No Place Like London

Yesterday, after being in England for 6 weeks, I finally went to London. I feel a little silly that it's taken me so long to get to this place that I've always dreamed of going to and that is only an hour and a half train ride away, but I guess that I've been doing enough other thing and traveling other places that I shouldn't feel too bad about it.
But the point is, on Saturday I finally hopped on that train to London. Unfortunately, we didn't leave until 1:13. We're still in the middle of paper time, so my friend Connie that I was traveling with had to get some more work done before we left. It would have been nice we could have left earlier, but I guess homework and papers are important, since we are studying while we're abroad and all that stuff. The point was, we were still going to London. And we got really lucky with the train. We got to the station just a couple minutes before the train was supposed to leave, so raced up the stairs only to find the train door closed. Thankfully, the train-station-man who had just closed the doors saw how rushed and slightly distraught we were so he let us hop on the train. If that hadn't happened, we would have had to wait another half hour for the train. So thank you train-station-man for taking pity on us American girls!
We had a nice train ride, even making a stop in Swindon, and then we finally arrived in London. The best part? We arrived in Paddington Station! Like the bear! Naturally, they had a Paddington Bear station to make the most of this situation. Then, we set out. Since we didn't have lots of time in the city, we had picked out a few places we wanted to visit and decided that we would walk there. Taking the underground would have gotten us to more places and would have been faster, but we felt we would see more of London itself (not just its landmarks) if we walked. So our first stop was Baker Street, home of Sherlock Holmes. They have a cute little museum (which, unfortunately, we didn't have time to go in), a cute little shop, and even a big statue of the man. My friend Connie is a big Sherlock Holmes fan and was super excited. Next we made our way over to the British Museum. (I love museums in England because so many of them are free!) Again, we didn't have too much time but we were able to see lots of stuff, including the Rosetta Stone and all of the things the Brits have stolen from the Parthenon (so cool). Surprisingly, we had no trouble finding both of these places, despite the Brits' annoying habit of not making street signs very clear, as in hiding them somewhere in the corner. So I guess it was only fair that we got a little turned around on our way to our next stop - Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. It didn't help that we map we wasn't very clear on street names in this area, so we just started heading out in the general direction. We figured that eventually we would find a landmark signpost that would help point us more specifically in the direction we want to go. (Even town I've been to in England, including Bath, has these cute little signposts and I love them.) We got turned around a little bit, but it wasn't all bad because we ended up wandering through a bit of the theatre district and got to see Trafalgar Square. And we did get to see Big Ben. It really is quite big, especially since I always think of Big Ben in terms of the Peter Pan ride at Disneyland where you get to fly over London (which is actually the biggest reason why I wanted to see Big Ben).
At this point, we were running low on time so we decided we would take the tube to our next stop - Kensington Gardens, where we would also meet up with my friend Jasmine from home. And we got so lucky as to have the worst subway experience ever. The car was packed and we were squished next to a traveling group of Spanish teenagers. They were soo loud and have a different idea of personal space, so it was nice to finally get to our stop. Kensington Gardens is so huge and gorgeous and I really wish we had had more time to just wander around. We met Jasmine in front of the Prince Albert memorial, which is this huge gaudy thing, so pretty much the perfect place to meet because you can't miss it. It was really great to see Jasmine and super exciting to see the Peter Pan statue in the Gardens!! ( Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, anyone?) And thankfully, being an adopted Londoner, Jasmine was able to direct us on our way. Connie was heading off to Heathrow Airport to meet her family that was flying in to London that night and I was off to a concert.
I met up with my friends Jess, Claire, and April (my roommate), who had been in London that day for a study trip for class, to go to a Mountain Goats and Sondre Lerche concert!! I had never heard of the Mountain Goats before (they were the main act and Sondre was opening), but I was so excited to finally see Sondre live. (Funny story - Claire, April, and I had been looking for tickets, but by the time we actually got around to ordering, the concert was sold out. When we called to make sure there were no more tickets, the guy recommended we keep checking back in case any tickets opened up. None of us did that, figuring it was a lost cause. But earlier this week, Jess, who's a big Mountain Goats fan, found four tickets that had opened up and just happened to mention this fact to Claire as they were both working in the study center. And then we got tickets. Crazy.) The bad thing was, I was running a little late and then the underground was running slow, so I arrived at my station at 7:30, when the concert (and Sondre) started. Then, we had difficulty finding each other to meet up and then head over to the concert (silly tube stations with their multiple exits), so when we finally made it to the venue, we were about ten minutes late. And naturally, I was freaking out just a little bit about being late and missing Sondre.
But we finally made it. And in spite of being late and missing stuff, what we saw was amazing (obviously). I was soooo ecsatic to finally see Sondre, my favorite, live. And then the Mountain Goats (slash singular Goat because only the main guy of the duo was there) were really great as well. I'm excited to get some of their music. The actual highlight, though, was probably after the show when I got to meet Sondre Lerche and have him sign my CD and tour tshirt!!!!! Again, I was kinda freaking out waiting to talk to him because I love him so much, but he was so sweet and cute. (My favorite part of our conversation was I was telling him where I was from slash what I was doing in England and I told him I was from Southern California. His response? "I could tell") My friends were similarly awestruck, even though only my roommate had known some of his stuff before that night and the other two had never heard of him before. Now they all love him. I was a silly fan girl, but it was so worth it.
On our way back to the tube station, we had a couple impromptu photo shoots with the London Eye (and Big Ben!) in the background, because we're silly abroad girls. Then we spent the tube ride talking about Sondre. Then I got on the train and came home to Bath. It wasn't the perfect day, but everything somehow worked out and it was an amazing day. And I really can't wait to come back to London.