London - Day 2

After leaving this morning on the coach, we picked up our Blue Badge Guide, Brian. He rode with us for awhile, telling us some of the interesting facts about London...for example, did you know that "London" as we know it, is actually 2 cities (City of London, which is just 1 square mile) and City of Westminster...and 33 different boroughs? We saw parts of the old wall that was once around the City of London.

Out of the coach, we walked to Trafalgar Square...took a group picture on one of the infamous lions...and heard some of the history of England and Napolean...we had to have the same mindset as the Brits (for Brian's sake) and cheer whenever we heard him speak of Napolean being defeated.
Driving around a bit more, we saw some Harry Potter sites...along with Mary Poppins sites...we went to St. Paul's Cathedral and spent a little time there. It was almost time for their Sunday morning service, so many of us went in for a little while...and the bells...the bells were chiming all over the city - at St. Paul's...at St. Martin on the Fields....it's loud...and I think, beautiful. We took a walk across the millenium (spelling?) bridge...which also gave us great photos of St. Paul's...the Tower Bridge...and the river Thames.

The Changing of the Guard is always a site to see...the pagentry...it's awesome. Brian kept reminding us that these guards are truly soldiers...most just returning from Afghanistan where they suffered many fatalities.

We had lunch right outside the grounds of the Tower of London...then ventured inside to see the Crown Jewels...the infamous ravens...and other sites (we explored on our own)...

The Theatre District was next and the performance of STOMP! I had seen it before in SF, but I enjoyed it more...for whatever reason! We followed STOMP with a visit to London's Chinatown and dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Delicious....

Here we are, back at the hotel...journal assignments have been given. We have a full day tomorrow...London Eye, meeting with a member of Parliament....

London

Hopefully you all received the phone tree...hearing that we landed safe and sound in London! We had some pretty excited delegates...and leaders. Steve and I agreed that our take off from SFO was one of the roughest either one of us had ever experienced...and the landing was no better. Steve was wondering if the plane was balancing on one wheel at times. That's probably a slight exaggeration, but it was definitely rocking and a rolling!

A few of our 1st time flyers thought it was all pretty fun...a couple were a bit white-faced!

But here we are...we met our Texas counterparts and their leader, Gwen. She likes the delegates to call her Mrs. T... and we met our delegation manager, Jeannette. Jeannette seems like she will be a great DM. She's only 23 years old but is fluent in ... well, I lost track of the number of languages. She's from Austria so loves the outdoors...mountain climbing, skiing, etc.

We started our day (about 2 p.m. London time) by getting on our wonderfully comfortable coach and striking up some conversations with our new friends from Texas. We drove around London, stopping to eat lunch at Don Pepe on the Green..and then we were off to Hampton Court Palace. This was the beautiful and historic home of King Henry VIII.

We broke up into groups of at least 4 to explore the palace on our own. The gardens were absolutely beautiful... the rose garden left some of the delegates in awe...as well as me. There is also a maze...and I definitely got lost. Some little kids directed me out...and come to find out, directed some of our delegates out too. I think it was Kayla and Hannah who told me they had no problem at all...never getting lost.

After a couple of hours at the palace, we walked a little ways, hopped on our coach for about a 45 minute ride to our hotel. London is HUGE....so you don't go anywhere very fast. Our coach driver was commenting on how little traffic there was.

Normally on the first hotel of a P2P trip, the students are already placed in their rooms in alphabetical order. This wasn't the case today. So we quickly put them in rooms by asking them, "Give me 3 girls to room together...", we'd write down their names, give them a key, and off they went.

But not for long. We took a little hike to a resaurant called Auberge Croydon for dinner. We were all tired and hungry...and it was delicious!

So here we are, back at our hotel, and we're doing room checks in about 5 minutes, at 9:30 p.m. Most delegates didn't do a lot of sleeping on the plane ride, so we're all pretty exhausted.

We definitely have a big day tomorrow...full day city tour, Changing of the Guard, Tower of London, and STOMP...finishing the day with a Chinese restaurant!

I don't know if I'll be able to blog tomorrow. There's no free Wi-Fi here...so it's 10 pounds for 24 hours of internet...and we're suppose to get back close to the time I purchased it tonight...

Always remember...no news is good news!

Project Fair

On May 15th, we had our last Orientation meeting, receiving our travel shirts, lanyards, name tags and pins. We also had our project fair. No one should have left hungry!

I would love the recipes for these crepes!!!























Oh boy! It's about time for us to leave...to get to England, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland...and to see all this represented in these projects and more!

See you at the airport!