Long Overdue

Hi everyone! Sorry it's been so long since my last post. Been busy and kinda occupied with school and trips and such. So with that said, I will apologize in advance for this very long post :)

Brighton/London trip
Since I don't remember where I left off, I'm just going to start from the beginning. Feb 26 was my travel day to Brighton, and also my first traveling internationally by myself (yes Mom I flew by myself and no nothing happened I was fine). The way to England was not eventful. I flew over there on Ryanair, which is pretty standard for me and they flew into Gatwick, which was the airport I needed to get to so I could take a train to Brighton. Once I made it through customs, which was a little nerve racking because that was my first time going through alone, I made my way to the trains, which were located at the airport. Yay convenience! Actually turned out to not be so good because before I boarded the train, there was an announcement that there had been a fatality on one of the main southbound tracks (the direction I was heading) and it was shut down. Well, turns out me and like 100 other people were all heading in the same direction so we squished on the train and it took us to the farthest stop we could go, which was the next stop. Then I had to push my way out of the station and stand in line for a good 45 minutes to catch a bus that took me to the next station, about a 45 minute ride away. Then I hopped on a train there and took it all the way to Brighton. Needless to say that for some reason when I travel, something always goes wrong :) Oh well. Finally made it to Brighton 2 hours later than I was anticipating, but my lovely roomies from Elon, Lauren T and Lauren M (who will henceforth be referred to as Laurenx2) were waiting for me. I honestly did not realize how much I missed them until I saw them. I almost started crying I was so happy to be with them again. They hadn't been waiting too long, thankfully, and their house dad (they're doing a homestay) was nice enough to drive us back so we didn't have to walk. Steve (their house dad) is really nice and was very welcoming. He even carried my backpack in for me. So we get there and dinner is almost ready, thank goodness, and it's REAL FOOD!!! Chicken fiesta to be exact, something I haven't had since I was back at Elon with my roomies. During dinner I also met their other roommate, Meaghan, who is a Senior at some school that I can't remember the name of, but she was really nice too. After food, we all kinda meandered upstairs after cleaning up and I got shown the very short tour of the house. Once in their room, it was like we had never been apart. That's one of the things I love about my roommates, Kristin included, is that no matter how far apart we are or how long it's been since we've seen each other, we can pick right back up where we left off. That night Lauren M and I were up until about 1am talking like we used to sophomore year. It was nice to have a conversation like that again :)

Friday dawned bright and early and we ate breakfast and then they decided to show me Brighton that day. We first took the bus to their school, the University of Sussex, which is SOOOOOOOO much bigger and better than DBS (my school). I'm thoroughly jealous of their library. I need something like that or at least comporable to Elon's in order to write my papers here well which has been proving to be a bit difficult considering the VERY limited amount of resources we have here. Anyway, after a visit to the school, we went to the Pier and of course took lots of pictures. It was great to be by the ocean again. Then we took a bus back into the city and had lunch at this cute Thai place with Meaghan, who needed to do some shopping. After lunch, we wandered around quite a bit just looking around shops and seeing what was there until around dinner time when we headed back to the house. It was at this point that I got to experience Sainsburys for the first time. OMG it is the best grocery store ever!!!!!!!! I really wish we had one in Dublin. It's like Tesco, only much bigger and slightly better prices. That night I honestly couldn't tell you what we ate because I don't remember, but knowing my roommates it was good. The next morning we had to get up a bit early to go to Rottingdean, this little town they had been raving about since they went for the first time. Apparently, it has the best creamed tea and scones with clotted cream ever. AND THEY DO!!!!!

That morning Steve was nice enough to drive us to Rottingdean and along the way we stopped by to say hi to his family and pick up his nephew. His family is really nice and jokingly asked him if he had picked up another girl for homestay when they saw me :) Once in Rottingdean, Steve dropped Laurenx2 and myself off in front of the cafe and we had the best tea and scones I've ever tasted. Literally to die for. If anyone goes towards the southern coast of England, GO TO ROTTINGDEAN FOR TEA AND SCONES! We then wandered around the town for quite a bit and did a few photoshoots, which being with Lauren T is typical :) They were a lot of fun though. We took pictures by a church, in this beautiful garden, and along the beach while we walked. Later we decided to take a bus ride so I could see the Seven Sisters Cliffs better. Ended up staying on the bus for about 2 hours just riding around. In Eastbourne, we had to get off and catch a bus back because it was getting close to dinner time. When we got to Brighton, we started heading to the next bus stop when we saw the bus we wanted at the stop so we ran like crazy, hopped a fence, and were able to catch the bus. It was insane :) Dinner that night was tacos, which are always good, and we had a big group to feed because not only was it Meaghan, Laurenx2, Steve, and myself, but some of Steve's buddies were over to watch a movie that night. Also, when we got back there was a surprise in the kitchen for us (well, I think more for me than anything). A 2-liter bottle of Shandy was on the counter (I had asked Steve about it the first night having been told about it by a friend of mine). So that night along with tacos, we all had some shandy. It was good (it's beer mixed with lemonade), but more lemonade than anything. I can't drink a lot of it at once though because it's really sweet. But it was a fun night.

The next morning we all headed to London. Steve decided to come with us as well so bright and early we headed out to catch the 8:30am train to London. It was an eventful train ride to say the least since Lauren M had booked the tickets and fails at life because she apparently did them very wrong so we had to buy more tickets on the train. Again, no matter where I go something seems to go wrong. Anyways, we finally arrive in London and make a pit stop at Starbucks. I think we all needed a pick-me-up to keep us going that day. First we headed to Buckingham Palace, which was cool, but was one of those things that can be done in about 10 minutes. So we moved onto Parliament, Big Ben, and Westminister Abbey. Those were really cool, and Westminister was really interesting to look at after having taken an art history course. We also wanted to see Trafalgar Square while we were over there so we made our way there and used the nicest free public restrooms I've seen yet. There is also this big fountain at the entrance to the National Gallery with lions around it so we did the touristy thing and took pictures by the lions :) We then headed out to check out the Tower Dungeon tour, however, upon arrive we quickly nixed that idea because it looked like an overpriced haunted house that none of us wanted to pay for. Continuing on our way, we walked over Tower Bridge, which was really cool and gave us a good view of the Tower of London. It was on that side of the Thames that we decided to pause for lunch at a pub we passed. The food was really good and I had my first taste of fish and chips (which were excellent!) Then we decided to split up since Lauren T and I wanted to go back to the National Gallery and the rest of the group wanted to see the London Zoo. It was nice to spend some quality time with LT, we had a good talk. Also, the art was really cool to look at, and we got to just about every section there was at the Gallery (and yes I am an art nerd lol). It was around that time that I realized I was late to meet up with Sam and Amanda so I frantically texted them and we decided to meet at Westminister Abbey since they had headed over in that direction. Lauren T and I made our way over there and met up with them. I introduced everyone and after standing around for 5 minutes, we decided to move on. I invited LT to come with us, but she decided to stay and wait for Lauren M, Steve, and Meaghan to come so we parted ways. It was sad to leave her and I'm a little sad that I couldn't say goodbye to everyone before I left, but it was okay because I knew I'd be seeing Laurenx2 soon enough when they came to visit me in Dublin.

Amanda, Sam, Andrea, and myself wandered around for a little bit before deciding we were hungry and wanted to find our B&B so we took the tube to Camdentown, where our B&B was located and checked in. After dropping off my ridiculously heavy bag (mind you I'd been carrying around my bookbag all day long) we went down the street for dinner at this little cafe place. It was pretty good and very cheap (always a plus when living on a budget) then we went back and took a nap. Earlier that day we had decided to go out that night and see if we could find anything interesting going on so the nap helped refresh us all. Once ready, we embarked out into London on a Sunday night. The first pub we went to looked okay, though seemed to cater to a slightly older crowd. We were very disappointed when 10 minutes after ordering our drinks they told us they were closing and that we needed to finish our drinks. So we asked the bartender if there was any place else open later nearby and he directed us to a pub down the street. Arriving there, we were glad to see that the crowd was closer to our age there, however they were going to be closing around 12am. So we asked the bartender there if there was anything open past midnight that night. She told us there were some places a few blocks away that should be open, so we headed out and wandered around till we found this seemingly popular little pub. Inside we decided to stay even though the bartender said they were only open till 12:30-ish. By that point we were kinda sick of walking and didn't want to walk too much farther. We all ordered a drink and found a table to sit at. It was kinda cool because we had apparently found a pretty Irish bar in London: there was an irish instrumental band playing and the guy who sat down and talked to us all evening was from County Mayo. Some of his friends came over, who are in a band, and we all ended up talking until around 1am when the really attractive bartender came over and told us that we needed to be moving on (which was fine with me because I was getting kinda tired). We headed back to the B&B and crashed. The next morning we got up and had a wonderful breakfast with, SURPRISE! normal coffee!!!!!!!!!! I was so happy to find that I wasn't having a massive caffeine jolt like I normally on the rare occasions I drink drip coffee here in Ireland. What a wonderful way to start off the day :) Then we grabbed our stuff and headed to the British Museum, which was the first thing on our list of things to do that day since it was mine and Andrea's last day in London. 2 hours later we were done after seeing some cool artifacts like the Rosetta Stone and Cleopatra's mummy. Then we headed towards Madame Toussand's where we were going to go until we found out that it was going to be over 20 pounds just to get in the door. Nixing that, we opted for a double decker bus tour instead, you know one of those hop-on-hop-off ones? Well, we hopped off at St. Paul's Cathedral, where Princess Di got married and were going to tour it when we found out that it was going to be 11 pounds. Not wanting to pay that, Amanda and I headed towards the Globe Theater, having gotten separated from Sam and Andrea while distracted by a used bookstore near St. Pauls. We took a tour of the Globe Theater which was AWESOME!! It was one of the few things I HAD to do while in London after hearing my friend Nora rave about it upon her return from London. I also went a little crazy in the gift shop and bought myself a mug, 2 magnets, and a beautiful greeting card that I think I'm going to frame. Amanda and I then headed to Kinsington Gardens on the tour bus to meet up with Sam and Andrea at the Peter Pan statue there. After trudging around the gardens for 20 minutes, we found the statue just as dusk was falling and took some quick pictures. Then Andrea and I had to run off because we had a plane to catch. Once safely back at Gatwick airport, we had dinner and then hopped the plane back to good ol' Dublin, though we realized that two of the guys from our program were on our plane to so when we got back to Dubin we walked back to the apartments with them. And since it's late and I have to be up early tomorrow, I'll continue with the post later :) Night!