Day 3

I woke up at 9:00 in the morning and was happy that I did not experience the tiredness from jet lag that I was expecting. I had my first experience with the Vandon House Hotel continental breakfast, and I should say it was quite unimpressive. They offered a wide array of choices to cover you breakfast eating need: croissants, croissants, croissants, little fun sized boxes of cereal, or croissants. The croissants were not especially good but I ate them anyway due to the fact that there were no other options.

Our first stop of the day was in the neighborhood of Finchley to see the house that Sigmund Freud lived in for the last three years of his life. The Freud Museum was a colossal failure. There were no exhibits shedding light into the fascinating mind of Freud, instead there was just a bunch of furniture and figurines with no explanation as to what they meant. This museum could, and should be extremely interesting, but unfortunately fails miserably in that regard.

We had our first experience riding the tube, or British subway system, and I must say I was impressed. They are kept much cleaner than their American counterparts and I did not experience any delays during the entire trip. However, the escalators that are found throughout the tube stations are somewhat dangerous contraptions. They are extremely long, and have certain etiquette that was never explained to us. If you simply stand still and let the escalator do its work you MUST stand on the right side because the left side is for people who are trying to get through quickly, and those quick moving individuals show no remorse for running people over if they are standing motionless on the left side. I made the mistake of standing still on the left side and not only was I nearly knocked down the escalator, but the man who did the running into had a few not so choice words for me as I moved over and allowed him to pass.

We returned to our hotel, and Tiffany P., Chantel, Kristen, and Amanda took a self guided tour to see the sights in the direct vicinity of our hotel. It was then that we saw the Buckingham Palace guards for the first time. I was hoping to get a picture next to one of them, but due to an excessive amount of people with the same idea, they are now behind a fence, which makes the gaurds inaccessible to would be photographer. We took a stroll through St. James Park, which is adjacent to Buckingham Palace, and it was extremely scenic and well groomed. It had an abundance of squirrels, ducks, and even pelicans wandering through its numerous, well kept flower gardens. Chantel randomly started chatting with an elderly couple from Bristol that was sitting on a bench in the park. We took pictures with this random couple, which they thought was rather strange, but were good sports all the same. It was also on this walk that we caught our first glimpses of Big Ben, the Parliament Building, and Westminster Abbey.

Our next stop was at Trafalgar Square, just outside the National Gallery, because Tiff P., wanted to see the fountains decorating the square. The fountains were magnificent and we each took several pictures before finding a tube station and taking it to South Kensington to find the Science Museum that Amanda and Chantel wanted to see. We found the Natural History Museum right off the tube station so we decided to go there instead. The Natural History Museum turned out to be very impressive! It had a large dinosaur exhibit complete with many fossils, and a full size animatronic T-Rex. Other attractions included: a full size blue whale replica, ancient mammal fossils, a large assortment of precious gemstones, and even meteorite specimens. The only downer was that the Darwin exhibit and the giant squid exhibit were closed for the day!

For the next leg of our adventure, we traveled by tube to the theatre district. It was here that we first discovered the Jubilee Market, which had a large assortment of low priced souvenir stands. After meandering around the market for a while we decided to move on and check out the National Theatre Museum. This wasn’t an especially interesting museum, but it did pass some time before dinner, so it wasn’t all bad.

For dinner we met up with Amy, Amber, and Jill and we ate at a fancy pizzeria called Pizza Express. The food was expensive, so Amber and I split a spicy “Diavolo Pizza,” which was good, but not worth the nine pounds that we paid for it.

Now that our stomachs were at least moderately full we proceeded to the Drury Lane (do you know the muffin man?) Theater to see a performance of “The Producers.” The performance was very good and extremely funny. The casting director somehow found the world’s best Matthew Broderick look-a-like for the part of Leo Bloom, he was not only a dead ringer appearance wise, but he also had the exact same voice. All in all, I can safely say it is the best play I have ever seen.

After the play we decided to go out as a group to a pub or a club; however, every time we passed a pub or a club one of the girls (Jill Bohnker) would complain about how it “looked to expensive.” So we decided to buy some stuff from an off license, which is what the British call liquor stores, and drink at the hotel. Once we found an off license I flirted with the idea of buying some absinth, but decided against it and got a bottle of Malibu, while the Bohnker’s bought a bottle of wine. Once we got back to the hotel we all assembled in the lounge to drink and plan the next day’s trip. Well, that’s what we were going to do until the Bohnker’s realized that they didn’t have a corkscrew. I was going to save my Malibu for another night, but the futility of watching girls trying to plan a trip drove me to alcoholism. I drank the entire bottle that night and I don’t think the girls ever figured anything out, weird huh? My final action for the night was to call my friend Jake, who was studying abroad in Wales, to arrange to meet up the next day. So I made the call and then went back to room 1/12 and hit the sack.