Living Life Abroad: Friday, July 27th

Friday, July 27th... this was the day that Sam and I were originally scheduled to go to Barcelona. Thankfully, this trip did not work out becuase Spain started taxing flights so we decided to save money, get a refund, and spend the weekend in London for Olympic festivities. Let the games begin! We had a very early morning to go out to Big Ben to hear the bell ring. This is the first time the bell has rang except for time in over 50 years! Likewise with everything else, that was an awesome experience! Then we walked around searching for a traditional English breakfast. We ended up at the Cat & Cucumber for some tea, eggs, sausage, beans, chips (fries) and bacon (ham). It was quite delicious but I still miss the states bacon and pancakes! We got to walk across Tower Bridge a couple times which is another thing off the bucket list. We toured the Tower of London for about 4 hours. It was pretty cool but got boring after awhile. We had an extra pep in our step for some reason and decided to take on the fire memorial which was 311 steps up. I definitely got my workout for the day. We made it to the top for a few minutes and then went to find Pudding Lane where the fire of London started in 1666 which destroyed nearly 5/6 of the town. Enough with the history lesson. We also ventured down to Drury Lane! Yes, I do in fact know the muffin man! After that excitement, we returned to campus for a short 20 minutes just to get at it again. We were back to Tower Bridge to scope out seats for the fireworks of the opening ceremony for the Olympics. We gave up said spots to go supper and a drink from Wetherspoon. As I've said before, it's good cheap food! We walked so much that day and was exhausted. But we went back to the bridge to see the fireworks. Honestly, the fireworks were slightly disappointing but still an awesome experience. Some English guys told us that it was only a small taste of fireworks and that would would be happening a little later.... then he walked away most likely thinking "dumb Americans..." because no more fireworks ever went off! Thought we did have a bit of a bonus by seeing the boat with the Olympic torch on it and supposedly David Beckham was on that boat as well! We returned to campus after a long day of walking and went to bed.