Thanksgiving, Westminster, & London Eye

  London, England, United Kingdom
Saturday, November 29, 2008

The Thanksgiving day activities went pretty much as planned. We all got up early and headed out to get Les Miserables tickets. Much to our surprise, Les Mis doesn't do student tickets like the other theaters. We couldn't get tickets in the morning, but could go an hour before the performance to see if there were any left. Because "getting tickets" took less time than expected, we thought we deserved some Starbucks.

So, we headed across the street to get some caffeine. Bad. Idea. Getting 7 people through the slowest Starbucks in the world left us with only 20 minutes to get to St. Paul's on time (They told us to get there by 10:30 for the 11:00 service). We booked it to the tube station, had a relatively quick transfer, and made it to the next station w/ 1 minute to spare. The major downer was that the escalators at the station weren't working. So we had to run up like 6 flights of stairs. It was chaos! When we got near St. Paul's we knew we were in the right place b/c almost everyone was carrying a giant coffee/Starbucks cup!

The service was really nice. The entire church was full. We were lucky enough to get to sit in the balcony, so we actually got to see some of what was going on. The ambassador read the President's Thanksgiving address. As he was walking over to the microphone, I leaned over to my friends and said that I hoped he would read it w/ a Bush accent. Turns out the ambassador is from Texas and sounded pretty much exactly like Bush. It. Was. Awesome!

Americans at St. Pauls

St. Pauls

Group Pic

Front of St. Pauls

After the service we all headed back to our dorm rooms to prepare Thanksgiving. Considering we have the tiniest "kitchens" in the world, we had a really great meal. I was in charge of mashed potatoes, salad, and puppy chow. We have a married couple in our group that have an apartment, so they made the turkey in their oven and brought it over. Everything was so good and we were stuffed!

Thanksgiving Food

Thanksgiviing Mael

We sat around in our tipsy food coma for a few hours and then headed to Les Mis. Luckily, we got tickets. We've been a little spoiled w/ the amazing tickets we've had all term, so we were a little disappointed when we had to sit in the balcony. However, the show was still amazing!!

We have a friend from Holland in town for the holiday, so Saturday we did some sight seeing w/ him. We walked by Buckingham Palace (not as cool as you would expect it to be). Then we headed over to Westminster Abbey. It was so incredible! There is so much history in one spot! There are also a lot of dead bodies buried there ... I'm definitely glad we were out of there before dark! I illegally took some pictures there, so enjoy!

Buckinham Guard

Westminster

Westminster Choir Stalls

A Chapel Roof at Westminster

Afterward, we headed over to the London Eye. We got lucky and managed to get on while it was still partially light, but all the city lights were on too. Although the rain drops on the outside of the pod made it difficult to take pictures, we managed to get some good ones. The ride took about 1/2 an hour. We tried to go see if we could get some theater tickets when we were done, but were unsuccessful. We did get Phantom of the Opera tickets for Sunday, though.

London Eye

The Pod you get in

Parliament/Big Ben

Group in the Pod

We ate some dinner and then decided to go see a movie. We chose "Zack and Miri make a Porno." After getting tickets, we thought the movie would be much better if we were tipsy. So we went to the convenience store and got screw cap bottles of wine to enjoy during the show (classy, I know). The plan was successful and the movie was funny (i think).

Today we saw Phantom and polished off the last of the Thanksgiving left-overs. It's about time to start doing some serious studying, so the updates me get significantly more lame until next term ... we'll see ...

It was great talking to/hearing from some of you on Thanksgiving!! I hope everyone else is doing well and made it through the first rush of Christmas shopping!