I'm Baaaaaccckkkk

Hello everyone. I'm back. I'm all moved into my new place, I came back from London on Monday and I started my new job on Tuesday. I know that you're all dying to hear about my trip so I won't keep you in suspense. BTW, I missed you all very much.

I drove to NJ on Sunday the 12th, we left for London on Monday the 13th at 9pm and arrived sometime on Tuesday. The room wasn't ready. I was exhausted, it was about 11am London time. We had coffee, the room was finally ready and we crashed and slept for about 3 hours. We got up, showered and headed out at about 4 pm London time, just in time to meet my cousin for dinner. We went to Pizza Express. The waiter flirted with me, the food was really good.

On Wednesday, my Aunt and I got up at 9am London time and we went to Buckingham Palace and watched the changing of the guard (awesome), then we went to Westminster Abbey and took the tour, then we viewed Big Ben, then we went to the House of Parliament and sat in on a discussion and then went and viewed the House of Lords. Then we met up with my cousin and we all went on the London Eye. The London Eye is the world's largest ferris wheel and takes 45 minutes to go completely around. It was awesome. We went back to the hotel and had dinner there because we were too exhausted to move.

On Thursdaywe slept in and when I say slept in, I couldn't wake up. I got up at 11:40am, took a shower got dressed and passed back out until almost 1pm. We went to the Tate Modern. It was cool because we saw various famous artists, but one of the floors was closed so we didn't get to see it. The Tate Modern was boring after almost 2 hours. So then we went to Jenny Lo's Tea House. The food was very good. And then the best thing of all, we went to see Billy Elliot, the play. It was incredible. The kid playing Billy was unbelievably talented. It was just awesome, I can't even describe it. We had 3rd row seats. They told my cousin that the seats were obstructed, but we had no problem. Amazing, that's all I can say.

On Friday we had lunch at Pizza Express again and then went to Portabello Road and checked out the shops and then we had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe (the original one) because I'd never been. It was a lot of fun. Then we went shopping at the Hard Cafe Store. I have to say that Portabello Road was a suck.

On Saturday my cousin came over early and we spent the day at the Tower of London. This was an all day event as there was so much to see. We started off with the Beefeater Tour (Yeoman Warders) which was very funny, but only gave a high level overview of the buildings. Then we went into each of the buildings and we got to view the crown jewels. We saw the sceptre that has a 530 carat diamond. The exhibit was awesome. We went into the other buildings where they held prisoners and stuff. Now, these are extremely old stone buildings, so going up the stairs, was like having an MRI. The stair cases were so small and narrow and had no railings and there were lines, so there you were standing on a step that was barely large enough to hold your foot, going up a spiraling staircase stopped and you can't see any light. It was still awesome. We enjoyed it immensely.

My cousin stayed at the hotel with us Saturday night, we pushed the postage stamp sized beds together and all three of us slept on there. The heat broke and the room was like a sauna and every time I turned over my cousin kicked me in the butt. It was a great night. Sunday was sad, we had breakfast in the hotel and my cousin cried when it was time for us to leave. I wanted to cry to because I didn't want to spend 7 hours on the plane.

We were very lucky, we had incredibly smooth plane rides going and coming. I had a wonderful time and I'm glad to be back. I'm not thrilled with my new place, but that is a separate post.