Acorss the Pond

We made it over to London alright.  No major riots in Paris when we were there, and the general strike had ended, so our plane actually had enough fuel to get us to London.  Lucky us!  There were a bunch of people staying in our hostel who had their flights cancelled, so we were getting a bit nervous about making it here on our original flight.

We were really lucky to be staying with friends Melissa and Venessa while in London.  They were awesome hosts, taking us out to meet their friends, inviting us to a party on a boat in the river, letting us totally disrupt the Cheryl Cole interview on the Tele (you’d probably have to be in the UK to get that last one).  Thanks a lot Melissa and Venessa, we really appreciate it!

We hit a patch of rough weather here in London, but still got out to see the sights.  (A bunch of the pictures below were all taken in a 2 hours span without rain!)  We did the hop-on hop-off bus tour of the city.  For anyone counting at home, that’s bus tour #2.  The tour covered all the important sightseeing stops: Buckingham Palace, Parliament Buildings, Big Ben, The London Eye, Tower Bridge, etc.  We also checked out Notting Hill where Ashlyn was secrectly hoping she’d bump into Hugh Grant.  No luck.

We did do some shopping (for warmer clothes) and decided to hit up Oxford Street.  Big mistake.  The best way I can describe how busy the street was, is to have you imagine if the boxing day chaos at Future Shop was multiplied by the line-ups at Disneyland.  That will give you some kind of idea of what the street was like.  It was enough to make you beg for Chinook Centre shopping on a Saturday in December.

Finally, last night we were able to catch a performance of the musical ‘Wicked’ and it was pretty good.  Ashlyn says ‘I LOVED IT!’.

Here are some pictures:

Ashlyn in Notting Hill

Buckingham Palace.

The London Eye

Some Clock 🙂

Ashlyn before seeing the show.

Next update will be from Turkey!