Brighton and London Trip-- Part 2

Welcome to part 2 of our Brighton and London trip! If you missed part 1, where I talk about our stay in Brighton, you can read it by clicking here: Brighton and London Trip-- Part 1.

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Jennifer and I arrived in London a little after 9am on March 15th. We wanted to give ourselves the whole day to explore London and visit all of the touristy areas that we missed the first time around. The first thing on our agenda was to take a tour of the Westminster Abbey (which, if you remember back to the post from my first trip to London, was my favorite building in the city).

On the train to London!

The outside of the building was absolutely gorgeous and I was so excited to get to see the inside! Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures of the inside of the building so you'll just have to believe me when I tell you it was stunning. Upon entering the abbey, we were given a hand-held audio set that allowed you to walk through the abbey and hear about the history of the different areas by typing in a number on the hand-set that corresponded with numbers set up around the building. Here's a couple of images I found online of the inside of the Abbey, so you can get an idea of what it looked like:

Clockwise, starting from left: The Quire, a window in Poets' Corner, a medieval wall painting in Poets' Corner, Chapter House, and a picture from inside the Abbey during William and Kate's wedding

We ended up spending a couple of hours just wandering through the Abbey. There was so much to see! The Westminster Abbey also holds regular church services and allows free entry during that time. I would love to go to a church service there one day! The Abbey was definitely one of the highlights of the day! Here's a couple more pictures of the cloisters:

Next, we headed over to take some pictures of Big Ben and Parliament near the River Thames! I still can't get over how pretty it is in person! London really is a lovely city!

Because we were missing California and our Mexican food, we decided to scope out Chipotle for lunch. Like always, it was amazing! And I was happily surprised to see that they serve the same huge portions that they do back home, so we left feeling extremely satisfied.

YUMMM!

Look what we saw on our walk to Chipotle! :D

 Next, we wandered over to the London Eye. We knew we could not leave London without taking a ride on the Eye.

Before getting on, we watched a little 4D experience that was very cute. We got onto the Eye just as the sun was going down so the pictures didn't turn out that well, but we did get some pretty good views and I'm so glad we got to do it!

It's hard to see, but Buckingham Palace is in the top left corner behind the gold statue!

Oooh, look at me taking artsy shots

 Afterward, we took some last pictures of Big Ben and Parliament as the sun was setting. Our last stop for the day was Harrods, the big, fancy department store. We took the Tube over there and oh my, was Harrods gorgeous! We didn't have much time to spend there, but just the first couple floors were amazing on their own. You could book a personal shopping experience and the aisles of the store were lined with designer clothes. Jennifer was too scared to touch anything for fear that she would break something and have to pay hundreds of dollars for it. I, on the other hand, walked through there with my hands outstretched, touching everything in sight! In Harrods, there was a fancy cafeteria area, a champagne bar, and a chocolate cafe!

The Chocolate Cafe

The English have an obsession with giant chocolate eggs... get with the program, America!

 My absolute favorite part of Harrods would have to be the toy store. It. was. HUGE! They sold life-size stuffed animals, gorgeous rocking horses and doll prams, and the doll houses were actually doll mansions! If I were a little girl, I would have had a field day in that store. Even at 21 years old, I was still really excited walking through and gawking at the toys. It was seriously an amazing store!

Can we just take a look at this "doll house" for a minute? It has 12 rooms. 12 ROOMS. I think I'd like to turn myself into a doll so I can live in there.

If you are ever in London, a visit to Harrods is a must! After Harrods, we took the Tube back to the train station and headed back to Leeds!

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I've just gotten back from doing some Spring Break traveling and I cannot wait to show you guys the pictures! I'd like to have my next blog post up soon. First on the list is Scotland! :D

Brighton and London Trip-- Part 1

Hi guys! A couple weekends ago (March 14th-15th), Jennifer and I decided to take a trip to Brighton, then spend the next day in London to do all of the touristy stuff that we missed the first time we were there. I decided to break this post into two parts, so here is the first part on Brighton!

We left for Brighton the morning of March 14th. Brighton is a little seaside town, about a 4 hour train ride away from Leeds, and I was so excited to be near the sea again (I miss California)! As soon as we got there, we checked into our hostel (which was directly across from the pier!), then went to grab some fish and chips for lunch. And it was delicious! We haven't gone out to eat too much since being here so once we finished eating, we sat at the table for another 10-15 minutes before we realized that we actually had to go pay for our meals at the front of the restaurant rather than have the check brought to us.

After lunch, we went to wander around the town. We were hoping for some sun while we were near the ocean, but in true English fashion, it was freezing cold and extremely foggy! As we were walking toward the pier, you will never guess what we came across... the Doughnut Groyne! I guess it's used for preventing beach erosion or something, but we had a good time laughing at the name and taking pictures on it! :D

We walked down by the water and took some pictures of the pier. It looked so pretty surrounded by all that fog!

There's rocks on the beach instead of sand... *shaking my head*

Walking around the pier was my favorite part of the day! It was huge and there was so much to do! They had an arcade, a carousel, a fun house, and a bunch of rides! It was like being at a carnival and I can imagine it being so much fun and packed with people in the spring and summer.

Even thought it was freezing cold outside, we just had to buy ice cream while we were near the ocean! They even came with a 'flake', which was a flaky chocolate stick! Yum!

That night, we went wandering around a little shopping area in Brighton called The Lanes. It was full of little alleyways lined with shops and cafes (I forgot to take pictures of it... oops!). I could imagine myself strolling through The Lanes on a warm, summer day.

We decided to head back to the hostel a bit earlier that night after a quick dinner at Subway because we had to catch an early train to London the next morning. We had stayed in a hostel before, but it had been rented out just for our group so we hadn't actually had a true hostel experience until this night. And it turned out to be very... interesting. Our room was directly over the bar, which was blasting music until 2am! So I just accepted the fact that I wasn't going to get much sleep that night. Other than that, it was pretty similar to what I imagined staying in a hostel would be. But the same was not true for Jennifer!

When we checked into the hostel earlier in the day, there was a girl in the room (I believe she was from somewhere in South America) that had been asleep all day because she was sick. Apparently, as I was attempting to fall asleep that night, Jennifer (on the bunk above me) was trying to get situated and fix up the bed so that she could go to sleep as well. But the beds were extremely squeaky! Because I didn't have my contacts in, I had no idea what was going on, but the same girl that had been in the room all day (and that was playing music on her laptop as I was trying to sleep) was not happy with the beds squeaking. Jennifer tells the story a lot better, but apparently the girl just sat up in the dark room (while her face was being illuminated from below by her laptop) and glared at Jennifer for a good 10 seconds. Once Jennifer realized it was because of the squeaking bed, she was careful not to make any more noise, but because I had no idea what was going on, I continued to move about and get comfortable. This led to Jennifer getting more glares from this girl before she slowly lowered herself back into her bed. The way Jennifer tells the story reminds me of something from a horror movie right before the creepy girl comes out with her knife. Lol. I didn't know all of this had happened until the next day so I thought it was hilarious, but Jennifer was scared for her life that night! Hahahaha. Good times.

We left bright and early the next morning for London. Aside from the hostel experience, Brighton was very nice and I was so glad that I got a little reminder of California near the sea! Now if only it would warm up a little bit over here! ;)

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Part 2 will be up sometime in the next couple of weeks! Our Spring Break just started, so we are heading to Scotland tonight for the weekend, then will be going to Paris and a couple cities in Italy! I will be sure to take lots of pictures and will have a ton of posts to update you guys with when we get back!