The journey home

8 am-Lying in bed: Journey Home starts now. Well it starts as soon as I get out of bed and finish packing. I have 2 hours to get ready and pack my last odds and ends and tidy up my room. I’m thinking I should probably get up now. Alright, hot shower, pot of coffee and a nice piece of soda bread, here I come. Next stop Heathrow.

1040. Standing outside my house: feeling very nervous and sad. Here I go. Off to Canada. It’s official.

1130: standing on the tube-
I’ve taken a bus to north Greenwich station, the jubilee line to Green park where I changed to the Piccadilly line. Currently I’m standing on a train headed to Heathrow. Not an eventful trip so far. I keep getting waves of excitement and then waves of dread. Not sure how I feel about all this yet.

1:06 sitting in a restaurant. Nothing like a good meal before a long flight. At least I hope that’s true. I’m all checked in and ready to go with an hour before boarding and 2 hours before take off. Better safe than sorry I suppose. Security was a breeze. Much less stressful than coming the other way, but maybe I’m just becoming a pro.

420. Sitting on the plane: take off was easy and thankfully, this time, on time. I’m currently watching the newest batman which I’ve never seen so that’s happy. I was less nervous than before flying so that’s also good. I’m pretty tired already though. And missing home, I expect that to get worse before it gets better.

630: well I do wish I was a little further on in my trip but that was a pretty good movie. Lights out now in the cabin but its still sunset out side. Best thing about flying west in the evening is that is has been sunset for about 2 hours now and still going strong 🙂

8pm- yeah, still on the plane- BUT I SEE LAND! Canadian land! And it’s STILL sunset. This trip is far, FAR better than my last one. But there is no stress just friends waiting on the other end. And it isn’t a red eye. … My legs are still sore as anything 🙂

1045 waiting for baggage: flight landed early! But how come I always feel like I’m the last one to have their luggage put out. Sigh. Waiting, waiting, waiting. My backpack is just so heavy and I’m so tired. *complain* one bright spot (pun intended) was that the sunset was beautiful for my entire trip believe it or not. That was great.

12 hospital: just got to the hospital because my mom is not well right now and I really wanted to see her right away obviously. Not much to say about that.

1:30am : Montana’s- Dad took me out for a steak dinner at a very North American restaurant which is really tasty. It is really nice to have father daughter time and catch up. Even if all I have to talk about is London; he puts up with it.

3:07am – Finally, head on pillow in Canada. I’m so tired I can barely keep my eyes open so this may be poorly proofread. Full apologies if its riddled with mistakes. 🙂

Total journey from door to door was about 13-14 hours not including dinner and hospital visits. For me today, I’ve been awake for almost 20 hours.

Local time, just 10:10. Time for bed 😉

The Winter Festival

My friends and I took a trip to south bank near Waterloo Station after work one night this week to check out the winter festival. It was actually quite good. The prices weren’t too bad and there was a lot of great food. We even tried roasted chestnuts. They were ok, a little bland. And I got my favorite, Churros!

Oh yes, we certainly did ride the carousel beneath the London Eye. That was good fun. It was actually a very nice night too, not too cold. I even met Santa 🙂

Changing of the Guard

the walk down the Mall towards Buckingham Palace

Just a pretty scene near Buckingham Palace. The frost was glittering in the sun.

I think they put all their best looking officers on duty that day. 🙂

Some marching soldiers.

I got a day off on Tuesday and even though it was very cold, the sun was out! I took the opportunity to go see the changing of the guard. Something I’d been interested in seeing when I was backpacking around the UK and Europe a few summers ago but never got the chance to see. Since my friends were all working, and had shown no interest in going, I took the chance to go on my own.

It definitely was not what I was expecting. It was surprisingly busy for a Tuesday morning on a cold December day. There were lots of tourists. I met some people from Australia, Korea, Japan and Ireland. Those were just the people I was standing near. There was a lot of standing to be done.

I arrived about 45 minutes before it was due to start and just got an ok spot to see the show. Buckingham palace always looks much smaller than I’m expecting it to. The whole event wasn’t actually what I was expecting. They marched in behind the gates, following a marching band. The band played for a while (mostly Michael Jackson hits, believe it or not) and then the other guards marched out of the gates following the band once again. There were two different kinds of soldiers and I do not know the difference though. You will see in my pictures what I mean.

It was definitely worth going to… I am happy that I have now experienced it, but I would not necessarily class it as a must see, unless you have lots of time to kill in London, like I do 🙂

Some more pictures

These are from my friend Jay 🙂

A Tudor Weekend

I had the pleasure of having a touristy weekend with my three favourite U.K. friends.

On Saturday, after working out at the gym and making a nice lunch we headed to central London to visit the Tower of London. An amazing place to learn all about British history. Using my degree I was able to educate my British friend on some of his own history, but he taught me a couple new and interesting things too.

It gets dark quite early here. This photo was taken at about 3. Maybe even before that. I was quite happy to see this castle, I believe it’s called the White Tower or the White castle, because last time I was here it was covered in scaffolding and ugly green sheets 🙂

We saw the Crown Jewels, some Beefeaters and a lot if Tudor history. This was one of my favorite carvings from within on of the rooms used as a prison. There were a ton of great ones but they were all usually very bitter and melancholy. Fair enough for prisoners waiting to be beheaded either privately within the castle walls or, more likely, publicly out in front.

Afterwards we went to a really cute English pub, all decorated to the max for Christmas. I had the fish and chips naturally 🙂 Cod, my favourite.

The next day we headed out of London to Hampton Court Palace. This is an even greater resource for learning about Henry the 8th because it was built by his advisor Cardinal Wolsey. After Henry had him beheaded, it became his main residence.

It is definitely the biggest palace I’ve been to… With a real hedge maze and everything!

I forgot my camera both days but these were snapped with our phones. One of my friends has better pictures of the four of us so I will try and get those off of her soon.

We, of course, visited another pub after Hampton Court and I chose to go crazy and have the roast beef dinner. I guess I’m getting my fill of British food before going home to Canada next week for Christmas.

Just thought I’d update about my fabulously historical and touristy weekend. It was great fun and sun was out more than it has been in a week! 🙂