alright! so! on friday we had a little day trip out to greenwich! (pronounced gren-itch, not green-witch. get it right). it was sweet! it's basically a suburb of london.. but you can't really tell where one ends and one begins. to get out there we did something a little different.. we took a boat down the thames! yeahoo! i have been wanting to do a boat tour before i headed back home and now i can check that off the list! it was amazing! another "must do" in London! like the famous red buses, it has the double decker thing going on so we sat up on top. there are so many freaking cool things along the bank of the thames. i love it.
we started at westminster pier, which is right across from the eye, parliament.. basically the most picturesque places in the city. my favorite spots! we headed down the river, passing the tower and under tower bridge with the big olympic rings on it! that is my favorite olympic photo spot in the city. is so cool and so london ya know? after that we passed by this building that has this huge ad looking thing of the royal family. it is still there from when they had the queens boat pageant from the jubilee which was in may. so that was cool. i love all the jubilee stuff, it makes everyone so patriotic. and all the stores have all this special edition stuff like lunch boxes, tea sets, basically everything you can think of, that is just super british and centered around the queen and super cute. i will miss it so much!!! after that we passed by the HMS belfast which is a giant battleship from world war 2. it is now a floating museum. now i think only my family knows this but i LOVE that crap. i was like freaking out and taking a ton of pictures as we passed it. it was so cool. reminded me a lot of the USS Missouri (i think it's the missouri..? mom?) that you can go on at Pearl Harbor. so freaking cool. let's see what else was there... there was a model of the Mayflower... oh and right after that was the outlet to the entrance to the olympic park! so i'm sure yall watched the opening ceremonies and saw where Beckham was riding the speedboat in? (i know he looked super hot.... i know) yeah that's where we were that same day! kinda cool right? right across from that was the HMS ocean. holy. crap. this is a modern warship they brought up to thames for security during the olympics. if that thing doesn't scare the shiz out of you i dont know what will. it's all decked out with helicopters and weird crap that does who knows what... it was so freaking cool!!!!! i would die to go on there! but yeah basically terrorists beware! hahah. and then we were at the greenwich pier!
so greenwich is definitely home to a lot of educational history. its where the naval academy used to be housed and where the prime meridian now is! the prime meridian, aka international dateline, was made when the railroad was installed because people needed a standard time to refer to when catching trains! kinda cool right? right as you get off the pier you see the cutty sark which is an old tea clipper ship built in the 1800s. this basically means its an old looking wooden ship with a metal hull that would go really fast. its also in really good shape. they have it dry docked and its really cool! but the real reason we went to greenwich was for the naval history museum. so that was our "highlight" i guess. in my opinion it was kind of a crappy museum. most of it was just copies of pictures of ships sailing. but i shouldn't say anything because i am just getting so spoiled.. but they did have a lot of figurines that were on the sterns of old ships.. like the stereotypical wooden mermaids on the front of the boat ya know? that was my favorite part to see. oh another fun fact. so greenwich is also an olympic site so security was INTENSE. this was just to get inside the dumb naval museum! but i heard someone talking today and apparently the uk brought home like 30,000 troops to do security here. so we went through airport security to get into a dumb museum that no one goes to. hahaha. but come to find out there was actually a luncheon in there for some people that had something to do with the olympics so yeah. but the place was a mess. scaffolding everywhere.. all these temporary bridges and bleachers. it was terrible. (and ugly).
after that we had free time! most of the group was headed out to the olympic park.. which was probably the stupidest idea they have had this whole trip. it was the day of the opening ceremonies and they were gonna go out there?! yeah in case you wondering they didn't make it. haha they closed it all down and you had to have a ticket to the ceremonies to get in. but anyways so me and chels went off to get food! we went to the main little shopping streets that were really cute. a lot of the roads were closed off because of the olympics, but it was weird because the city honestly seems empty. i'll talk more about that in my next post. but we found another joy and i got a cute little sandwich container and cup that i can use at work! in orlando! yay! then we found the greenwich market which was super cool. it was like portobello so it had a ton of antiques... silver, crystal, old tins, stamps.. really, really neat stuff. i wish it wasn't so fragile! but we wandered and wandered and finally found a mexican place. i guess i should say we found an english mexican place. mexican food here SUCKS. but we always get so excited when we find a place because we miss it so much! hahah it was so funny though so we thought the guy was actually hispanic cause he had brown skin.. so chelsea tried asking him about corn tortillas.. yeah he didn't even know what those were. pretty sure he was arab. and when they brought out my burrito it was like they put beef chili in a tortilla. it was super soupy and nasty. and the decorations inside were definitely polynesian masks and geckos. not mexican. hahaha. so funny.
okay so after sketchy mexican we caught the tube back into the city. out in that area the connect line is the DLR which is the Docklands Light Rail, a relatively new line. it's an overground train so you can see what you're driving through. i seriously love this area. so this is the new part of the city.. all the buildings are high tech and really nice. the river literally runs through them all with manmade canals and stuff and there are street cafes everywhere. they aren't the quaint cafes like in london london but they are still really cool and cute in a different way. i'm not describing this very well but i really liked it. it reminded me of an american city and it was really cool. mmkay i'll stop now.
so we went back into the city and did our last london walk! it was a required one and was basically wondering through the actual "city" of London. fun fact, the city of london is only 1 square mile! it's tiny! the tiniest capitol city in the world. i technically live in westminster! (my whole life is a lie! :() but it's cool because its all built on the remains of roman london and all the legit important government stuff is in that square mile. we saw the equivalent of the supreme court building, where the great fire of the 1660s started, lots of christopher wren architecture.. all that good stuff. we also stopped in top shop and i got a sick pair of shorts. yay.
wow this is really long. i'm sorry! after this excursion we came back to the centre, ate some dinner (bread and bananas.. lots of nutrition there) and got ready for the opening ceremonies!!! me and chelsea bought tickets to watch it on the big screen in Hyde Park. they also had a concert going on! so that's why it cost money. they had four different bands each representing a different part of Great Britain. Paolo Nutini from Scotland, Duran Duran from England, Stereophonics from Wales, and Snow Patrol from Northern Ireland. i will explain that part later. but it was so fun to get dressed up! i handed out all of the little bracelets and tiaras my mom sent me with to the kids at the centre and they wore them to wherever they went to watch the ceremonies. it was fun to see everyone get in the spirit and they were so thankful! they are all keeping their stuff for future events too. so thank you mom for making me bring that stuff! they all love you and think you are the best mom ever!! sad story.. my tattoos are lost though :( haven't seen them since fourth of july in wales. so yeah.
anyways so we walked through hyde park to the concert and it was super intense. we got there around six and the gates had opened at 430, so we missed the paolo nutini guy. this is where the security got super intense. we seriously waited in line (or should i say "queued") for an hour and a half, at least. every single person got either a full on pat down or a wand search or went through a scanner. it was scary! then they literally emptied every single pocket of your bag onto a table and went through it. the guy even opened my wallet and went through my paper bills and coins! so you can see how this would take forever!
then we were finally into the stage area.. it was HUGE! all the food vendors and stuff totally reminded me of a fair back in the states, it was great. we pushed our way to a pretty decent spot and posted up! oh and we also found a guy selling tattoos with flags so that was a win :) so first we saw duran duran. i'm not really into that scene so i had no idea what was going on. i really enjoyed the overweight fifty year olds getting drunk out of their minds though. it was great. they were dancing like there was no tomorrow. i wish i would've filmed it! after duran duran, we moved up more and found some americans! they were super nice! there were four of them but the two we really hung out with were 2 students from Cornell. they were both from wisconsin, one was doing research on elementary education and the boy was doing an internship (he was cuteee by the way). but they were fun! it was also really nice to be with them cause it turns out the guy, sam, had actually gotten a ticket to the dress rehearsal for the opening ceremony so he knew everything that was going on! being 5'2" it was really hard to see everything on the big screen, my neck still hurts! but it was so fun. i loved the ceremonies! it made me so proud to be british!!! then i realized.. i wasn't british. hahaha. but i loved all the pop culture references. harry potter, peter pan, mary poppins, mr. bean... and of course the queen and james bond! how funny was that! this one lady next to us was legit bawling when they showed the queen because she loves the queen so much.. kinda weird. but it was funny to ask peoples opinions back home of the opening ceremony cause i think a lot of it went straight over their heads. i was so thankful that i have gotten at least a little familiar with the culture! so i LOVED it!
during the parade of nations, which is painfully long, stereophonics and snow patrol played. our little american group had never heard of stereophonics, and when we asked this indian guy next to us who they were he literally had a cow. i guess theyre a big deal over here. they were pretty good! but snow patrol... they were AMAZING. i didn't really have high expectations and they were SO GOOD. it was so fun! sadly at this point we had been standing for about 6 hours and it was starting to get freaking cold. also, everyone was started to get wasted. like really wasted. there was this group of australian girls next to us that were so gone. they started dancing and one of them spilled their beer all over me. i was literally dripping. needless to say i was loving life at that point. hahah but it was funny. also this drunk british guy came over and started hitting on us. good stuff. i also learned that when people are drunk they just start hooking up with each other.. so me and chelsea have this great picture of us posing and then two couples just going at it behind us. hahaha. neither of them knew each other before, basically the guy just came up, offered drink, talked for ten minutes, then they started making out. it was great.
so they showed "team GB" come out then we decided to head. we figured we could watch the torch get lit on youtube or something. as we were walking out snow patrol started playing again and they were AMAZING so we were dancing around and stuff and this super super super drunk guy saw us and came up to me and basically couldn't stand up and was saying something about america... and yeah. somehow i got out from under him and then he wanted a picture? so i was mean and said okay i'll take your picture with my friend! hahaha sorry chelsea, basically threw her to the dogs so that i would take the picture and she'd be in it. but before i could his other friend came in. he just as drunk, maybe more, and he wanted a kiss! so as i'm taking the picture he went right in for chelsea's face... hahahahhaha best moment of my life. she ducked so he nailed her with a big wet one right on the forehead but it was SO funny. after we escaped them we were literally crying.
so we walked home, and we happened to find a big screen in the lobby of a hotel just as the torch was getting lit! so we saw it! yay. then we came back to the centre and everyone was camped out in the kitchen and it was just the cutest thing ever! everyone was all dressed up and screaming for america and it was one of those things youll never forget ya know? they had popcorn and were sitting on the floor.. it was just great! it was an amazing day and truly a once in a lifetime opportunity! i loved it!
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