Crunch Time!

Alright last week, we all made a list of things we have left to do in London, so we've been running around the city like crazy trying to get everything done! One day a few of us history nerds went to the Churchill War Rooms that are underneath on of the government buildings by parlaiment. This is wear the British moved their headquarters during the London Blitz of WWII so they could be sheltered by the bombing raids and still work on defense strategy. It was so neat seeing everything left exactly as it was! However, ironically while we were walking around the speakers came on asking everyone to evacuate the building. Given our sinister moods from looking through bomb shelters, it was a little freaky. Everything turned out to be OK, but we still don't know what happened. So as we were waiting to go back into the museum, we decided to walk around a bit. We ended up behind some more government buildings that had an open field full of brown gravel in the middle of London---weird. So we walk through the area and come out from under these arches where we see some beautiful horses. So naturally, being the tourists we are, we get our cameras out to begin snapping pictures. Little did we know, we were right in the middle of the changing of the horses with the Royal Guard! Haha, they didn't even tell us to move! So there are going to be quite a few tourists who will later look at their pictures, wondering who the Americans are running around in the background. Eventually we got to go back into the museum, but it was indeed an eventful day that ended with us riding the tube all over town to find our favorite cookie place, Ben's. College kids, what do ya do?

This weekend a big group of us went to Paris, which of course wonderful. Relaxing as Nice? Not so much...the first day we got there we went to the Louvre and afterwards had lunch in the park next to the Arc d'triomphe. Afterwards we walked for 2 hours straight--our luggage on our backs, looking for our hostel. I'm not going to lie, that was pretty miserable and by the time we finally got to the place all we wanted to do was sleep since we had been up since 3 in the morning to catch our train. However, we did not sleep we went on top of the Le Tour Eiffel, which was breathtaking, especially at sunset---better than I remembered! We saw a couple get engaged which was soooo sweet and romantic! The next day we went to Notre Dame, went on a river tour on Le Seine, and oh yeah, ate crepes, crepes and more crepes!!!! My favorite food in the world!

That night we were all super tired and we stayed close to our hostel to eat dinner and watch the USA vs. England World Cup game. I am SO GLAD we were not in town for the game---the English are violent about their soccer, they don't mess around. Sunday, we went to a beautiful church on top of the only hill in Paris called Sacre Coure...this was the first place I had not been to in Paris, and it was my favorite place by far! We got to walk through it, which was during a Sunday morning service--at first a little weird, but the choir literally sounded like angels were singing. We left the church with chill bumps and tears in our eyes because it was such a beautiful experience. Oh yeah, and the view of the city was amazing! Also, while we were walking around on top of Mount Mart Tour de France bikers were training for a preliminary race (I think) so there were hundreds of people and radio stations and buses, etc for that.

The rest of the day we took it very easy because we were dead on our feet. We grabbed some crepes for lunch and had a picnic on the lawn in front of the Eiffel Tower, and we laid around for a couple of hours, it was ideal. When it was finally time for our 9:00 train, we were beyond ready for a beds awaiting us at Regent's. And as soon as we got on the London tubes, we realized how much we missed the cleanliness of London (which who would have thought to say that?). But Paris, smells horrible--it's beautiful, but I'm almost positive they do not know what proper sanitation is there.

London is definitely home to me. I feel like I've been here for at least 2 months--not just 5 weeks. And I can't even think about leaving this beloved city. We are definitely going to live it up the short time we have left here, and mark off the London bucket list!

The first picture is the beautiful park behind Notre Dame where we ate lunch one day, the next is a us on top of the Eiffel Tower, and then the last one is of the girls at the Eiffel Tower!