The World is Calling: A Weekend Adventure in London

I'm sitting in my flat right now watching the rain come down lightly on the neighbor's backyard. Yes, I know it's a city, but they really do have backyards here, and if you don't have a backyard, you normally have a square across from your house. I was told that about 1/3 of the city is devoted to green space, including parks and squares. I'm drinking the instant latte mix that I had to buy because I couldn't find a coffee maker, and with the exchange rate, it's too expensive to buy coffee from a cafe everyday even though there are about five down the street from me on Earl's Court.

Two of my flatmates have gone to class and the other one is sound asleep, so I essentially have the flat to myself.

My weekend was quite adventurous starting Friday night with our official pub crawl. Our RAs took us around to the best pubs in the area, which were way better than the ones we had found on our own the night before. We ended up going to the Imperial College Student Union (aka "the Union") which was by far the best place yet. Drinks are about half of the price of all of the other pubs and there are tons of British college students to meet.

Saturday morning no one woke up until noon, so we got a rather late start on the day. A bunch of us planned on going to Portobello Market on Portobello Road. The market is only open on Saturday and tends to attract a lot of tourists, but I had heard that there was a lot of neat things to see. We had planned on taking the tube all the way there, but half the line was closed down for construction, so we had to get off two stops earlier and walk almost two miles there. We ended up seeing some very pretty sights, but since Portobello Road itself is two miles long, by the end of the day we had walked about eight miles. Next time I'm definitely going to go when the tube is running.

Portobello Market

Sunday we got up a little earlier and went to the Russian winter festival at Trafalgar Square. We saw a Russian rock band, watched some dancing, and then ate food that we couldn't pronounce but tasted very good. The sun came out, so we decided to go to Hyde Park, the biggest park in London. It was very pretty, and very green, especially for January. Apparently, the grass doesn't die here in the winter, but stays green all year long.

Russian Winter Festival at Trafalgar Square

Elisabeth, Crystal, and I eating tasty Russian food.

Hyde Park in January

The park was a lot farther away from our flat than we thought it was, and I was not prepared to spend that long out in the wind, so it was really too cold for this Florida girl. I'm looking forward to the weather getting warming.