Apparently they don't believe in knocking in the UK

So for the past week (the entirety of the time I've had the pleasure of being in the UK) I've been sick. This has not stopped me however, from exploring the new city! In the past few days, after we settled the kitchen debacle, Emily and I have been to our first pub (yay!) the tower of london (and tower hill and tower bridge) and buckingham palace! On Friday night (despite the cold weather and rain) we did ourselves up and went out to our first pub. Now we planned to go to this pub - an ale and cider house - that was supposed to be close. I was quite excited about this because I couldn't wait to try some traditional english cider! Despite our hopes, we walked for nearly an hour until we found ourselves lost and gave up. We made our way back to school, and then found our fall back pub - the court. this is the go to place for students of UCL, and also offers great student discounts. Emily and I tried some english beer, english cider, and some english vodka cranberry (which kicks america's vodka cranberry's ass, by the way). Now this pub was really crowded, and had all walks of life. College kids to middle aged men dressed in suits. And it was totally normal. Everyone just sitting around tables drinking cider and beer and having a grand old time. We stayed for a few hours, met some new friends (yay!) and then made our way back home.

The next day we headed out for the Tower of London. It was 15 pounds to get a ticket in, but it was definitely a landmark of London worth seeing. We got a free tour by these men who live in the tower and guard it (but also give tours..) but they have to serve in the military for like 25 years and all this crazy stuff to qualify. That was fun, then we explored around. We saw the Crown Jewels (reallllllly amazing), some torture chambers and dungeons, some armor and swords and things like that. After a long, long day of touring around, we made our way to the Tower Bridge. Now, for those of you who are confused by the nursery rhyme, the huge landmark bridge in london is NOT the London Bridge. Nor is it falling down. The Tower Bridge is the huge bridge that was sooo exciting for me, because I love bridges. Its absolutely tremendous, probably the biggest one I've ever seen. There are offices IN THE BRIDGE! How cool is that?!

Anyway, we grabbed some food at a pub and tried some pimms (a lemonade fruity alcoholic drink that is just delightful) and then made our way to Tower Hill (where all... well, pretty much every person who lived in London got beheaded). It really was a bunch of nothing, as what's left of it is just a patch of grass. We walked past it like 8 times before we realized. Its in the middle of this huge navy memorial, which if you ask me is not the place for a guillotine site. But oh well.

We didn't make it out last night because we were exhausted, and had to wake up early this morning to get to Buckingham Palace in time for the changing of the guards. We arrived there at 10:45 am, 45 minutes before the guards changed. I kid you not, there were THOUSANDS of people there. I don't understand. The changing of the guards happens every single even day of the month at Buckingham palace. And every single even day of the month there are thousands of people there!!! Its unbelievable. It was cool to see but rather uneventful as I am quite short and could not see the bulk of it. But the guard's band did play a nice Abba medley. After the changing of the guards was over, we waited in line for a long while to get tickets inside the palace. Now, I had never really thought much about the queen and her palace, but after seeing it I could definitely see myself living there. Or being the queen for that matter. Every single thing in that palace is gold - the staircases, the chandeliers, the walls, the chairs, its like endless gold. And there was this one display of some of the queen's actual gowns, which I wouldn't mind wearing myself from time to time.

After the palace, we headed over to a small tea shop that I remembered from when I was here a year ago. It was still there!! We went in, and tasted some of the BEST tea I've ever had. I bought a few packages of tea and as it started to rain, we got on the metro to Euston. Next, we went into this medical museum that is part of our school and was sponsoring a free skin exhibit. It was really cool (a little creepy) but had real human skin, some photography, some information on skin diseases and some really cool tattoos.
All in all it was a long but great day, and then we finally made it home and decided to just hang out for the night because we had been running around so much. Tomorrow we are going to the science museum, which I'm really excited about!