London

I'm finally catching up on my travels. I don't have internet in my house, and the internet in my study aboard center has been alternating between immensely slow and not functioning, and, until yesterday, I couldn't use the wireless at USal. Fortunately, I got the USal problem fixed (it turns out that all of my student Id cards have a different number on them and, my actual user Id was a different number yet.
So London. I went to London immediately after finishing my USal finals, and I stayed with a friend who is studying at the Lawrence London Centre, which was pretty convenient because I didn't have to find my own housing, and I had a kitchen and a travel guide. I flew out of Valladolid airport, which is only an hour from Salamanca by bus, is much smaller than Madrid, and has a bus that goes directly between it and Salamanca. Additionally, flights to London from Valladolid are only 15€ each way, which is a great deal, and the bus tickets are only 20€ round trip. Altogether, Valladolid is better than Madrid, although they only have one flight every other day. My flight left late, remeber I'm leaving from Spain..., so I got into the airport late. When I got into Stansted airport, I found out that the train wasn't running, so I'd have to take a bus, which took another hour. Luckily, I have nice friends who waited for me at the train station and found me when I got there, and I repayed their kindness by making dinner.
Actually, the friend I was staying with can't cook, so I also made dinner because the other option was pasta with salt...

The next day, we took out our A to Z (pronounced "zed") and visited all of the really touristy places in downtown London.

Like Big Ben

and Parliment
and Westminster Abbey

and Trafalgar Square (which is not actually square)

and Piccadilly Circus

and Buckingham Palace
and some pretty gardens

That afternoon, my friend had an art class, so I wandered about for a bit. I ended up going back to Paccadilly Circus, because I knew for some strange reason that the Geologic Society of London's address had some-sort of Piccadilly in it, and I wanted to see if I could find it. I had some trouble with that at first, but I eventually realized that I was having trouble finding it because it was in a huge building. I didn't go inside, but I took some pictures from of the outside.

My friend and I then went out for dinner (we got Indian, since they don't do foreign food in Spain), and returned to her place to rest for the next day, which was...more touristy stuff!

We went to the Tower of London, and the Tower Bridge (it turns out that London Bridge is a little underwhelming, and the Tower Bridge is much prettier).

Tower of London pictures. The Tower of London is actually a collection of small towers and an old wall


and bridge pictures

After visiting the Tower and Bridge, we went to the Natural History museum because my friend wanted to see me "geek out" (her words). It was pretty amazing.
I thought that this phrase would make a nice, simple life philosophy...

More inspirational words

After spending some time in the museum and some store related to some geologic society (they had geologic maps of Siccar Point, but no topo map) we hurried home to watch the inauguration on-line, and then we went out to a pub to celebrate.
They actually had very tasty falafel burgers at the pub, and it wasn't smokey, which makes me like London a whole lot.
We also got a 1 GBpound pound cake from Sainsbury's (aren't they clever). Actually, this picture shows some of the best food in the world: Sainsbury's custard creams, a Milka Cookies bar, rellena de chocolate cookies, Nairns, a chocolate cake and a Strongbow...
Just to avoid confusion, we the only place that we actually went inside was the Natural History Museum, everything else we enjoyed from the outside.

The next day, I left really early, and after some tube issues (a lot of routes were closed) I made it to the airport and back to Spain. I had a fairly enjoyable flight back and the person sitting next to me talked to me the whole time in Spanish, which was good practice. I made it back to Salamanca fine, and I started to pack to get ready to move to my new house, a Spanish apartment where I live with my house mate, my Señora, and her various family members (she has 10 kids and 15 grandkids, most of which live in Salamanca), who are always stopping by for lunch.
Look for my new home and school stuff soon.