LONDON!!!!!

London was awesome. The street names were understandable and so was the language. The first thing I noticed was FASHION!!! In Brussels everyone is fashionable but it's all greys and black and wool coats and boots. In London it was LOUD and EXTREME in every direction! I LOVED IT!!!! Crazy hair and crazy outfits. It was fun. When we first arrived at the train station there was a giant statue of a couple kissing! I thought, "I like this place!" One downer though, NO TRASH CANS!!! NONE! I saw 3 the whole 3 days we were there! Honestly! I asked a worker at the train station where to throw my tissue away and he told me to throw it on the ground!!! So I became a litter bug for 3 days. I didn't really have a choice!!!

Well, we made a spur of the moment decision to catch the Hogwarts Express and had a magical time!

We saw Big Ben by nightfall and it was BEAUTIFUL!!! For a clock it really was breath taking! I just wanted to linger and stare at it for awhile.

Oh yes, the moment I'd been waiting for since before we started the trip!

This musical was AWESOME!!!! The music! The story! Every moment got better and better! The moment I got home I downloaded my favorite songs from it. To all my family members: you must see this musical- you MUST!!!!
Every night we saw a production. The next night was Zorro and that was SO FUN!!!! He would pop up all over the stage and they even had spurts of flames all through out the play! The last night was 39 Steps, but I was sick back at the hotel room so I missed it. But I guess it was hilarious. Greg said I would have liked it more than anybody. There is so much talent in London!!!

I guess the English are famous for their meat pies. So we all had one.

This is where the Queen lives, even though she rarely ever stays there. We came for the switching of the guard. It was CROWED!!! The best part was the band. They played Indiana Jones, Star Wars and Superman! I was not expecting that.

This is West Minister Abbey. Greg will edit this for me. But I thought this was the coolest building! It's a church that is FILLED with tombs!!! Crazy!!!! They have a lot of memorial plaques too. For Jane Austin, Schumann, Charles Dickens, T.S Elliot and all KINDS of famous people!!! On each grave or plaque it would say something really extraordinary about how good that person was and what they contributed to the world. It made me think if I died what people would write on mine. But I thought it was neat all the memorials and stories of people in there. Seriously every inch of wall and floor was covered with someone's name. It was incredible!

The Tower of London. Ok did anyone else know it's a castle and not a tower? Why is it called TOWER of London! But isn't it beautiful? I loved it! We had an AWESOME tour guide! He was just hilarious! Told us basically all the terrible things that the English have done. Pretty gross stuff. This is where Wallace (from Braveheart) had his intestines ripped out and cooked while he was alive and still attached to them. Yuck!

This is Henry VIII's body armour. Either way- yeah man, I don't think so! (check out the cock piece- apparantely the armour makers had to start putting restrictions on how big to make the cock pieces because they kept getting larger and larger! HA!)

Jousts are hollow and made to collapse upon contact. This one is HUGE and only weighs 20 lbs!

The executioner's ax and block. I wonder how many heads have been chopped on this baby? Ick!

This has got to be the biggest book in the world!!! Apparently it's just filled of receipts for like 2 months!

There was this cool room where you got to play, hands on, with all kinds of things.

Me simulating arrow shooting.

This is Greg and Chris. You stick your face in and you're wearing a helmet (well the front part) and there's a video of fighting in front of you to give you the experience of the terrible vision thru the helmets. I've actually thought of this before, but it was something to experience!

Greg and I jousting.

I think these are so funny looking.

This is the Tower Bridge. I thought it was really cool looking. I wanted to walk across it but I don't even know if you can.

Ok this was really fun. A WAX MUSEUM!!! I'd never been to one before. I couldn't BELIEVE how real some of them looked! It was BIZARRE!!! You'd look them right in the eye and think they were about to move. It was nuts. Unfortunately, something about the camera- it makes them look all shiny and less real.

This guy looked real.

Unfortunately, Harry Potter REALLY didn't turn out good on camera. But it was still fun!

Tom looked SO REAL!!! He was one of the best ones.

Yes, we made friends with Angie and Brad.

And I finally got to meet Troy Bolton!
All the stars were so happy to see us!

Greg made some really good connections with some of our world leaders . . .

Yes, all kinds of world leaders.

And yes, this was the most exciting one.

In the middle of the "wax experience" I was really feeling ill so I rushed thru the end and sat down on some stairs waiting for everyone else. I had my head in my hands and after awhile I heard somebody speak Japanese or something really close to me so I looked up and there was this girl a foot from me looking straight at me and she suddenly gasped, eyes all big and ran away laughing. She thought I was a wax sculpture. Ha ha!

This is St. Pauls Cathedral. I really liked this one. Most churches honestly give me the creeps. They're always dark and cold and I don't like the stained glass! But this one was light inside, and warm and there was a choir singing the most beautiful music and it just filled this giant church!!! I loved it and just wanted to sit and listen for awhile, but we left. That's one thing about traveling in a big group. People like different things. People move at different paces. And this was the hardest for me: People eat on different schedules.

This is kinda funny. This bridge is literally one block from the church, but we took a wrong turn and walked far away from it before we realized we were going the wrong way. But you can see the church, right at the end of the bridge!

I know it's ridiculous, but they look like The Beatles to me!