Hello everyone and greetings from London! These past couple of days we have been exploring the city, mostly by ourselves, and it has been a lot of fun (minus getting lost about ten times and walking over 10 miles each day!). We got to see all the landmark places like Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, the London Bridge, the London Tower, and Big Ben (which was sadly under construction,) and we got to see a few bucket-list places like Abbey Road and 221 B. Baker Street! It has been so much fun meeting more people from my Grenoble program and exploring London with them. I have really fallen in love with this city these past couple of days, and although I am very excited to travel to Grenoble, I will miss London! Our flight tomorrow is at 6am so we must be at the airport by 4am; therefore, I will be going to sleep soon and anticipating my next adventure. I can’t believe that I get to travel like this for the next four months… it will be amazing.
Finally, a unique thing we got to witness in London this trip were people rioting against Prime Minister, Boris Johnson’s, moves to suspend Parliament and leave the EU. It was amazing to see so many citizens coming together to defend their country and it made me think—why doesn’t this happen in the US? Many people in London compared Johnson to Trump, saying he is a “compulsive liar,” “selfish bigot,” and “cares more about himself than his country.” Now if you know anything about me, you know that I agree with all of these things, but it is crazy to see people in other countries admit to Trump’s failure as a political leader as well. It is also amazing to me that we in America have not started riots like this over some of the stuff he has done as President. We should be more like London and come together to protect our beautiful country!
Anyways, enough of my political stuff, London was amazing, especially as a music person I loved seeing Abbey Road and taking a picture of where the Beatles recorded and took their famous album cover. I also loved seeing the Hard Rock Hotel where Jimi Hendrix died (in a very morbid way) because he is a guitarist that I have admired forever! There is so much history here and it is very interesting. No, we did not see any royal family members, but we did use public transportation A LOT. I’m going to get to sleep, but I highly recommend London if you have not yet been.
I will be trying to post blogs once a week.
Please look in photos and videos for more of London!
Thank you all, much love, and goodnight from London!
Rachel