Rome Sweet Rome: The Royal Lands

Ciao!

So let's begin with the journey from Dublin to Wales and finally to London. Now this was quite the exhausting adventure! We got on our "cruise ship" to go to Wales and once to there, they informed us that we were about 10 minutes late and that the connecting train we were supposed to be on was waiting for us for only a few more minutes, as they already had been waiting for that 10 minutes. So we all got off the bus at the terminal and starting running. Let me just say that this was a struggle, but a successful struggle to my surprise! Picture this if you can: I ran across the terminal to my train with 3 bags on my shoulders, in wedges, and made it onto the train out of breath, with 30 seconds to spare. No kidding, I hadn't even put all my bags down and train was already moving. Pheww! That was a close one! If I only knew what was to come....Here is a pic of what I looked like after that run..shocked, exhausted, and utterly confused as to what just happened in the past 5 minutes!

Now, that not the end of it... we are happily cruising along on this train, and the conductor keeps saying, "thankfully we have made up 5 minutes... then 10 minutes of the time we had lost due to the boat being late". I kid you not- the next 5 minutes were actually quite hilarious- The train broke. We sat there thinking that we were just waiting for another train to move out of our way, because that happens often. Nope. Our train decided to break down. The conductor comes on the intercom in a quite sad tone and says, "Unfortunately, this train is having technical difficulties, so we are going to have to terminate this train service at the sext stop". I am thinking to myself, "of course this would happen..as I laugh it off". So much for the gained time we got back.... that what's probably killed the train... they pushed it to its max and broke the dang train. And the award goes to...

Thankfully we got on another train (that was already full, so we were packed sardines) and got to London. What an eventful adventure! We get to our Hostel, and the first thing we do after checking in is get more locks for our stuff, as we didn't want the nightmare of Dublin to happen again. We were in a room of 14 girls from all over the world. Pretty cool. No stuff was stolen in our time there, thank God!

Time for the day activities part: I'll try to keep it short. We went to Warner Bros. Studio for a tour on the makings of Harry Potter. That was awesome!! Childhood relieved for the day!

Then the next day, we went sightseeing the whole day, seeing practically every major sight in a matter of 6 hours-including: Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, The Crown Jewels (my absolute favorite part!), London Bridge, The Globe Theatre, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace and much more.... We were pretty impressed with ourselves and how we did it all in one day! Then later that night, we went to see the musical "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". That was a fun show, as well as a good way to end out time in London. London reminded us a lot of NYC. The city life, the people... everything. We felt like we were in the US, just with a way cooler accent.

Here are some pics from this 3 day trip in London:

This bag of chips definitely lived up to the "Hand cooked with care"...they were delicious!

Oh, and it's Christmas time in London already...No Thanksgiving for them! Still too early in my opinion!

The NFL had a game while we were in London. That was pretty cool! I saw many Americans and all the jerseys... for a second i thought I was in the US! The flags were a nice touch to the London experience.

Yet again, home was brought to my mind when I saw giant nutcracker. My mom collects nutcrackers, so needless to say-- Mom, this Nutcracker made me think of you instantly... Cant wait to see ours up in the Living room when I get home!