England Pt. 1

As promised, I’ll finally write about my short trip to England. As with my Christmas entries, this will also be multipart.

We left for England on March 19th. I traveled with Jonathan. We caught an early train from Oldenburg to Bremen, then we caught the tram from the train station to the airport. We wandered around the airport briefly looking for the Ryanair (the airline we flew with) check-in counters, but it turned out they had their own building. After checking in and everything, we had about an hour to wait before we could board. The flight itself only took an hour. We flew from Bremen to Stansted Airport, then we caught a bus from Stansted to central London (Victoria station). The bus ride took about 2 hours and it was more of a shuttle than a bus because it was a tiny bus.

The first thing we did was meet up with Tomomi, a good friend of mine from Japan who is studying at Oxford University. We met at Victoria station (a very large train/bus/subway station in London). We then walked a few blocks to Buckingham Palace, then through St. James’s Park and saw Big Ben and the Parliament building. Then we walked across the River Thames and got something to eat. We ate a McDonald’s near there, then we walked by the London Eye. We decided to walk to Tower Bridge which took about an hour or so. On the way, we walked past Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and the Clink (a really old prison that is now a museum). Finding the bridge was kind of difficult. Once we got near it, the walkway we were on veered away from the river and we found ourselves on a strange street. We wandered around for a while until we finally found a way to the bridge through a shopping mall. We also saw the Tower of London which is right next to Tower Bridge. From there we found a Starbucks and sat down for a while.

By that time, it was getting time to meet up with Orion and Rieke (the other 2 Jonathan and I were traveling with). We caught the Underground to Victoria station. Tomomi recommended that we buy an Oyster Card for the Underground if we were going to be traveling a lot with it. The Oyster Card is a card you get for a 3 pound deposit and you can fill it with money that way you don’t have to constantly buy tickets. It also charges a lot less than the tickets cost. At the end of our trip, we turned in our Oyster Cards and got our 3 pound deposit back. My first experience with it was horrible. The train stopped in the middle of nowhere underground because of signalling problems. We then sat there for 20 minutes in an extremely hot train until we finally started going again.

Once we finally reached Victoria station, we called the others and found out they were on the bus from Stansted to Victoria, but they were stuck in traffic. We waited for about an hour until they finally showed up. Then we went and found something to eat. We ate at a pizza place in Victoria station that had an all-you-can-eat buffet. After dinner, Tomomi had to catch a bus back to Oxford, so we said goodbye. Then the rest of us went to the Underground to find the youth hostel we had reservations at.

We found the youth hostel fairly easily. It was a large industrial-looking building and we had a room on the 5th floor. It was a 4-bed room and there were 4 of us, so we didn’t have to share with anyone we didn’t know which was really nice. The bathrooms were in the hallway, but the room had its own shower in one corner. As we settled in for the night, there was a noise in one corner of the room and Rieke, the German girl, was scared that there may be a mouse. At one point, she took out her cell phone for light and looked around, then suddenly screamed and ran over and turned the light on. There was no mouse though.

The next we got up early so we could catch the breakfast included with out room at the youth hostel. It was disgusting. It consisted of toast and cereal (only Corn Flakes) with warm skim milk. After breakfast, we decided to go to the British Museum first. We again caught the Underground and then we had quite a long walk through London’s China Town from the nearest station. Eventually we got there and to our surprise it was free admission. We spent several hours there. I could have spent much longer there, but the others decided it was time to go, so we left.

From there, we walked to Trafalgar Square which is dedicated to the British general that defeated Napoleon. Then we walked along White Hall which is the street that contains all of the government buildings — the ministries, Downing Street (where the Prime Minister lives), etc — to Big Ben and the Parliament building again. Rieke and Orion wanted to see them. We also saw Westminster Abbey (the church were Isaac Newton is buried) while we were there since it was right next to the Parliament building, but we didn’t go in. We then got lunch at the same McDonald’s we ate at the day before, then walked back to Buckingham Palace so Orion and Rieke could see it and then back to Victoria Station.

We took the Underground to Green Street. There we went and saw the West Ham United soccer stadium which Orion and Jonathan both wanted to see. They also wanted to see Green Street (the street the stadium is on) because of a movie they both really like called Green Street Hooligans which is about soccer hooligans who support West Ham United.

After that, we went back to Victoria station and looked for something to eat for dinner. It took us almost 2 hours of wandering around and looking at different restaurants until we finally found one that wasn’t going to cost us 15 pounds ($30) a meal. It wasn’t a whole lot cheaper (about 10 pounds ($20) a meal), but that was the cheapest we could find. It was basically a bar that served food. We had to go up to the bar to order, but they had a really good hamburger, so I was happy.

After dinner, we were all tired, so we headed back to the youth hostel.

That’s enough for this entry. I’ll write more about England soon.