March 3rd

Well it's been a while, hasn't it? I know this post is long overdue, so i'll try to make it a good one.

Many things have happened since my weekend in Cardiff. I've gotten pretty comfortable and confident at getting around the city. The tube makes everything incredibly easy up until about 12:30am, and then everything after that is covered by the night buses. They're less frequent and the bus stops can be a bit harder to find than the tube stations. Most of the time it's easy, and the night bus always provides an interesting people-watching experience. I think my favorite so far has been a group of about 5 boys who were all singing some song I'd never heard...but the girl (she was from the bay area actually) that had a little too much to drink and decided that the bus would be a good place to puke was entertaining (mainly disgusting) as well.

I've now been to some of the major attractions, such as St. Paul's Cathedral and the Tower of London. St. Paul's has been my favorite so far, walking up to the dome and walking along the outside of it was amazing.

From left to right: Katy, Nathalie, me, and Oliver

From left to right: please use above photo

The Tower of London was really cool too. Unfortunately, I definitely did not allow enough time for this. I went in around 2:45 and it closes at 4:30. The worst part about that is that it's one of the more expensive attractions to visit. The Crown Jewels were cool to see, and I liked seeing all of the old weapons and armor.

I've also been to a number of parks here. Regents park is close to my place and it's huge, but very nice to walk around. Part of it goes right by the zoo, and you can see some of the larger animals from the park's paths. I saw camels. There's also a boating lake on the south eastern side of the park. Just north of the park is primrose hill, which is probably one of my two favorite views of London that I've had from outside of a building so far (i'll get to the other one soon).

    Regents Park:

This is primrose hill, it doesn't really do the view justice, but it's really cool.

Primrose Hill at Night

Hampstead Heath

Another park i've been to is farther north of primrose hill, and it's called Hampstead Heath. Parliament hill is here, which provides a view similar to primrose hill. It's farther away from the city and a little bit higher up than primrose is though.

I've also been to Battersea Park. This parks south of the river, and it has a children's zoo in it. I unfortunately didn't walk by the zoo, so I don't know if you can see any animals from outside or not. I instead walked by the duck pond area and it was really cool. They had some small trails that went off of the main paths, so of course I took those.

The last two parks i've been to here are Kensington Garderns and Hyde Park. I believe that they're technically two separate parks, but they're connected to each other. There's a lot of statues here as well as an italian garden, which basically has a bunch of cool fountains. Hyde Park is also right next to the Marble Arch.

Hyde Park &  Kensington Gardens:

Cool Bridge

This is Princess Diana of Wales' Memorial Fountain which is in Kensington Gardens

That's enough about parks though...spring break is coming up kind of soon and I've been planning. It starts on April 10th, and i'll be flying to Barcelona on Thursday, the 10th. I'll be there until the 14th when I'll be flying to Palma De Mallorca, which is an island just off the eastern coast of Spain. I'll be staying there until the 16th, which is when I fly to Geneva. I have four nights in Geneva, so i'll probably be taking a day trip to Montreux. On the 20th, I leave Geneva for Nice in the south of France. I have until the 24th there, and I need to find probably one other place that's easy to get to from Nice for a day trip. So any suggestions (maybe Marseille, Monaco, or a trip inland into the mountains..) would be appreciated! On the 24th, I fly to Amsterdam where I'll be for two nights and I'll fly back to London on the 26th. I'm very excited for the whole trip, I think it should be a lot of fun.

I'm also going to Paris on the 27th of March. My room mate and I are going down for the weekend. Still have to work out where we'll be staying and I wish we had more time there, but I had to get to Paris at some point in my time abroad.

I've also been keeping a list of beers that I've been trying...well, most of them at least. Here's my list:

Abbot Ale
London Pale Ale
Hobgoblin (delicious)
Carling
Camden Ale
Carlsberg Export
Carlsberg
Fullers London Pride
Doom Bar
Strongbow Cider
Nicholson Pale Ale (Delicious)
Winter Lightning
Scottish Ale
Brooklyn Lager
Moretti
Kronenburg
Tuborg
Zywiec
Green King IPA
Red Hook
Night Watchman
Camden Wit
Tiger Beer
John Smith (nasty)
Freedom Ale
Old Crafty Hen
Tribute Scottish Ale
Weisse Rothans (delicious wheat beer)
Kernel Brown Ale (also delicious)
Porter Number 6
Camden Ink
Bread of Heaven (delicious)
Lowenbrau
St George's ethiopian beer
Shoreditch triangle IPA
Hook Norton Ale
5am Ale
Asahi Japanese Beer
Ghost Ship
Old Hookey
Golden Hookey
Citra Oakham Ale (delicious)
Noble English Ale
Dark Star Ale
Yardbird pale ale
Wainwright
Leffe

I like the beer here a lot, the ales are really good. My favorite pub that i've been to is called The Cask. It's in Pimlico, which is relatively close to Westminster abbey and everything else that comes with that. I had the Weisse Rothans, Kernel Brown Ale, and the Porter Number 6 from this place and they were all great. The other thing that I like about The Cask is that I could go there pretty often and I'd never run out of new beer to try, they have a big selection.

I've also been to Abbey Road:

And the Millennium Bridge:

And the Prime Meridian  Back to front is: Brett, Diana, Oliver, Me, and Katy.

I think that covers pretty much everything.  I've been pretty unsatisfied with the sandwiches here, they all seem to be really skimpy.  Usually a layer of meat, maybe two if you're lucky, cheese, tomato, and the bread.  I almost gave up and settled for subway when I found Birley's Sandwiches.  I had one of the best roast beef sandwiches i've ever had there and i'll be going back probably every Monday (it's near the building that my class is in on Mondays).  Anyway, I hope everything is well with all of you and i'll try to post again soon.