So, Wednesday I printed off the paper, did some stuff on the computer. Managed to throw my belongings into my backpack right before leaving, forgetting my cell phone in my apartment, but making it to the bus stop in plenty of time. Mandy and I rode the bus out to Shannon Airport (Chelsea met up with us later, she had to take the later bus). At the airport, coming off the coach, we met a girl named Ifa.
She wound up joining us during the wait and flight. She looks much older than her 17 years. Quite an interesting story, quickly summarized: she is young, lived in Ireland by herself for quite some time working and schooling it and now decided to move to England and see where life takes her. She was a sweetheart who introduced me to the Bueno candy and offered each of us a toblerone which made me think lovingly of Kayla. We sadly parted ways at the Stansted aiport when she went to go meet a friend and we went to the train to take us to London.
We changed train to the underground. There we were blessed by the information imparted upon us by a kind worker who informed us that we'd best be sleeping at the airport our last night because we'd miss the transport to the airport otherwise. Thank you kind sir! We made it to our hostel without a hitch and sort of called it a night around midnight or so. It was a cheap hostel with 18 people to our room. It was warm, but felt good to me since I'm always cold. My only complaint was the guy snoring right across from me who I passionately wanted to smother. Don't worry, I do not want to visit prison or the hospital and I was too tired to try and figure out how to do it without getting caught. I eventually fell asleep.
The next morning, we ate our free breakfast of toast and cereal and went off exploring! It was sort of this weird "I'm in London!" realization about every ten minutes or so for me. We went off towards Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guards at 11:30. We walked through Picadilly Circus area and saw some amazing sights, China Town, stores galore and globalization at its finest (Cinnabon, Starbucks, McD's... you get the picture). We walked through Green Park to get to the palace. We arrived plenty early to get near the gate. I wound up walking around and sort of lost my front row 'seat.' It was okay though, I got to see the soldiers on horses leave and return and sort of had some nice "this is crowded" conversation with the people who moved in front of me when I'd left. The actual changing of the guards ceremony itself was a little anticlimactic. But that's ok, it was still interesting. It was quite the ceremony, topped off with a concert, that included, no lie, ABBA songs like "Dancing Queen" and "Mama Mia."
Ok, I'm exhausted, I'm stopping here for the night.
nice.
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