I realize I have not blogged in quite a long time but, have no fear, I shall abridge the last month of my life into a few blog posts... it shouldn't be hard right... I mean I only traveled to 8 new countries in the past month... oh crap. Well, I guess we shall start with my first longer trip to London, Bruges, and Paris. My lovely sister, Melissa, made her way to Europe to embark on this adventure with me. Our first stop was London. The disaster started when Melissa and I were mistakenly at the wrong gates trying to find each other in a foreign country with no cell phones. It continued as we exited the airport and were greeted by the ever so friendly London rain which continued for the entire two hours we were searching for our hostel on a street that didn't exist. The trend of running around and being completely lost continued throughout our entire stint in London and the agony was only negated by the fact that London is home to Europe's only Chipotle Restaurant... so if you were wondering what the first thing we did in London was... well, ate enormous burritos (no regrets).
London in five words: gloomy, bland, confusing, proper and overrated (JJ Vittoria, I apologize extensively for this blog post). Their metro... oh wait, sorry, TUBE stops have names like Picadilly Circus and Jubilee. Whoever created those names was on LSD, I am certain. We did, however, get the chance to visit the Harry Potter monument to Platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross Station which, besides the Chipotle burrito, was the highlight of my sightseeing day in London. We took it upon ourselves to conduct a personal walking, rather, running tour through London to see the main sites including the London Eye, Big Ben, Westminster Abby, Buckingham Palace, etc... all very, well, like I said, unimpressionable. The day was brightened by some tea and chocolate mouse later in the evening followed by bedtime at 8:30 (not joking, it was glorious). Unfortunately, we did not have time to go to Abbey Road, however, I plan on returning to London later in life (shocker right) to take a picture of my family walking across the famous street... a picture that will hang above my living room fireplace. I plan too much, I know. To wrap up our first day in London I suppose Melissa said it perfectly, "I now understand why Harry left and went to Hogwarts".
The second day was much much better, perhaps because we weren't in London. We visited Windsor Castle which was absolutely beautiful and we really lucked out with sunshine during our time in Windsor. The queen was in the castle that day, noted by a certain flag flying above the castle. Did you know the queen's salary per year is 7 million dollars? Getting free shit and waving your hand all the time is definitely worthy of 7 million. After visiting the many what seemed like billions of rooms in the castle, we ate lunch outside at a cafe where I had my first ever Jacket Potato with cheese and beans. It was absolutely scrumptious.
The tour continued with a trip to Stonehenge, which was the entire reason for our visit to London. It was very cold and dark when we arrived which, in my opinion, added to the mysteriousness and ambiguity of the entire relic. It was in the middle of no where, which gave us a great opportunity to see the English countryside. It was awesome to finally see it in person after seeing it so many times in picture. While it was not the most architecturally astonishing thing I have seen in my life (Machu Picchu still takes the cake), it definitely held an enigmatic air that you can only feel if you see it in person.
Our last stop was Oxford, where Melissa and I separated from the group to find the great hall where scenes from Harry Potter were filmed. While most of the film was shot in London or in studios, there are select scenes that were captured in Oxford and we were determined to find them. Oxford, in general, was a beautifully quaint town with cobblestone passageways home to boutique shops and candy stores.
Our entire stay in England ended with some Fish and Chips and Bangers and Mash, some real british delicacies. I could have done without the Fish and Chips but the Bangers and Mash were absolutely bomb. That night we took an overnight bus from London to Brussels. We did not get any sleep which could be attributed to the fact that their was an obnoxious man behind us who believed he had the right to violently push our chairs back every time we tried to recline them, as well as the fact that we were completely unaware we would be exiting the bus to take a ferry across, as opposed to taking the Chunnel. But, of course, in attempts to make the best of the situation, we bought some Kinder Eggs on the ferry and I spent my last pound on a slot machine. I didn't hit big... this was expected.
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