Much to the exasperation or envy or many of my friends I went to London last weekend! My friend Sarah and I caught one of those beautiful discount airline flights Thursday evening from the Dutch city of Eindhoven to head to London with the plan of seeing Harry Potter. We ended up not being able to see it Thursday, we didn't get tickets fast enough. So instead we explored the area around our hostel, which was off of the London Bridge tube stop for any one who is wondering. We decided to make it an early night though so we could get up and go in the morning!
After a delicious breakfast of toast, fruit and cereal provided by the hostel we went on one of the New Europe free walking tours. Luckily for us out guide was an actual Londoner, so he knew some funny anecdotes about some famous places. We saw Buckingham Palace, and this time I actually saw the changing of the guards. We then walked to St. James and after we went down Pall Mall, to Trafalgar Square and made our way on to Parliament and Westminster Abbey. Our tour ended with the story of Guy Fawkes. It was fun since I ended up seeing most of the main sites I missed on my last tour of London!
After that Sarah and I decided to head to Camden for lunch! After getting some delicious sandwiches involving goat cheese we explored record shops and other funky places for a while. After we had gotten our fill of Camden we went to go find Platform 9 & 3/4 in true spirit of the weekend. Sadly though they are currently renovating part of King's Cross Station and it is blocked off. Or at least that is what we think...
By the time we walked out of Kings Cross (around 4:30) it was already dark! So we decided to grab some coffee and just walk around and explore. We ended up at St. Paul's and walked across the Millennium Bridge to the Globe and the Tate Modern. After that we decided to go see how much the London Eye would cost - almost 20 pounds! eek! So we decided to walk around the Christmas fair that was happening around the area. It was really nice, and it was fun to hear familiar Christmas carols.
Then we grabbed a quick dinner and went to pick up our stuff from our hostel! We were seeing Harry Potter at midnight and had a 7am flight so we went straight from the movie to the air port! We saw the movie in Leicester Square which was pretty exciting! The movie was fantastic and all of you should see it :) After the movie it was so cool to walk out into the streets of London, since parts of the movie were shot there! We then caught a night bus and made the surprisingly long journey to Stansted airport.
After convincing the man in Eindhoven airport to let me back in the country despite my lack of residence permit (grrrr College Hall grrr) Sarah and I were in Eindhoven with some time to kill. A fire in Utrecht Central Station had prevented our friend we were staying with from getting there the day before. So he was still in Utrecht waiting for his brother to pick him up since no trains were running. Sarah and I wandered into a cafe and had some wonderful coffee. After which we explored downtown. Eindhoven is cute, it is certainly not very pretty, but it has a nice atmosphere. It is the town Phillips electronics' headquarters is located it. So even the football team is named after Phillips electronics (PSV)After our friend Erwin and his dad picked us upwe spent a really nice day at Erwin's house. Where there were non-dorm showers, constant fresh coffee and a home cooked meal. I am not sure if the Dutch students understand how wonderful it is when they take us home for the weekend. While I do love UCU and consider it home, there is something irreplaceable about home cooked food and a family atmosphere. After dinner we watched a movie, and then we watched a PSV v Ajax football match. Ajax is the Amsterdam team and there is a pretty big North-South rivalry in the country so everyone was pretty involved in the game. It ended up being 0-0, so a pretty stressful but unexciting game. Although at the very end one of the players bit another one, which was very weird. After the football game we all put our shoes in front of the radiator and sang a Sinterklaas song. The next morning we all had a chocolate S in our shoes!( I will explain all the wonderful Sinterklaas traditions soon I promise! ) After singing songs Erwin took us to see some of the Eindhoven night life. We ended up trying mango beer which was served in a half of a coconut. I was not really a fan, it tasted mostly like mango juice. But the night was really nice, and going to sleep after almost 40 hours awake felt wonderful!
It was a really nice weekend, and coming back to UC felt wonderful! Especially since Sinterklaas also came to my unit last night. So this means I must explain Sinterklaas tomorrow!
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