The rest of our time in London

Here are some pictures to go with my first post of Iceland and part of London...

the coast of Iceland

Pia next to the troll's door

on top of a cliff on the coast of Iceland

our hike in Iceland!

on our walking tour in London

our tour guide I told you about :)

taking a nap in Regent's Park

The rest of our time in London was so much fun. On Thursday, Pia and I went to Diagon Alley in the morning and then came back to the hostel to do some more planning. That night, we went to Regent's Park to see the play, Pride and Prejudice, at the Open Air Theatre and it was wonderful! Pia and I both love Jane Austen so it was a perfect evening.

Intermission at the Open Air Theatre

The stage for Pride and Prejudice

Friday, Pia and I went to an Evensong service at Westminster Abbey, where we heard the Australian Children's Choir from Sydney sing and it was beautiful. Then we went to Harrod's, where we enjoyed looking around and bought some raspberry cheesecake from the international food hall. On our way back to the hostel, we decided to walk through Hyde Park instead of around it like we usually do. This was such a good idea. Hyde Park is one of the biggest, most beautiful parks I've ever seen. We walked along the lake as we saw children playing and trying to catch the millions of pigeons that were hanging out there, and it made for the perfect photo! Then one of Pia's blisters popped on her white flip flops. Lovely.

Happiness in Hyde Park

St. Paul's cathedral

On our last day in London, Pia and I decided to split up. Pia wanted to go to the Tate Modern and I wanted to go to St. Paul's. We thought this would work perfectly since these two places are so close to one another. We were using the street maps to get to what was labeled, "Tate Britain". Once we got there, I left to go to St. Paul's. As I was looking at the street maps, I couldn't seem to find St. Paul's anywhere. So I kept walking in the direction where I thought it was. Eventually, I found it on the map. Turns out, the Tate Britain and the Tate Modern are two separate museums and that is why I had to walk an extra hour to get to St. Paul's. After walking another hour back to Tate Britain to meet up with Pia, we decided to ride bikes to the Borough Market (which was also by the other Tate and St. Paul's).. We had a late lunch there, then walked along the boardwalk by the river. We stopped along the way to listen to some street performers play as we ate our very large watermelons that we got from the market. :) It was good day!

Enjoying some watermelon by the river :)

After watching the Parliament light up at night, we headed back to the hostel to get our backpacks and rushed over to the bus station. When we got to the bus station five minutes before we were supposed to leave (whoops), we ran over to the Megabus at our platform and they told us it was overbooked! So they sent us to another bus and the driver on that bus told us it was overbooked as well! So he sent us back to the first bus, which had pleeennnty of open seats on the top level. Right as we were starting to fall asleep on the bus, we made a stop in Newcastle to pick up more passengers, and three very very very drunk girls got on the bus without tickets. It was 4 in the morning and they were screaming and singing, waking everyone up. Then Pia went to tell the driver that these girls got on the bus through the back door without tickets, and all he did was come back and tell them to behave. Twenty minutes later, these girls decided that getting on this bus to Edinburgh wasn't such a good idea after all, so the bus driver left them on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. And everybody was happy.

So far, Pia and I have been traveling well together. Other than the fact that she has learned from her dad, "every man for himself" and I have learned from my dad, "never leave a man behind" (which has caused her to leave me behind more than a few times...haha) and the fact that I have been trying to speak like the Brits and the Scots with my wonderful talents of speaking with an accent (not), so Pia can't wait to get out of the UK... because that's when she thinks I'll stop... we'll see about that.

Overall, we enjoyed London, but so far, Edinburgh has been our favorite place! I'll make a post about our time there shortly!