The Blue Trees of London

Contrary to popular belief, when I woke up this morning I knew exactly where I was, but despite the number of times Maddie and I would look at each other and say "We're in London," it still doesn't seem real. One thing I will have to get use to though is the constant noise of traffic, even at night. Luckily honking here isn't as major a form of communication as it is in New York, but it still took me a while to fall asleep with all the cars passing by. And it wasn't a good combination with the residual jet-lag.

We had another Orientation meeting this morning at 10 which was a general information session about living in London and the differences in culture and language we might encounter. Everyone got a chuckle when they warned us that here "pants" are underwear and "trousers" are pants and to be really careful before you said something like "I really like your pants, can I borrow them sometime?" or "I wish I had worn pants today."

After that our Arcadia leaders gave us a "scavenger hunt" that was a list of places we had to find using the Tube system so that we could become accustomed to using the Underground. Like many people have said, it's not very difficult and it makes it extremely easy to get around London. Maddie, Alex, and I went with two other kids from the Arcadia group, Frances and Tanner. Our first stop was St. Paul's Cathedral which was really cool and began our first "tourist" day of taking a bunch of pictures. The little garden outside the cathedral was really neat too because an Australian artist had painted all the tree trunks that surrounded the area bright blue. The "Blue Trees of London" as they were called were a project to show the importance of having trees within the city, and I have to say one of the things I really love about London so far is all of the little green parks that seem to be everywhere and are a nice break from the buildings as you walk through the city.

Once we were done walking around the Cathedral, our group decided that we would rather walk around and explore on our own than follow the scavenger hunt. So we took a detour to walk the Millennium Bridge, the one that was filmed in Harry Potter! You can also see the Tower Bridge from there so we took a few more pictures and continued to the other side of the of the river where we found The Globe Theater. It was early afternoon by this point so we decided to get some lunch at a restaurant called PizzaExpress. Now, I know what you're thinking, you're in London and you're getting pizza? But the restaurant was actually really nice and the pizza was delicious! I got the La Reine pizza which was prosciutto ham, mushrooms, olives, and mozzarella.

The Millennium Bridge with St. Paul's Cathedral in the background.

After lunch we got back on the Tube and went to Covent Garden which is a cute little area full of shops, street performers, and little eateries. Everyone had to pull themselves away from one that was selling these delicious-looking cupcakes. I also couldn't get over how cool all of the buildings and shops and marketplaces were lining these little cobblestone streets. It was so much fun to walk through and it's a place I'd love to go back to so I can actually eat and shop. Finally, we took a quick walk through Leicester Square (which looks kind of like a London version on Times Square) before returning to our flats to relax for a couple hours.

After we got a little of our energy back, we went to grab a quick dinner before going to see a play with our orientation group. Unfortunately, the limited amount of time we had before we had to be at the theater meant we had to default dinner to a KFC. (Getting pizza doesn't seem so bad now, does it? And although I really didn't want fast food, it was the first time I had ever been to a KFC. Go figure.) But we made it to the theater where we saw the play 39 Steps in which four actors play 39 different characters throughout the show. It was really good, not to mention impressive that they could remember and perform so many completely different characters. Finally, we went back to our flat with a big group of people and just hung out, swapped stories, and had a good time.

The theater in Leicester Square