Welcome To London

Today I had one of the best days since for ages!
The strikes meant I had a day off school, so me and my friend Sam were planning to see Bridesmaids because three of our other buddies were going on open days. But her art teacher really wanted her to take the opportunity to go to London to take photos for her art coursework. I was kinda disappointed but when I was looking up places to see graffiti and advertising and all the trains we'd have to get I was getting a little excited, so last night I really couldn't wait to go!
Usually when I go to London, or a place further than 3 miles from my house, I rely on other people because they always know the way, and if they don't they will be much more likely to get us home than I will! But today, as only me and Sam were going and we don't know our way around London, I really had to be careful. I took two maps with me! Every time we got a train we were practically jumping with excitement that we were on the right train when we were looking at the next stop in the map, but by the end of the trip we were actually annoyed at the perfection of our train journeys. I am so glad we didn't get lost though, well on the trains. Finding what roads to go down was hard, my map hardly helped at all, but we never asked anyone for help, we were awesome!
First of all we went to Westminster, and my dad was saying that there were three exits to that station so we were pretty lucky to come out at the one where Big Ben was right in front of us. I was surprised at how tall it was, it wasn't that big last time...

After that we walked across Westminster Bridge towards the London Eye, which wasn't actually on my map, probably because it was made in 1995! I'll have to get my dad a new one for his birthday... There was a capsule on it missing, which was kind of creepy, there was the outer shell left so it looked like it had just fallen off at some point on the way round.

Then we walked to the National Theatre where there's a legal spot for graffiti, and skateboarding. I didn't take any pictures of this because I wasn't the one doing the art project. But Sam will have some pictures on her blog at some point which you can check out here. There were a few skateboarders there, and they were so young! They weren't doing any cool tricks though, which was a shame. Then we started to make our way towards Embankment station so we could go to Piccadilly Circus. We saw a few protesters but the group was so small, and none of our teachers were there. We took some photos of the huge advertising wall screen things they have at Piccadilly. They are so cool, like a tiny Times Square.

I actually took this a while ago, I just couldn't be
bothered to get my camera out this time ;).

By this time it was 11.30 (we left for London at 10) and we were incredibly hungry! We wanted to find a McDonald's but had no idea where to go so we just started walking down a random road and we found it! It was just perfectly sitting there looking perfect - I was really really hungry. The girl that served us was amazing, she was so happy and friendly, if we were having a bad day she would have totally cheered us up. She wouldn't take Sam's 'No' to the sauce as an answer, it was so funny :). After our delicious meal we walked to Hamley's, I'd forgotten how big that was too! There were so many toys and we tried out the head massager and it was the weirdest feeling ever, I don't think it could be called relaxing... Then we went to the sweets and there were so many jelly bean flavours! It was awesome.

Then we tried to find Oxford street, finally we did, Regent Street was long. I hadn't been Oxford Street before, it was pretty amazing, so big and so many stores. I suppose it's like a normal High Street but about 3 times bigger and with more take away stands and phone shops than anywhere! We didn't go shopping, we were just repeating the names of the stores that kept appearing, like H&M and GAP. Oxford Street was so much longer than Regent Street so we were walking it for ages! And there were so many roads to cross. London has the worst roads, they are so confusing and the green man definitely doesn't last long enough! We just copied the crowds. Finally we reached the end and found the Jelly Baby statue, which was strangely placed near a giant horses head, which looks nothing like a horses head unless you see it from the side.

Cute right?

We decided we needed a break so went to the local McDonald's for a McFlurry. And then I asked for a chocolate milk, instead of a dairy milk McFlurry. I'm just too funny... So we ate our McFlurrys next to the giant horses head, where others were sleeping or eating McDonald's like us :). It was a bit cold though, I was starting to believe the shorts might not have been a good idea. We started to see some people we knew around, which we thought was weird because we just commented that we hadn't seen anyone yet. We went to Hyde Park out of interest because we'd finished our to do list for the day and we noticed that there was something going on, like a  music festival thing, which is where we think the people we knew were going. We walked around a bit and found some awesome deck chairs, which Sam was convinced we had to pay to sit on, and sat on them. They were so relaxing, but incredibly hard to get out of! 

We wanted to find the lake in the park but it was so big we decided to go to Tower Bridge, which I confused with London Bridge so we got off at the station and had to walk far. But we did get some photos :)

Then we walked back to the station and decided we would walk up St. Paul's Cathedral, we felt like being crazy. When we got there though it was so expensive to get in. Well maybe not that expensive but for us it was :P so we went to Starbucks, where I got an awesome Chocolate Cream and we sat in the sun to get a tan ;) definitely didn't regret the shorts here. We were the coolest looking people there! Not even kidding!

We went home after this, after eventually finding the right road, and we were so tired we nearly collapsed onto every train. We kinda got lost at Liverpool Street but we decided to get the Circle Line to find a station we actually knew. Then we got the c2c home and almost fell asleep :P.
It really was a great day, I definitely want to do it again. It was nice having the freedom to explore London without a proper plan for the day. So exciting and spontaneous :). I just love London. I might have to rethink where I want to go University!