I knew the moment I woke up that morning, that it was going to be a great day! Today was the day I was finally going to get to see Wicked preformed in LONDON! Anyone who knows me, knows I am a wee bit obsessed with the play Wicked. For anyone who hasn't seen it, you should! Or at least listen to the music and fall in love with the Wicked Witch... for she really isn't all that Wicked!
The other half of our group arrived in the middle of the night and they informed us at breakfast that they just made it in time to take the underground from the train station to the hostel. They made it on the very last train of the night and they arrived at the hostel at 1 in the morning, pretty good for leaving Bangor at 7 at night I would say! After eating we decided to go our separate ways since they wanted to see if it was still going to be possible for them to get tickets to Wicked for the matinée showing at 2:30 with us.
So they left for the Apollo and we set off randomly. We had seen pretty much everything we wanted to see the day before but during the tour we really didn't have a lot of time to explore the places we walked by. So we decided to set off for Buckingham Palace again. The day before we had arrived just in time for the changing of the guard so the place was packed tight we people so we really didn't get to see much. This time we got to walk right up to the gates and explore and really take it in for the greatness that it is! It is really a very magnificent place! After the palace we walked down The Mall Road and stopped in front of Prince Charles' place where there happened to be a couple of guards marching. We were really hoping to get really close to them to take a picture but they had really big guns so we decided we didn't want to get shot :)
After a short walk (probably a mile) we were in Trafalgar Square, which I mentioned we were at the day before. We didn't have any time to "play around" the day before, we only got to look. Trafalgar Square is famous for the gigantic lions that everyone climbs on, so we couldn't pass up the opportunity to play around. We all had to help each other out to first get up on the monument and then we had to help each other get on to the lions. The lions were very slick so once I was up there I really didn't move much, and as soon as the Kodak moment was captured I slid right down! At this point we started wasting time because we had been informed that the rest of the group was going to meet up with us. Only 2 of them were able to get tickets to Wicked... sad day! OH well, that didn't matter because I knew those of us that were going to see it were going to love it!
Next we decided to walk toward parliament, Westminster Abbey and of course Big Ben! Granted we had seen all of these great structures the day before, the rest of the group had not. They are so magnificent that it was ok seeing them twice :) We really wanted to go inside Westminster but they charged 16 to get in! How crazy is that? You have to pay to get inside of a church! Must be pretty amazing inside. And to think, in just under 2 months Prince William and Kate will be getting married in that very church! I would love to go, but I think it will be way to crazy in London, but who knows, we will have to wait and see. After all, it is history in the making!
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| "One Short Day" |
Now it was time for the group to part ways. Six of us headed off, to what I consider to be the greatest part of the trip! It was time to head to Wicked. As we walked down Victoria St. I was getting very very excited. So excited I could hardly stand still. There was another girl in our group, Riley, that had seen the show before and she totally understood my excitement. The others, really had no idea about the greatness they were in store for! We arrived in plenty of time, before the doors opened actually. After we finally got into the theatre we looked around at the great merchandise. It took a lot of control to not buy a shirt but I decided since I already had one from the Chicago show I would save my money to buy something from a different show. I thought they would be really picky about cameras so I was trying to be sneaky about taking pictures because it was strictly forbidden in the Chicago theater. I soon realized after getting into our seats that they didn't mind because they didn't stop anyone from taking pictures. However, they did announce before the show started that flash photography and recording was prohibited, so what did I do? I shut off the flash. I actually got a few really good pictures during the show and I was bad because I recorded the "Defying Gravity" number. It is on facebook if anyone wants to see it (video isn't great but sound is perfect!) Overall, the show was absolutely amazing! It was everything I expected and it brought me to tears more than once. It was great and I hope to see it again before I leave!
After the show we decided to take the "newbies" up the river walk since it was so awesome the day before. So we got to see parliament and the Eye all lit up. It was even more magnificent the second night. I just loved everything London had to offer. It was such a beautiful city, I hope everyone reading this has a chance to see it someday! We did the same route as the night before and after the crossing the Tower Bridge we decided to take the underground back to the hostel. This wasn't such an easy task since there were a few lines that we not running over the weekend for maintenance. Apparently, Saturday nights are not busy nights for the underground because several of the stations were closed by 7:30! So we ended up walking way father than we thought we would have to and we were pretty much exhausted by the time we got back.
The next morning we headed back to the Euston train station to catch the 8:45 back to Bangor. We were there in plenty of time and since we had general tickets we decided to get on the 8:15 train instead. The train was running behind but we finally left a little before 8:30. We knew we had 2 connections but we weren't 100% sure what all the connections were. So we got off at what we knew would be our first connection spot, but we didn't know what train we needed to be on after that. We found out what train we needed to be on just in time to watch the doors close and the train pull away from the station... ooops! So we had to wait 2 more hours for the next train. I got caught up in a good book on the Kindle and before you knew it, it was time to board the next train. We made the next connection and we were back in Bangor in early afternoon. Not too bad! While walking from the train station back to campus, it was amazing, it was like we had traveled through time to a different world. Bangor and London are two complete opposites, different in every way. The best part of being back in Bangor was not worrying about getting hit by a double decker red bus at every street we crossed!
Until tomorrow...
~Amy
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