The Atlanta Nanny

A Personal Recount of London 2017

Tuesday, 21st of March 2017

I'm sitting on the Chunnel from London to Paris, awaiting arrival. I've already stayed in London for two days; we traveled to some of the most famous of tourist spots. So far, I have seen and ridden the London Eye, a very large Ferris Wheel, which can hold up to thirty passengers in one bubble. Unfortunately, it is very typical for London to be very cloudy, and although our tickets were for sunset, there was no sunset to be seen through the clouds. Thankfully, there wasn't rain on our first day, despite us only being able to have half the day after we left the airport. There was an issue with our ticket not letting us cancel our 2nd leg without cancelling our returning home flight. I'm so glad my dad is quite assertive when it comes to calling out ridiculousness when he sees it. Anyways, London is very cool. It's like a short Atlanta, but with more old-fashioned buildings and very few skyscrapers. All the streets look the same, I don't know how people know where they're going. Some differences between the U.S. and the U.K. are the street lights for one. Ours hang over our heads and theirs are short posts with the street lights attached to the top. Also, even their "new" buildings are designed to resemble the old London. You can never tell just how old a building is because all the architecture is the same. An obvious difference is the whole driving on the opposite side of the road thing. I wish we had an Underground like London does though. Our Marta is bland compared to this modernized rail system. It is definitely not as safe as the Underground for sure. Also, very few places offer free water, only bottled, and you have to pay for ketchup, which should be abolished. No drink will ever have ice either, tragically. On day 2 of London, we did a ton of walking. Savannah, Charis and I got up close and personal with Big Ben, the grandfather clock that towers over London. Right next to it is Westminster Abbey, which is a famous church that was built in the early 13th century. It's held every coronation of royalty in the English Parliament, including the current Queen of England's coronation. The Abbey also doubles as the burial site for plenty of kings, queens, dukes, duchesses, and even famous people as well. Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Lewis Carrol, and C.S. Lewis have their final resting places underneath the stone floor of the Abbey. One of Mk's favorite authors lies there as well: Charles Dickens. The next place we visited was the royal family's little getaway in London, the Buckingham Palace. It was much smaller than I had expected, but it's still a fair-sized palace. There we made it to the end of the changing of the guard where they had the band, the guards and men on horses in a little parade. Why they have unnecessary bulbous hats that are dysfunctional is beyond me. After many pictures taken in the gusty wind, we made our way to my long awaited "must see": The National Gallery. There was endless art on every wall, from nearly every era and style period. I got lost a couple of times because of how many rooms there were. Of course, my favorite room had to be the one with my favorite painting inside. Van Gogh's the Sunflowers was more glorious than any photograph could have ever justified. It was amazing to see his use of Chrome Yellow, a new paint color of his time. Van Gogh uses the new paint in a multitude of his oil on canvases. I love how goopy Van Gogh makes the paint in order to let the image practically jump out of the canvas with raised texture from the excess layers of oil paint. The whole thing was absolutely breathtaking, I was so excited. Later on, since all of us were hungry, we stopped at this little restaurant called the Shades for some delicious avocado, bacon, chicken sandwiches. They were huge, thank goodness Charis and I split one. I couldn't believe Savannah ate a whole one by herself, then again, she had skipped breakfast. Since we had done everything on our list earlier than expected, we decided to randomly choose an attraction before our Musical, Mamma Mia! that night. Charis chose this War ship called the HMS Belfast that floated on the River Thames. The ship was much larger on the inside than we had expected. The tour was so cool, the retired ship had 3 transformations in its lifetime of service and had even led the fleet of ships down the spout on D-Day. We had no idea the self-guided tour and exploration would take 3 hours, but what an experience it was! Since we had killed so much time, we decided to head on over to our musical, Mamma Mia! that started at 7:45 that evening. I'm so glad Eva and I listen to musicals all the time because it was so much fun being able to sing along with the soundtrack and the cast. Mamma Mia! has such a great plot and the soundtrack is something upbeat and easy to sing along or dance to, with its 70's style music and whatnot. Finally, after a long day from 7:00 am to midnight that night, we reached the hotel. I have never had or have even seen a blister so big as the one on my right pinky toe. Just the one toe, too, nowhere else on my feet, just the pinky toes on my feet hurt. Maybe Paris won't be such an extreme walking extravaganza? Hopefully, and prayerfully. That's all for now, I think we've arrived in Paris. I cannot wait to see what the city of Love, and lights, holds for me today.