Written March 25, 2009
Good morning, friends and family!
I hope this blog entry finds you well! 
Today was my last day in London and I am somewhat sad to be leaving tomorrow, but very excited to come back again! I love, love, love, love London and could see myself living here in the distant future. But we shall see.
Today was another rough wake-up call – not because I did not sleep well – au contraire, I slept just fine, but because yet again, I felt like I was trapped in a grave or something of the sort. I literally woke up screaming “GET AWAY from ME! LEAVE ME ALONE”. No, I am not kidding!! This hostel’s bed situation is killing me! Anyway, I got ready and went down to have breakfast. At least the cappuccino was amazing!
After we were done, Bill and I packed up and headed back to the hostel that I originally stayed before he came. It had been booked for Friday and Saturday, so we had to book Palmers Lodge, but we liked the Astor Hyde Park hostel so much better we came back on Sunday, left our bags in secure storage and left.
The Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park
Our first stop was Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park – both conveniently situated right next to the hostel. I had seen almost everything I wanted to see in London, so we were up for a relaxing final day in this fantastic city. The Kensington Gardens were absolutely beautiful and peaceful. The Albert Memorial dominated the scenery with its tall spire. Dedicated to her late husband, Queen Victoria had made sure his memory was fondly remembered. Her marriage to Albert is said to be one of the first love marriages between royals. Marcel told us during the London walk that after he died only 20 short years into their marriage, Queen Victoria went into mourning for the rest of her life.
As we walked by the south entrance of the Kensington Gardens, we shared the wide walkway with many runners. It was about 10:30 am and I was quite surprised at the sheer amount of people running. Didn’t they have a job or work to go to?? I was completely confused until it dawned on me – ” Oh, that’s right – today is Saturday. Duh!” …ah, never mind, what a little blond moment
Strolling through the park, we kept walking in random direction with the one final destination in mind – the Speaker’s corner. We passed through the Serpentine Lake – a beautiful man-made lake along which even more runners were enjoying their morning workout. All of them were so fit and looked so hardcore that I caught myself pondering how many of these men and women were preparing for the upcoming London Marathon. “Probably almost all of them,” I thought. “And Hyde Park is perfect for it!” Hyde Park is basically the Central Park equivalent in London, so you can imagine…
My attention then shifted to the left – little ducks were swimming in the pond making their usual animal sounds. Some people had brought bread and some food to feed them. The little birds tried pushing each other out of the way to get to the prized pieces of bread, which they hungrily devoured like carnivores. I had never before seen ducks like these ones; they had a special coloring around their necks unlike any other duck I’ve seen in my life. Bill was equally as puzzled as to why these birds were different.
I took my glance away from the birds and peered to the left. A little bridge towering over the Serpentine Lake in the distance provided a crossing for pedestrians and cars alike. It looked so idyllic.
To the back of us was Lady Diana’s memorial which invited people to sit down, relax and splash their feet in the running water. The memorial itself has an odd elliptical shape which came at an angle as a stream of water was running down around it.
The Speaker’s Corner
We decided to keep walking and exploring the Gardens and following the curving river – or perhaps it was a big pond – found ourselves at the Speaker’s Corner. Speaker’s Corner is an interesting open-air part of London where public debate and discussions are allowed. So, of course, to our amusement we found the scene filled with a crowd of people gathered around two men duking it out in a verbal match about – out of all things – superiority and religion.
Both were trying to somehow make intelligent arguments for and against religion, much to the entertainment of the whole crowd. One of the guys – who seemed better spoken and more well-read – used clever lines and somewhat bullying statements to make all of the spectators laugh and his opponent seem like an idiot.
As entertaining as it was to watch an atheist and a religious believer engage in a meaningless debate, I walked away trying to figure out if this was an authentic verbal debate, or a clever gimmick to gather around a crowd of distracted tourist only to be pick-pocketed by accomplices of the two ‘speakers’.
As we carried on, we couldn’t help but buy some delicious ice cream which was so satisfactory in the middle of-the-day heat before hopping on the Marble Arch Tube to Notting Hill…
Notting Hill
Aaah, Notting Hill!! Now that is a beautiful neighborhood straight out of a postcard. And speaking of postcards, I quickly realized that we were leaving London, but I was yet to fulfill my tourist duty of purchasing a postcard for my grandma in Bulgaria. So as we walked down the picturesque streets, I was a woman with a mission – or on a quest, rather – to find THE perfect card.
Once that goal got accomplished, I wasn’t shy about entering clothing shops and trying out a few things – which, of course, was sort of unfortunate for Bill who had to stay around and wait for me. Haha… Oh, it’s not easy to be a man! 
…but back to the clothing – I found this super cute dress made quite possibly the softest material I had ever touched… but was – of course as luck would have it – the wrong size 
Portobello Rd Market
No visit to Notting Hill is complete without a visit to the Portobello Rd Market – which we made our next stop. Portobello Road is filled with shops and tourist stands full of cheap and funny tourist gifts and trinkets. To give you a better idea – picture the type of t-shirts that have printed two arrows – one pointing up with the letters “the Man”… and the 2nd one – pointing down – “the Legend” …hahaha Get it? 
Of course shirts like that were plenty – and I couldn’t help but take a ton of pictures and buy a few… gifts, that is. I got a few shawls – so everyone – all of you are getting scarves! You’d better be excited! Hehe… just kidding!
Of course, though, all that (window) shopping can make just about anyone as hungry as a beast. So we indulged in a scrumptious crepe (*cue a tune of angels singing *) which reminded me of Paris… and as we strolled down, we saw the best part of the Portobello Rd Market yet – a blue shirt stating “No, I am not on Facebook” hahahaha!! LOVE IT!
After a few last memorable pictures, we strolled through the reminder of the market – which was reminiscent more of a bazaar filled with odd items than a regular outdoors market and hopped on the Tube to the British Museum.
The British Museum
If you’ve never been to the British Museum – you have clearly not lived! It has such an amazing collection of artifacts – and I am not just talking about half of the treasures of the Greek Parthenon! I mean – how was Britain able to get away with taking away all these cultural and historic riches of the Greeks, in the first place?!
But carrying on – some of the highlights we saw include – the Rosetta Stone (!!!), Cleopatra’s mummy and x-ray scans, an Egyptian wing filled with mummies, burial plates with pharaohs’ names chiseled out from monuments (history buffs know exactly what I am talking about!!), and a recreation of an Egyptian burial – with a mummy so well-preserved you could see the actual skin of the man buried in the Namibian desert!
The British museum had plenty of other exhibits – the Roman exhibit filled with statues and items from daily life was great. The money exhibit was good, too. The best part, though, were guided talks given by history professors, or museum staffers that would explain certain parts like history of Egypt, the Roman Empire and the Middle East. I was super psyched about the Middle East talk and learning more about that region, but unfortunately missed the timing and had to settle for the Egyptian one. It was great if only it was not for the presenter whose face had this huge incision and scars which were pretty distracting. Half the time I found myself devising theories about what the horrible event that caused him to have those marks could have been.
Anyway, going to the British Museum is like dying and going to heaven – an experience that any art and history lover would confirm. But as with most good things – there comes the point where you get *SO* museum’ed out that you just try to run for the door. Literally. I tried calling Bill – hoping he’d be game to get out. I also tried calling my cousin on her UK cell phone, but it didn’t work. I then tried to txt her – and that was a spectacular fail as well. Gosh, it seems that after using a smart phone for years, I had lost all of my abilities to use a simple T9—type of a dial phone. *le sigh*
So since I couldn’t work out how to get in touch with my cousin, Bill and I headed to Vinopolis for some well-deserved (and anticipated) wine tasting. We arrived at the Tower of London Tube stop and walked straight through Borough’s Market to the building housing Vinopolis. We walked around the building looking for the visitors’ entrance and once we were able to finally locate it – we received the disappointing news – the last entrance was at 3:30pm. So, sad and in need of a still drink, we thought of the General Nelson story – and laughed. If you do not know the story – the expression “stiff drink” originates from the following story. Read at your own peril.
“Ok, well, next time!” – we said to each other and headed back. “At least, we got to see the other side of the building we didn’t get the chance to see earlier,” we tried to crack a not-so-funny joke. Now, you’ve got to understand – Vinopolis is located inside a huge industrial-loft type of a building, so we trekked around, got to Waterloo en route to the London Eye only to see a poster informing of the high rate of knife stabbings of people in Brixton (the area we were close to) – needless to say reading that and seeing a bunch of police cars with their lights on did not make us very happy.
Beautiful Views and the London Eye
The London Eye was worth all the potential risks of committing one of the typical tourist errors of walking into a part of town you may not like very much. The location of the big circular Ferris wheel-like attraction was beautiful as was the wheel. We had to withstand a huge line to get in and get tickets – but I didn’t mind – this was the only line I had ever waited in on this trip, and it went by surprisingly fast.
Thankfully, there was no line to get in the Eye, but there was a security check. After inspecting my bag, they let us inside the capsules which opened pretty cool panorama views of London. I shared a capsule with a cute Hungarian family and it was fun to see the kids squeak with excitement over being high in the air and seeing cool things like the Thames, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. We had enough space to walk around as well as sit on a bench in the middle of the capsule and gaze at the tremendous beauty of Big Ben. It’s exactly like in the movies!
After our circular ride above London was done, we got out – but not before having our obligatory tourist theme park-like picture taken. It was chilly out, so Bill and decided to leave. We headed to the Westminster Tube station to Covent Garden where we got a bite at the “Prince of Wales” pub. We both got a local brew to accompany our meal – which was definitely not the most delicious thing I’ve had in my life, but as we sighed “it’s Britain” – I chatted with a Turkish guy who was telling me about moving to the UK and what it was like to work there.
After dinner, we went back to the hostel, showered and called it a night. My tired calves were so sore and screaming bloody murder for having been put through so much walking, climbing and trekking touristy torture for the 5th day in a row. I massaged them lightly and went to bed, glad I didn’t have to sleep in a coffin-like bunk bed.
