Hello again. This is the last posting of my trip. It kind of makes me sad to think about that, but I will be glad to be back home! We are in London right now and things have really slowed down. We are no longer moving at the rapid pace that the rest of our journey did. It is nice to finally slow down!!
Our last day in Prague we decided to splurge and eat a huge yummy dinner at one of the expensive restaurants. It was fantastic. It is one of the best meals of the trip!! (The expensive ones usually are!) We headed for the train station and boarded our train. We were as prepared for our 14 hour journey as we could be. It was definitely a restless night, be we were able to nap through most of the journey (in between the appearance of all of the customs people at insane hours of the night)! When we arrived in Amsterdam, we checked into our hostel, and decided to venture out. We went to the Anne Frank house, which was neat. They didn't have any of the furniture, but they still had the pictures that she had glued to the walls, and they had the bookshelf there that hid the passage way. It made the story that I read so long ago really come to life. We walked around some, just taking in the sights before we headed back to our room. We met one of our roommates, Jeremy, and he hung out with us for the rest of the night. We just walked around taking in the night life of that crazy city. We were just going to stay one day in Amsterdam, and then head over to Brussells the following morning, stay a day there, and then the next morning take a train to London. Then we thought about having to lug our packs to all of those destinations, and decided to cut Brussells out of the itenerary. We stayed an extra day in Amsterdam, and were able to go to the Van Gogh museum. I really enjoyed it. We met a girl from Hawaii there, and we hung out with her for the rest of the afternoon. Then, Katina, being the sweethart that she is, did laundry and washed my jeans!! I was so excited. They were so gross, and I finally had clean jeans again. Once I was able to dress again, we spent the rest of the evening with Jeremy wandering the streets of the city.
On the day that we were scheduled to depart for London, we woke up bright and early to catch the 7:24 train to Brussells, where we would change and catch the Eurostar to London. It was a long ride, but we finally got to London at about 1:00. We took the tube from Waterloo to our hostel. We are staying at the Curzon House Hotel. It is so nice. In our room there are 4 beds, and there is a bathtub also!! I finally shaved my legs!!. It had been two weeks, and it was a very grim situation!! We decided to unpack and actually make a home for ourselves. We were staying there for 6 nights, the longest we have stayed anywhere, so we decided to settle into our latest "home". We have seen a lot in London, but for the amount of time that we have been here, we haven't seen much. We have come to the realization that this is it, and we are finally having our vacation. Every day we go to a different outdoor market and buy fresh fruit. The strawberries here are so sweet. They are fabulous!! We have taken tours of Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, and the Tower of London. Everything here is SO EXPENSIVE!!! The Buckingham Palace tour was a self guided tour, and we still had to pay the equivalent of $17!! This is another reason we aren't seeing and doing everything imagineable in London.
On Saturday we had a pleasant little tour of some of the high spots of London by a guide by the name of Justin. (He is the guy that was our roommate in Rome, and the one that we ran into in Venice!!) He came to London for the day to hang out with us and show us around. We went to Covent Garden, Soho, China Town, and some other areas around there. Before he left, we went to a posh place that his parent took him to as a little boy, and we had afternoon tea with scones. It was "quite splendid" as the English would say (as well as expensive)! We went to Camden Town to the markets on Sunday, and fought our way through the crowds. It was complete madness!! There were tons of people everywhere. We even got to see some of the "punks" and "gothic" people of Camden with their spiked hair and black clothes. It was all very interesting.
Today is my last day in a different country, so I am going to end this soon so that I can make the most of it. I have loved my trip, and hope to do it again, and now I have the wisdom and experiences to know how to pack!! Tonight to end our adventure, we are going to a concert. I am so excited about it because it is an artist that I have been a fan of for several years now, and I haven't heard anything about her for a while now. I was riding the tube, and picked up an entertainment paper because I was bored, and I saw that she was playing at the Electric Ballroom on Monday night. We went out that night and bought the tickets. I was so jazzed!! It should be an excellent way to end our trip, and I will tell you all about it when I get back to the States (tomorrow)!! Bye for now, and I will see you soon!!!
