not, and I believe that the underground is connected between the two, and that it basically acts as one underground tube station.

Just got back from a 6 mile walk around the city. Here's a picture of the route I took, it's not exactly accurate, but it is for the most part.

I Started out from my place around 10 this morning and headed south until I hit the River Thames. I stood on black friars bridge and took a few pictures.

Then I walked towards St. Paul's Cathedral, which was really cool. I didn't want to pay to go inside and take the tour because I figured I'd save that for later in my trip so I can do it with someone. But I went down below it to the cafe and walked around the perimeter of the outside. Here's a few pics of that.

The building is awesome and the surrounding area had a lot of cool cafes and stores as well. I ate at a place on the northern side of the cathedral called PAUL Bakery. Had a coffee and a Ham and cheese croissant sandwich. It was delicious and cost about 5 pounds.

After that, I headed towards the Bank of England. I didn't take too many pictures or stop too much in that area, but I'll definitely be going back there. It was cool and I like how there are a bunch of roads that lead to it. Another interesting aspect of this area that seemed more noticeable to me than in the other areas i've been to so far is that there's a lot of modern architecture right next to older buildings.

Next, I went to one of London Metropolitan Universities buildings. It was pretty impressive, although I'm not sure if this is the building that I'll have my classes at, or if it'll be at a different building in the city. I'll find out more about that when I begin orientation on the 20th. Here's a couple of pictures of the building that I went to today.

After that I walked back to NIDO which took me about 40 minutes or so. I didn't take the fastest route though, so taking that into consideration, it wasn't that bad.

That's all for now, more to come later.

London Day 1

Hello from London!

I arrived at Heathrow on time this morning, around 7:30am. The plane was awesome, every seat had its own TV screen and it even had USB ports and plugs for my devices as well. There wasn't anyone else in my row, so I took advantage of their TV's and charging outlets, and I slept across the row for a good portion of it, which was good considering I had stayed up until 5:30am the previous morning. After I got off the plane, I walked to the UK border and got through without any problems. I did have to stand behind a large man wearing a turban who decided it would be a good time to relieve himself of some of the gas he had clearly been holding in throughout the flight. It was a pretty miserable half an hour to 40 minutes in line before I got to the border agent.

After being admitted into the UK, I went on to get my luggage at baggage claim and then headed to the underground tube station. I bought an oyster card and used that to get into the underground where I took the picadilly line all the way to the Kings Cross station. My luggage made it inconvenient for several people, but no one seemed too upset...next time I'll probably just stand with it off to the side so people don't have to maneuver around it. I was a little disoriented after getting off the tube, and I ended up walking about five minutes in the wrong direction which was a pain since I was carrying around all my luggage. I eventually realized it wasn't right, so I turned around and made it to NIDO student living. Had to sign a few forms, they didn't say anything about the security deposit though...but they gave me my room keys and everything I needed for my stay at NIDO. I'm on the 12th floor, out of 16 total, and I can see the Kings Cross train station really well from my room.

After I got up to my room, I went through the apartment and marked the condition of everything, the place seems pretty good. It's small and there's no room to move around in the bathroom, thankfully there's some storage space under the bed. So I unpacked all of my clothes and stuff, and realized that I didn't have any hangers. So i figured that I'd be able to get some at a store I'd read about called Tesco that was close to my place. I was wrong, but I bought some food there so it wasn't a waste of a trip. Back at my place, i looked up another store called Argos which was a bit farther away, but I wanted to see more of London so I was okay with the walk. I finally got there and when I walked in all I saw was a bunch of Ipads and a few places to check out. I went up to an IPad because I wasn't in the mood to ask anyone and look like a confused tourist, and I learned that at this store, you do all of your shopping on the Ipad and then you go to a clerk to pay, and they grab all of your items from storage behind the counter. Unfortunately, they were out of hangers...so I bought a shower mat instead.

After Argos, I went into a grocery store called sainsbury's where I bought a pellegrino lemonade (something familiar) and a croissant cheese twist that was delicious. I kept walking and took a few pictures of buildings that I don't know anything about...but they looked cool and I figured I'd be back around the area and can learn more about which things are what later.



There's a few of the pics and here's a few more of my place. I'll add some tomorrow of the view from my room, but it's too dark to get a good one right now.



I think that's about it for now, planning on exploring more tomorrow. I'll post again soon.