Me, Daniel, and Jack the Ripper!

I was woken up this morning by Katie snoring. She sounded like a cross between a kazoo and a lion. This was at like 6:30am and I was not a happy camper. Shannon, Katie, and Jenny were out until after 4 in the morning so they had not been asleep long. I tried to take a video of the whole situation because it was one of those things that you just have to hear to truely appreciate to horror of the sound she was making. lol

Teresa B., Lauren, Allison, Ashley, Amy and I went to Camden Market to do some shopping. It was a lot of fun. There were a lot of cute stuff and some great deals. I bought some really cool pictures to frame when I get home. I plan on giving some away but I like them so much…it will be hard to give them up.

I had to leave the group around 11:00am so that I could meet Daniel at Paddington station at noon. I having been planning to meet up with him in London for about a month and it was a little scary because he doesn’t have a phone that I can call him on so if we missed each other there was nothing we could do about it. I really started to panic after about 45 minutes. I started calling everyone at home to see if I could get his brother Steve’s home phone number. See Steve is one of my best friends and his brother Daniel is stationed over hear. I figured, Daniel and I could be each others little taste of home. He finally got there at around 1:10pm. I was so glad to see him (he had some rain troubles) if we wouldn’t have found each other I would have been alone all day. And being on my own all day in London did not sound like a good use of my day. Plus scary! lol

Daniel and I went to Big Ben and walked across the Millennium Bridge. We took pictures by Westminster Abby. We went to lunch at a little pub near the Abby called The Silver Cross. We both got burgers and a soda but it took almost 45 minutes for him to get his burger and when it came it was wrong so we got free refills (they are not normally free over here....weird) and had to wait longer for his correct burger. It tasted ok despite the service issues. Luckly over here you dont tip so HA take that bad service! In your face lol!

After we ate we headed to the London Eye. I offered to go up in it again if he wanted to but he decided the line was too long. Daniel and I took the tube to Piccadilly Circus which was cool. It is kind of like a very small scale Times Square. I saw my first pay toilet (.20p) at the mall. We went to T.G.I. Fridays and snuck in to use the bathroom for free. After walking around for a while we hopped back on the tube and headed to the the London Bridge as well as Tower Bridge and walked around Tower Hill. You know you remember that song London Bridge is falling down? Well I kind of expected some grand bridge since the song was so famous but it is just a ordinary bridge with a little plague nearby explaining its history. It was a little anticlimatic if you ask me.

 

We had to take a break after that because our feet hurt. All this walking is a killer.  I was really nice to see Daniel, he really did reminded me of home. Kind of quenched my homesickness for a while. At this point it was about time for the Jack the Ripper tour so we headed over to that. It was really close to Tower Hill so we didn’t have to walk far. The tour was really neat. The area is still called Whitechapel and we walked around and were told about the murders and all the suspects and evidence. The guide was one of the guides from Tower Hill who I had spoken to yesterday so I was pretty confident that he knew wht he was talking about. The tour was really long though. It took about 2 ½ hours. We even had to leave early so that Daniel could make his 10:00pm train. I felt bad leaving because you are suppose to pay after the tour if you liked it and I did but we HAD to leave. It was only £5 so I guess it isn’t that big of a deal but still I felt bad. (Funny thing I saw on the tour was a place called Snatch that sold Adult Food…..anyone else confused??? lol).

After saying goodbye to Daniel I headed back to the hostel to see what everyone else had been up to that day and to find out what was going out for the night. Everyone was going to go out but when we got the bar it was closed. I am not used to place closing so early. We all just came back and went to bed. I tried to get food first b/c I hadn’t eaten since lunch but everything was closed so I had a coke for dinner and was asleep around 2am.