Things Learned my First 24 Hours in London

Things Learned my First 24 Hours in London:

1. Pedestrians DO NOT have the right of way. The cars/double decker buses will hit you!

2. If you want to shop, do it early. Everything closes by 6pm, most likely to give the shopworkers time to go home and get ready to go to the pub.

3. Anytime after noon in London is a good time to start drinking. Pubs are full by 7pm and there is no law against public drunkenness. Pub parishioners spill out into the streets mixing and mingling with the neighboring pubs and creating a kind of street party.

4. Men in London are quite forward. While walking by a restaurant, before asking my name or anything, a guy asked me "Can I have your information?" Translation: "Can I have your phone number?"

5. Just because it's summer in the rest of the world doesn't mean it's summer in London! Yesterday, while walking around the Bloomsbury district, checking out the University of London, I was caught in a downpour of rain... in my flip flops!

6. London is a beautiful, yet dirty city. Walking down the Thames there was trash strewn everywhere, even on a statue by Salvadore Dali. There seems to be no public trash cans, which is unfortunate as the trash really does take away from the natural beauty of the city. Yet, it still looks nicer than Los Angeles!!


Overall I love London! Everything is within walking distance of the hotel, and if you don't feel like walking the 30 minutes to the Tower of London, there is of course a bus that will get you there. Public transportation here is awesome. So far I have visited Big Ben and Westminster Abbey, Trafalger Square, and the National Portrait Gallery which plays host to all of London's monarchy from the Tudor line on. The paintings are ginormous and quite elaborate. We had our first classes today. I'm still trying to get used to London time. I went to bed last night at 10pm and woke up at 5am. I couldn't sleep so I just did some reading. Then I came back from class and promptly fell asleep and woke up 5 min late for my discussion section! Luckily they hadn't started yet.

The full English breakfast is interesting. They have beans, stewed tomatoes, sausage, ham, fruit, cereal, yogurt, mushrooms... it's a weird collection of things. Their sausage is sweet and not greasy. And I love having ham for breakfast! I load up on breakfast so I don't have to buy lunch and dinner. I'm trying to do just a late lunch to save money since everything here is twice as expensive. And I'm really debating if I want to buy a full set of the British Harry Potter books... I probably will... I'm going to Platform 9 3/4 tomorrow! As well as the British Library which is supposed to be excellent. Anyway, my time is about up!