Listening to: "Little Secrets" by Passion Pit
Phrase of the day: "Heyyyy girl"
It was really weird walking around in London since they drive on the opposite side of the road. At all the cross walks on the streets, they had painted "LOOK LEFT" or "LOOK RIGHT." Guess they get a lot of dumb tourists (us) that forget!
After the Evensong worship, we went back to the hostel to get ready for our evening. Trav showed off his catching skills. Jack left to go to Normandy for a day. Since he had left, we had a new roommate named Dan. Dan was a very interesting Chinese twentysomething who was coming to London just to get some paperwork so she could stay in England longer. She started talking. And would not stop. She showed us these high-waisted pants she had bought at H&M and asked us what we thought. Apparently her friends thought they made her look "fatty," among other things. You definitely meet some characters while staying in a hostel.
We met up with the other Mizzou girls that were visiting and went to dinner. Sarah has been studying in France for the entire year and actually studied abroad with one of my friends from high school! The more I study abroad and travel, the more I feel like the world is a tiny place. We went to Devonshire Arms, a cute boutique restaurant in Kensington. It was actually kind of evil vintage princess themed! By that I mean dark wood embellishments and gold accents instead of the white and silver that I have in my room. So naturally I loved this place. I got wasabi crab cakes to eat and they were AMAZING. I literally could have eaten them forever. They came with this little mango jelly. Absolute delicious.
THe other Mizzou girls went home because they had to leave really early the next morning. At that point, we met up with Lindsey Wolf and Elizabeth Strickert, our Chi Omega sisters at Mizzou. We took the tube (aka the Metro) with Lindsey and Elizabeth to a bar called O'Neill's who has a band that plays. They said it was a good one filled with lots of college-age students studying abroad--and they turned out to be right! Directly after we walked in, I ran into my friend Elisabeth N. who went to Duchesne, the other all girl's high school in Houston. HOW WEIRD. That's the second time I have accidentally run into Elisabeth! Further proof of a small world.
After hanging out at O'Neill's for a while, we threw in the towel and headed back to our hostel by taking the night bus. The night bus was not easy for us to figure out. I liked it though, because it is referenced in Harry Potter. Trav came home really late because he went to the casino afterwards and won 50 pounds.
On Friday, April 9th, we went to get lunch at Harrod's. Harrod's is a famous department store that is unlike anything we had ever seen.
We went to a couple of the restaurants and looked at the prices, but they were a little expensive. We went to the take away food area and got a variety of things. Trav got some sushi, Haley got some interesting food, Tricia and I got a chicken, avacado, and mango salad. It was so delicious. We couldn't eat it inside so we went and ate it on a street corner overlooking a park, like the true hobos we are. There are dozens of sections and restaurants. Everything has a theme and ornate decorations. I loved the store window displays. Most were Alice and Wonderland themed so they had over-the-top decorations with bright, vibrant colors. We walked around for a bit, just soaking in all extravagance. Tricia bought perfume and a dress. I bought a French Connection black and gold heart necklace. I wanted a gold necklace that I could wear with my Danish Georg Jensen daisy jewelry, so this was perfect! We finally left Harrod's after a long day of wishing we were millionaires. We had all bought cupcakes and Tricia and I ate some of ours while we were walking home. Once again, amazing.
We made a quick stop at the Victoria and Albert Museum which was down the street from our hostel. A lot of the museums in London have free entrance so we were lucky enough to save a bunch of money and go back to the museums repeatedly. This museum had everything! Lots of artifacts from all over the world, ironworks, sculptures, anything you could think of. We walked through their exhibit on clothes, which oddly enough had a Juicy Couture velour track suit in it! It's weird to think that our clothes might one day be in a museum.
We came back to the hostel and we made dinner! We went to the store and got some pasta and salad. We made so much that we had enough extras to feed pretty much the whole hostel. It was really good though. The Astor Kensington hostel was nice enough too that it had a fully functional kitchen that we were able to take advantage of. Anything to save money!
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