London and 6 Nations Rugby!

February 7, 2010 4:11 p.m.
I came home to a lot of e-mails anxious to hear how London was so I wanted to update my blog right away :). London was great! Wednesday night I went to bed around 9, hoping to get at least a few hours of sleep before we had to get up and leave our apartment at 3:45 to catch a bus to the airport at 4:15. Our neighbors next door were having a party, and I decided to stay in due to having to get up early but my roomates Kristen and Meghan decided to go and then just sleep on the plane. I didn't get any sleep that night either due to noise and me just being excited to go to London. 3:15 (when I got up) came entirely too early! Meghan Donovan, had the flu for several days and felt awful so she decided it was best not to come. I felt so bad for the girl! While we were in London she let us know that she went to the doctor and she actually had a sinus infection AND strep. Ugh..no wonder she felt awful!
At a little before 4 a.m. Kristen O., Meghan M., and I headed out to O'Connell street to meet the bus to take us to the airport. On the way there we saw people just coming in from the night before haha. There night was ending and our day was just beginning. Needless to say we were all very tired, but excited. When we reached hotel where the bus picks people up a taxi driver offered to take us to the airport for the same cost as the bus. After some deliberation and finding out the bus was running late, we decided to take him up on his offer. We arrived at the airport and went through the procedures to get through. As soon as we found our terminal us three sleepy girls fell asleep. We then fell asleep again on our 6:25 a.m. flight,55 minute plane ride to London.
Upon arrival in London it was a rainy kinda gross day. Security was ridiculously easy to get through which is scary. No one even looked at our passports! You are supposed to go through customs as well, but no one was even there to do that. Kinda scary huh? Kristen G. was flying in from Cork to London, and she wasn't supposed to get in for close to 2 hours after we got there. We all curled up on benches and fell asleep with our backpacks as our pillows. I'm sure we looked like real winners, but we were tired girls! I woke up to my phone vibrating, Kristen was at the end of the airport and didn't know where we were. She had come in a different security place than we did. Eventually we found her and Britney (a girl who goes to UNI/Cork too). Britney was meeting up with some friends in London. After getting some breakfast we found a bus to take us to the center of London which would be a 75 minute bus ride. Needless to say all of us slept most of the way on that as well! After arriving at the city center we had a hard time trying to figure out where we were and how to get to where we needed to go. London is HUGE. After roaming for a few minutes and looking at my map we finally got pointed in the right direction and walked a long walk to our hostel. We saw some pretty sights on the way there though so it was worth it! We stayed in Journeys London Eye Hostel which conveniently changed its name to Journeys Waterloo hostel without telling us. It's ok though we figured it out soon enough! The man behind the counter was very nice and even stored our bags for us. Before heading out for the day we decided to check out our rooms. They weren't too bad! We had booked a room in which there would be 12 girls. While we were there there were only 5 other girls besides us though. They were nice. They were from Spain and one was trying to get a job in London and the 4 others were heading back to Barcelona the next day. Beds were 3 stacked together with blue curtains to pull in front of you while you were sleeping. The bathroom was the awkward thing. There was one toilet stall and then one sink and mirror for 24 people. I didn't even look at the showers because I wasn't going to be taking one and I really just didn't want to know what they looked like!
After checking our room out and asking our hostel manager the best way to get to the Tower of London, we decided to save money and set out for it by foot. The hostel manager said it would take around 25 minutes. WRONG. With the directions he gave us, we walked for about an hour. Yet again, it's ok though, we saw some cool things. The river Thymes is amazing when the sun is hitting it or at night when the lights of London are twinkling on it.
We arrived at the Tower of London and overall, I think it might have been a waste of money. There were some cool things to it, like the crown jewels, but everything else was set up in a way that made it seem fake. I know it isn't, and it actually happened in history, but it was set up all wrong. The crown jewels were AWESOME though! We saw the inauguration crowns with thousands of jewels, and a gown made entirely of gold that was worn by a queen, weighing 22 pounds. The history behind all of that was fascinating. After leaving the Tower of London we took a bus to the London Eye. That was really cool! I have been on it before, but I got talked into going on it again and I'm glad I did. It's HUGE. It moves at an extremely slow pace with glass domes in order for it's riders to get the full effect of London itself. Riding it at night was awesome. My pictures turned out blurry and I can't even begin to describe how pretty it was. Big Ben, the houses of Parliament, Westminster, and much more all lit up over top of the Thymes river..it was so pretty.
After that ride and grabbing some food we were all so tired that we crashed in our hostel at 9:00. I stored my bag and had all my money on me, and used my coat as a pillow so that nothing could get stolen. We met a guy in our hostel who had said the night before his ipod had been stolen. I was still paranoid though so I didn't sleep much that night either.
Friday morning I woke up to Kristen G. opening up my curtain (I was on the bottom bunk) to tell me that it was 7:30...yay! We got up early so we could go get in line at the half price ticket booth to see what shows were playing that night! Our hostel supplied toast and cereal which was a good deal. So after filling up on that we headed out to Leicester square to find the half price ticket booth. We bought an underground transportation day ticket for that day thank goodness! Probably the best investment of my life. We jumped on the subway and found the ticket booth. Some of the shows looked good, but we wanted a classic show, so while I kept our place in the already long line, Kristen went to look at other booths. We ended up going to another booth and buying a ticket to see Les Miserables for quite a good price!
We then hopped on the subway to Buckingham Palace where we were meeting Meghan and Kristen to see the changing of the guard at 11:30. We got there at 11 and already many people were swarming to try and see it. A man behind us asked a police officer where the best place to stand was and he said away from the castle, because more happens on the square than inside of the castle. Kristen and I ran to the rope then to get a good view of the square. Meghan and Kristen found us then we watched the proceedings. A marching band of men with those funny hats comes through the square, marches around, then enters the castle. While they are playing and yelling at the two guards on the inside who are being relived the horse guard comes through the square (I'm not sure why). While this was going on we were debating on how exactly you are chosen to become a guard of the Buckingham Palace, do you get paid a lot, and do you get benefits? Hmm...things to ponder. It was really neat and I didn't see much that went on inside the castle, but we were surprised when the band started playing Thriller and the Beatles (a little out of place?)
After watching that we went to the Westminster Abbey which was so so so beautiful. We got a free audioguide and right when we played it, we saw our other friends who were in London as well! Weird how in such huge cities you run into people! They told us how they missed their flight yesterday due to passport issues, and had to pay extra 100 euro each to change their flight, so they didn't get in until later afternoon Thursday. Poor guys! We all went our own separate ways with the audioguide in Westminster. It was SO amazing and I'm glad I got the audioguide. It took probably 2 hours..but so many amazing people are buried in there. 1,000s of years worth of English monarchs, poets, musicians. Handel, Mozart, King Henry IV, and many many more are buried there in magnificent tombs and chambers and vaults. It was really intriguing hearing the history behind everything while wandering around looking at it all. In the end we all obviously ended up in the same area, so we met up and we then decided that while Kristen and I were at the play the rest of them would meet up for supper, then we would try and catch them later depending on when the play got over.
Meghan, the Kristens, and I then went to the National Gallery which was free and housed Van Gogh paintings, and so many more treasures!! I could have stayed there forever, but unfortunately we only got to for a little over an hour. It was huge as well! i only got one wing done in that time period! We all then headed back to our hostel, Kristen and I got ready for our play and the other two girls took naps.
Les Miserables was awesome!!! It has been running over 25 years and still was sold out when we went. It is a musical that follows a man throughout his lifetime and the many crazy circumstances he runs into. The music is still stuck in my head. It was well worth the money paid for it!! We were the second row from the back, but honestly it was so small that it felt like we were right up next to the stage. It started at 7:30 and didn't get over until 9:45. It went by so fast! After leaving the theatre Kristen stopped at McDonalds and I stopped at Cinnabon. We then decided to get the whole use out of our subway tickets so we rode around and ate and talked. It was fun just to sit and people watch! We were then going to go meet up with the rest of our group, but Kristen and Meghan said they were headed back to the hostel to sleep for a few hours before we needed to leave for our bus at 3:30 a.m. This whole early morning thing will probably kill me yet! We decided it was a good idea so at midnight we all went to sleep to wake up at 3:15, so at 3:30 we were out the door. We bought bus tickets to get to the station to take another bus back to the airport. At 4:20 we boarded the bus to take us back to our airport at catch a 8:05 flight.
When we reached the airport we had to wait in line for a long time to get our tickets stamped to be able to board. After finally doing that, the girls got breakfast (i kept part of my cinnabon for that) and then we all sat in chairs and slept for a half an hour. When we boarded the plane which was delayed a half hour due to fog we then were delayed another hour for fog. That's ok, more sleep time for us! But due to that we had to quick like get ready for the 6 Nations Rugby game when we got back to our apartment. We all had to shower so one right after the other showered really fast then we were out the door to find Croke Stadium. We bought the cheap tickets so we figured our seats would be awful, but no it wasn't at all!! We were right up in the action. Rugby players are TOUGH! There was no stops like in football and they don't wear pads or helmets! It's amazing that they still have all their teeth! And barely any of them got hurt, but they were pounding into each other like crazy! I think I like rugby a lot more than football. It was a great day for it too...really sunny until the walk back. We played Italy and won 29-11 Yay Ireland! It was fun just to be in a mix of the Irish and Italian crowd, and each cheered for their own team and got along really well. They even played the Italian national anthem. We had two Italian men right in front of us and they would cheer for Ireland sometimes and Ireland would laugh and cheer for Italy sometimes too. You would never find that in the U.S. it was really cool! Overall, it was a very very busy but really great weekend! We slept for a solid 12 hours last night into this morning, but man was it needed! We now have tickets booked to Scotland for the first weekend in March, we planned that out this morning. I get to go visit miss amanda over there with the kristens! But next stop..Belgium next weekend!