London!

So the weekend after 10 day Ari and I headed to London! Yes I finally got there!

It was only a two day weekend so we knew it would be a very brief visit but still totally worth it!

Friday night we took the train to Salzburg where we stayed the night so we could get the first flight out Saturday morning. Our first adventure occurred when the bus that's supposed to come every 10 minutes to take you to the airport didn't show up for 45 minutes and then the sign said that it still wouldn't be there for another hour! And we had to get to the airport or we were gonna miss our flight! But, luckily, right on the corner was a tour bus station and there was a very nice gentleman there who spoke English and called a cab for us! So we made it to the airport in plenty of time!

Once we got to London it was a 45 minute bus ride from the airport to the actual city. And then we spent a good 45 minutes to an hour just trying to figure out the metro system. But we finally got to the Tower of London and Tower Bridge. Unfortunately, because we were so short on time we didn't get to actually go in the Tower but we still got some great pictures of both the Tower and the Bridge. Now Tower Bridge is what everyone thinks of when they think of London Bridge but it's actually not. London Bridge is actually highly disappointing. It looks like a really boring average bridge. However, Ari was very excited that we got to walk across Milennium Bridge which is the bridge that gets destroyed by the death eaters (or dementors I don't remember which) in the sixth Harry Potter movie.

We did find British telephone booths to take our pictures in which Ari especially was very excited about.

We then made our way towards Big Ben and I got to ride on a double decker bus! Top deck of course. Yeah, it was exciting.

I hadn't thought we would get to see Westminster Abbey but it turns out it's right near Big Ben so we got to go into part of the Abbey though the actual Church was closed. But, once we got there, I had a spur of the moment idea so Ari and I knelt outside the church and prayed a nine minute novena (which is just nine Memorares) for the conversion of England. Being in London really helped me to appreciate the fact that all the other trips I've been on this semester have been pilgrimages. It was so sad seeing all these beautiful churches in England and knowing that they should be Catholic - they were Catholic - but they're not. I never fully appreciated the selfishness of Henry the Eighth before. He wanted his divorce and so he not only destroyed his wife, scarred his children, killed hundreds - probably thousands - of innocents, and forced that generation to abandon their faith but he imposed his false religion on all these future generations of English! It just broke my heart. So I was very glad that we were able to pray for England's conversion outside of Westminster Abbey and implore the prayers of St. Thomas More and St. Thomas a' Beckett for the conversion of their country. That prayer was definitely the highlight of the trip.

We then took some pictures of Big Ben which was actually smaller than I expected. But it's Big Ben so it was still pretty darn cool.

It was dark out by the time we headed to Buckingham Palace and let me tell you that was disappointing! It was a wall! We walked right past it and then we were like wait, I think that was the palace. Yeah, it was kind of ridiculous.

Now, Ari had her heart set on visiting Platform 9 3/4. For those of you who have not read Harry Potter, Platform 9 3/4 is the platform at King's Cross Station where Harry gets the train to Hogwarts. However, it doesn't really exist. In the books you have to run through a brick wall to get to the platform. So when Ari first told me that she wanted to visit Platform 9 3/4 I was afraid that I was going to have to explain to her that Harry Potter is in fact, what we call, fiction. But, it turns out they built a Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross Station because of the popularity of the books. So our final stop that night was to Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross Station. Oh my gosh it was so much fun! The "platform" is actually just a brick wall with a sign that says Platform 9 3/4 but sticking out of the wall is half a luggage cart - like it's in the process of disappearing through the wall onto the actual platform. We took so many pictures - it was hilarious!!!! It sounds so silly but we just had a blast!

We then headed into town to get some dinner but stopped to do a little souvenire shopping on the way. I got one of those adorable teddy bears that's dressed up like a Royal Guard! We ended up eating dinner in a Chinese restaurant!

And then we headed for our hostel. On the website it had sounded like a really good hostel - cheap, breakfast and towels included, only ten minutes from London Bridge - well it turns out that ten minutes from London Bridge is the bad part of town. So we're walking down the street and we have to pass through this whole group of people doing drugs and fighting. So we just kind of looked down and walked by as quickly as we could and then we realize we've gone too far and our hostel is back the other way. So we turn around and look up at the building that all these scary people are standing in front of and . . . it's our hostel. Yeah. I've never actually read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde but this was the kind of place I imagine it being set in.

Now, I've discovered that my brain tends to shut down when I'm in situations like this so I was ready to go into this hostel. Thankfully, Ari still had all her wits about her so she walked right on past and we got a bus and headed back to the safe part of town. I was a mess. Like I was just totally paranoid the rest of the night. And it probably didn't help that we were just wandering around London trying to find a safe looking hostel. So we finally hailed a cab and told the driver to take us to a safe hostel. Which he did. And there were two beds left in the entire place! Praise God! So we went up to our rooms and we stopped in the hall and Ari was like "Can we just pray before going to bed?" and I was like umm, YES! So we just thanked God that we were alive and then headed to bed. Oh yeah and it was about 2:30 in the morning at this point. I think I got about 4 hours sleep that night.

The next morning we took a bus to the train station, a train to the airport, a plane to Salzburg, a bus to the train station, ate kebaps for lunch!, and took a train - well a couple trains actually - back to Gaming, and then walked back to the Kartause! And that was the end of the London adventures!