London (with pictures!)

Hello everyone!

Big Ben! Picture taken on our way to Buckingham Palace

Sorry I've been gone for a while, but I've been to London from Wednesday to Friday with my school, and I'd like to tell you all about it.

Day 1


On Wednesday, all people from my year (I'm in the third year of secondary school, I don't know how other school systems work but anyway we went to London with all people in my year) gathered around our school at around 6:30 in the morning. It was early and we were all very tired, but also extremely exited. We drove away at around 7:00.
We didn't go by boat, but we drove to France and took the train there. Let me just tell you one thing: That train is fucking scary. The outside is some scary rusty brown colour and the windows are very tiny, and the inside looks like a Star Wars tunnel gone-wrong. Your vehicle basically gets locked up in a department and at the front and back of the train there's a toilet (I've never been to the toilet on a train before, and after this experience I never will again) and that's it. It's really scary.

About forty minutes after entering the tunnel, we saw daylight again. Everyone was happy because we were in England yay! I tried to take some pictures of small villages in beautiful valleys, but all photo's turned out like this:

Fail.

Before we went into the tunnel, I'd watched Finding Forrester with a good friend of mine who is absolutely obsessed with Sean Connery. The movie is great, everyone reading this should watch it. It's beautiful. After the tunnel, I sat next to another friend of mine and we listened to some music.
(note: our tastes in music are very diffrent but these are some songs we both liked:)

My friend likes My Chemical Romance,
 so I err.... forced her to listen to some
songs she hadn't heard yet.

Don't laugh. Everyone loves this song.

Our hostel

We arrived at our hostel at around 4 pm, I think. We stayed at the Hyde Park Inn, with my class and an other one. The other two classes stayed at the Saint Christopher The Village. We drove past their hostel and it looked really nice. In fact, we drove right through the London city centre and it was awesome! But why is there a Starbucks at every streetcorner? Not that I'm complaining...

When we arrived at the youth hostel, we were a bit later than expected and (oh my god my school does this kind of things all the time) our school forgot to bring the entrance tickets to the hostel, so we had no proof that we were even allowed to stay there. Those papers were still in the other hostel. So, after standing outside in the rain for what felt like an hour, we were finally allowed inside. I shared a room with three girls that I do speak a lot and they're very nice, but we're not best friends or anything. I was very happy to be in a room with them though, because as I said, they are very nice and friendly.

Finally, I don't know how much later than expected it was but well it was late, we walked to Buckingham Palace (and we used the Underground, our teachers were so worried about losing us it was almost funny) and then we immediately had to leave to the restaurant we were eating that day: Ask Italian.
Ask Italian is a nice restaurant, but some people in my year are just huge douchebags so the staff had a very stressful evening. The food was really good though, I had a pizza.

Then, we headed for the theatre to watch Billy Elliot.

I've heard so many people talking positively about it but I really didn't think it was that good. Billy Elliot has been playing for what, four years now? And it was really showing. The actors did a very poor job at acting, if you ask me. They've simply played it too many times. I was dissapointed. The dancing was awesome though, the dancers were great. My compliments.

Back in the youth hostel, the three other girls and myself were in our room, and in the room next to us, well, I don't know what was going on but it sounded like a massacre/rave party. And the owner of the hostel came to OUR room to complain and he told us that if we would make one more noise, we would be removed from the hostel. We were completely innocent! We were whispering for heaven's sake, because there was some dude on the staircase that kept saying 'SHHHHHHH' all night long. It was awkward.

Day 2

I showered in a shower without a lock. Enough said.

I also went to Starbucks for the first time that morning. I ordered a caramel frappuchino and I'm in love! I'm not a huge fan of coffee but this is heaven. They did spell my name wrong though. Apparently it's 'Domini'. I was amused.

At around 10 or 11 am, we left for our trip to a museum of our choice. A good friend and I went to the Victoria Albert Museum and it was amazing. We saw an exhibition of jewelry, of theatre stages and costumes and posters (I spotted original Siouxie And The Banshees, Sex Pistols, Rolling Stones and The Cure posters, just so you know) and in the 'Asia' department we spotted a display with Lolita dresses and it was the best thing ever.

After our trip to the museum, we went to the London Eye. Now, I took lots of pictures there, but my camera kept focusing on the rain of the basket we were in and not on the background. Here are some pictures though.

The London Eye is pretty damn scary from this close

Okay that's enough. After the London Eye, we went to Tower Hill with the Underground to eat in a restaurant called WAGAMAMA. We had to eat with chopsticks, which I had only done once before in my life. I looked ridiculous. There was one waitress at the restaurant and she was so awesome! She had blonde hair with hot pink underneath, in two ponytails, and she'd painted a rose on her cheek with eyeliner. The fact that her boss let her look the way she wanted at work made me smile.
We had so much food it was too much for me. I loved it though, if I ever visit London again I'll come back here for sure.

After dinner, we had the coolest thing ever: A Jack The Ripper Tour. 

Basically, a guide took us to some of the places of some of Jack's victims and showed us pictures and told us stories of how he killed people and stuff, it was awesome. I highly recommend doing a Jack The Ripper Tour if you ever have the chance to. We walked past some spooky buildings, I have pictures!

Some people were scared to death but I loved it.

Okay. This night was weird. When we got back at the hostel, there were French boys staying in the room next to us, throwing a party just like the people the night before, and this time the boys (I think they were like 12 or something) would walk around in nothing but their boxer and smile at us. That was pretty scary for sure. Also, there was a girl from our class staying in our room, because she liked our room better than the room she was supposed to sleep in. At some point in the evening, there were people in our hallway so she got out of our room and came back with a bunch of Italian boys. I was half asleep and introduced myself to one of them. I've slept most of the night, but what I do know is that the guys kept knocking on our door all night long asking for that girl, and one time a teacher came into our room when one of the guys was there so we hid him behind the door.

Day 3

In the morning, I went to Starbucks again and ordered another frappuchino, but one size bigger this time. This time they also wrote my name wrong, they wrote 'Domine' which was also amusing.

Then, we were given some free time. Originally, we would've had 3 hours but we were behind scedule again and were only given 2 hours. My friends and I wanted to go to Camden really bad, but we didn't have enough time so we went to a bookstore where I brought The Tales Of Beedle The Bard and Quidditch Through The Ages. We had to arrange our own lunch in Covent Garden (just like the day before, by the way) but things are so expensive there we brought lunch in a supermarket.

Now comes the epic part.
The BBC Experience! We were going to have a tour through some studios and stuff and I was so excited!

AND GUYS. THERE WAS DOCTOR WHO EVERYWHERE. I SCREAMED. I ALMOST DIED. MY HEART(S) STOPPED BEATING OKAY. I HAVE PROOF.

At the main entrance

A TARDIS. OH MY GOD. THEY USED IT IN THE ACTUAL SERIES.
I TOUCHED IT
SO TECHNICALLY I HAVE SHAKED THE DOCTOR'S HAND

TOO MANY EMOTIONS

We weren't allowed to take pictures of everything, the whole place is very well secured and they like to keep stuff private. They showed us two studios, one where they used to host the sport news and one where shows like Dancing With The Stars (or well, I don't know how it's called in English but you know what I mean) are recorded.

Look how big! 

Dramatic close-up of the lights.

After seeing the studios, our guides let us read the news and play The Weakest Link in a small studio made for the tour. There. Was. A. Cybermen. Mask.

Then we walked through a hallway, to the BBC shop, and I saw this

A mask from The Girl in the Fireplace, my favourite episode :3

An Ood mask! 

And this was on the wall of the BBC shop:

There, I brought two posters and a Doctor Who action figure of the Eleventh Doctor. My friend brought a Doctor Who chess game. How awesome is that. 

After the BBC Experience, we had an hour to do something by ourselves. My friends and I went to a HUUUUGE music store called HMV where I brought an Avenged Sevenfold poster and an Iron Maiden bag. Because I can. Then we had dinner at a restaurant called Leon Carnaby Street. I had a wrap and it was nice, but it had chorizo and, like, one hundred kilos of garlic so the smell was unbelievable. It was really nice food though. After dinner, we had another hour to do something by ourselves before going to the Wizard Of Oz. So we went to Drop Dead store (the store is so cool, they have some really nice clothes) and went back to HMV where I brought two Avenged Sevenfold CD's: City Of Evil and Waking The Fallen. 

The Wizard Of Oz was a fantastic musical. I liked it way better than Billy Elliot. The decor was awesome, the costumes were amazing and the songs very catchy. I loved it.

After the Wizard Of Oz, we had to go back to the Netherlands again. The way back is a bit of a blur in my mind... 

London was amazing and I can't wait to go back there. It was awesome.

Thank you for reading!

xoxo

Gasoline Diamond

Whoever made this, I love you