London!

January 11th, 2012: London is unbelievable. The trip here was long, the bus was granted special permission to get through the cocahala because the roads were so horrible. Then we had to try to operate the tube (like the bus but an underground system) which was hillarious. We each have 3 bags and are carrying roughly 100 pounds and try to fit that on the tube at rush hour! The doors closed to fast, whether you were still in them or not. So a few times, our bags got stuck. You also have to 'mind the gap' between the platform and the train, which is rather large.We will return home with huge muscles that's for sure. It took us 4 hours to get to our hostel! We were surprised to see our cankles once we hit the hostel. After a 6 hour bus ride and a 10 hour flight on a massive 2 floor 747 plane though we weren't too surprised. Its nice here, for a hostel. We are a 20 minute tube ride to central london and in Hendon Central (where we are) there are lots of little cafes and shops around so we don't have to leave Hendon if we dont want to. We are able to walk to most places here. You risk your life trying to cross the road, though! luckily there are 'look right' and 'look left' on the cross walks for tourists. Pedestrians don't have the right of way here though, so we sprint across the road because they drive 30 miles/hour and we can't predict where the cars are coming from because everything is backwards!

January 12th, 2012: Today we woke up at 445 am! We are definetly still running on BC time, haha. Is it ever chilly here! I definetly miss my ski jacket. It is 3 or 4 degrees without the wind chill. Today we spent 12 hours out and about sight seeing. First, we visited Buckingham Palace to witness the changing of the guards. Was that ever cool. There were roughly 600 people that showed up to see it! There was a parade, where the guards played music and marched into the palace where they switched and the old guards marched back out. What impressed me was the gates to the palace. They were gold and black and massive with the British national emblems on either side. The guards wore the typical uniforms on the TV, black furry hats and the red suits with the gold buttons. We didn't get to see the queen, unfortunetly. We did get to see where her chambers were though. On our way to see Big Ben (the big clock by the parliament buildings) we visited the red telephone booths. On our way to see the London Eye, we visited Hygh park and St. James park which were beautiful. There were massive geese, pigeons, swans, fat squirrels that chased one of my friends because they thought she had food and a really pretty black bird with a bright orange beak. We then visted St. Paul's Cathedral. Unfortunetly we couldn't take pictures but I would have loved to it was amazing. In the middle is a huge dome with religious paintings all up the walls and on the ceilings. We learned about the fire in London and that Princess Diana married here when we watched a video on the cathedral in a big circular room where the video played all around us on screens, called the "inner eye of the cathedral". We visited the crypt where we saw tombs of famous people like the Duke of Wellington. We saw a plaque dedicated to Florence Nightengale (the founder the nursing)  which we all touched and we think it was a sign that she was wishing us good luck in our journey to Africa. We climbed up 257 circle stairs to get to the Whispering Gallery which was awesome. My friends took at one end of the circle and I walked to 30 metres away to the opposite side of the gallery. It was a little difficult to hear because there was an orchestra playing below, but when we put our ears to the wall and whispered, we could hear eachother from 30 meteres away! From there, we walked across the London Bridge which I had expected to be much more of an ordeal. Turns out it is just a bridge that is famous? Was still cool to walk over it though.

January 13th, 2012: Today we went to the Tower of London! It was worth every pound and pence to go. The first tower we visited was the Great White Tower. We saw the crown jewels which we would have loved to take pictures of but weren't allowed to, at one point while we were talking to one of the guards before we left he noticed a lady taking pictures and threatened her with a HUGE fine if she didn't delete every one of them. The crowns were stunning. One of the septras had a 530 carret diamond that came from a diamond the size of your fist which was broken down into 9 530 carret diamonds and 48 smaller diamonds. We were amazed to learn that the crowns aren't only historical, but are still used today for coronations and such. We learned that King Charles II (the king whose wife couldn't have children but he mysteriously had many children) had ruined the reputation of one of the fonts (baptism basins) so it was now known as the "Bastard Basin". The next queen to rule made a new font (made out of gold, of course) which is still used today. We learned that only once did someone try to steal the jewels. It was a huge scheme and in the end, the guy tried to shove the septra down his pants and was caugh at the Tower of London Bridge (which is amazing by the way). The King was said to have been thought to be in the scheme as well even though he wasn't. We weren't sure how anyone would steal them, the doors were 15 feet thick and if the alarm went off the guard said there were men armed on the floor above ready to go. We learned that King Charles won't be named King Charles the 3rd because of King Charles the 2nd and his 'playboy' behavior as the guard said. Instead he will be named King Charles 7th or something of that sort. On the upper floors we visited the armory and saw the old guns, cannons, swords and lances. One of the lances was 5 metres long and was said to be used for parades not for fighting. There were heads of kings, suits of armour, replications of horses of the kings. There were displays of the gifts that were given to the U.K and we thought it was funny that Canada gave the U.K. a grizzly bear which they named Martin and kept alive at the zoo which used to be in the Tower as well. Out of the windows we could see the mote, the inner and outer walls and the ravens which they kept 6 of. It is said that if the ravens leave the tower, it will crumble. The tiolets were hillarious, little holes on a piece of wood that were up about 10 stairs with no doors. There was one stair case that ran up the entire Tower. No wonder people that lived were in such good shape! We could see the execution post which stood in the middle of the square where they said that 7 kings and queens were executed for many different reasons. One of them was killed because the current king couldn't get ahold of the lady that he wanted to kill, so instead he killed her innocent son. We saw the chapel which held all of the bodies of the people that were executed and many bodies couldn't even be identified when they were found. We saw windows that were shaped to hold a bow and arrow for defense. We visted the Prisoners Chamber which had real carvings from past prisoners there. We then saw the torture chamber which had items such as: an iron circle that was designed to keep prisoners crouched in there for days, a stretching machine that did just that and shackles that would hold the prisoners up for so long that some of them never regained use of their hands after. We learned the story of two brothers (roughly 12 and 9) who were killed and weren't found until 191 years later in the Bloody Tower and then moved to Westminister Abbey. In the Bloody Tower people were hung, quartered, stabbed, beaten and such for such petty crimes we were happy not to be living in that time, that's for sure. We saw the Old Hospital Block and were disappointed when we couldn't go in but it was awesome to see. There was Traitors' Gate and many other towers, some of which still house families of the people that work at the Tower. There was so much history there I wish that I could buy another brain to remember all of it!

January 14th: Today we slept in until 230 pm as we were out until 3 am last night. We went on the Camden Pub Crawl! We visited 3 pubs and 2 night clubs. The night clubs were so much cooler than home, they had live bands and about 7 floors in one of the clubs. We met so many friendly people last night. We met people from Spain (argentina), New Jersey, all parts of England, Australia and many more. One of the people that we met was named Santiego and we were impressed that he was travelling from Beaunos Aides and was roaming the world solo for 6 months. I wore high heels for the first time in my life and that was an experience especially because the streets are cobblestone! The people here amaze me. They are always willing to help and chat. Everyone here reads the newspaper on the tube. They dress very brightly and their fashion is so far ahead of home's that I don't know if we will ever catch up. We felt very underdressed. All the men wear peacoats and scarfs and many have beer bellies (you're lucky to find a seat at a pub, everyone goes there). We aren't sure how they have bellies because they sprint through the tube station. Other than that, there are few overweight people here which is quite different from home! Today is a lazy day, we are doing our laundry for the last time in a machine before we leave for Africa. We aren't looking forward to packing everything up and the10 hour flight to Lusaka before we bus for 11 hours to Mongu that we will be doing tomorrow morning. Luckily we have finally started to adjust to the time difference of 8 hours from home, so the extra 3 hours won't be so bad once we get to Africa. We are all getting nervous and excited and can't believe Africa is finally here! Although these extra few days have cost us extra money, we are so thankful we decided to come it has been worth it.

Until next time, I love all you guys and am missing you. It feels as though I should be coming home now after visiting London, not going to Africa for the next 6 weeks! As they say here, Cheers :).