London: Surveying and skating in Jolly Old! Summer 2014: Day 2 5/11/14 (British breakfast, much walking such city so photos, scavenger hunting, meeting the queen (maybe in alternate universe), skaters in Hyde park, adventures in Boots and clubbing on a Sunday night)

The day started off late at like 8:45 AM because I wanted to grab a bit more sleep for the day. I grabbed a shower (which did not seem to be as warm as American showers (oh well it was still good))! The only funny part was that the water would shoot directly at like a 30 degree angle at the front of the shower (aka the curtain and you couldn’t change the angle to have the water not hit the curtain). Basically without the curtain pulled to one side it was half shooting onto the bathroom floor (fail)! The room is nice though. Small with two single beds and a modest TV of about like 19 inches. Breakfast was chill and was eggs, sausages, toast and jam, orange juice, raisin and crème pastries, round hash browns and tea. I filled up on two plates as Shockey had bought us breakfast vouchers (free ish food!) and I didn’t feel like paying for more than 1 meal a day. They also have these single serving packets of Nutella that I think my sister could live off of for the duration of her day.

After breakfast we decide to start working on the scavenger hunt. We had a whole list of things to find that were scattered around London. We started off by walking to Big Ben and the London Eye (which is massive by the way). After the obligatory photos we went to Big Ben and walked around that area with the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey. Stefan wanted to go to a club in Chelsea to watch the final matches for the Premier league cup (which Manchester City ended up winning). We started walking for a while and I wanted to make it to Hyde park, but Nick and Stefan ended up going back to the hotel which at this point was like 40+ min away. Shoop kept going with me and we finally made it to Hyde park and got to see Buckingham Palace. Much less elegant and regal than I had imagined but it was good. Perhaps in an alternate universe we met the queen but in this one we did not.

Buckingham Palace

In panorama!

The walk around the palace was good though! We even saw the black fur hatted guards carrying the British equivalent of an AR15 (Looked like a shortened FNFAL). We sauntered around the exterior of the palace and then walked along Constitution road or something to Hyde Park. We also saw a Hard Rock Café (not sure if it was the first one or not) but it was in Piccadilly. We also saw the arch there and then headed to Hyde Park. I had read in the guide book for the area that there exists a group of skaters (mainly bladers that leave from one of the corners of the park and go skating around the city) that leaves at 2 PM from one of the corners and I saw them. I even saw a dude rocking quads that had basically inline hockey boots attached to quad plates. He had just gotten back into skating and I had a decent chat with him about skating (he lamented the speed of the inliners so I’ll have to show up later and see if I can bring a better showing for quads). After that Shoop and I started to head back to the hotel and grab photos of a few more items for the scavenger hunt. Several items we came across were this British bikini mug for a quid (cheapest and coolest item for a quid), a Johnny at Boots (Boots is a store like Walgreens). After that we finally got back to the hotel after so much walking. We then decided to grab food at the local place called the Plough. IT was good and I had the Big Ben Burger. Later at the same pub George freaked out after Will had been continuously slapping him and spilled a bear on the seat. Not a cool move. Later that night we headed to a club called 333 and it was cool with two floors but we (Kevin, Sean, Nysa, Angela and I) were among the 20 people that showed up to the club (it was free to get in). It was also 2 miles away and we had to bus back. I finally ended up getting to bed at like 3 AM and got up at like 7:45 AM.