Halloween Day in London

I have realized that in the United States we celebrate Halloween a lot more than I thought we did. Veronica and I spent Halloween day in London and only saw about two kids dressed up in costumes.

We left the house at about 9:30 a.m. that morning and walked to Norbiton train station to catch the train to Waterloo (Central London), where we immediately found a Starbucks!!! I was shocked to find the weather was so cold and had to buy another jacket :) I use any excuse to go shopping. We sat in Starbucks for a little while discussing exactly what we were going to do. Our plans were to go to the zoo and the aquarium, but it was too cold for the zoo. So, we hit up the aquarium, which only cost us each $10 rather than $20 like it usually would have. Since we came to London by train, we got a 2-for-1 deal.

The aquarium was pretty nice. It was, perhaps, a bit smaller than what we were expecting, but it was still fun. We got to watch the workers feed the stingrays, and we were able to touch them—so that was cool. In the shark tank, one shark loved to come right up to the glass, and it seemed like he was looking at us. But, really, they see a mirror image from their side of the glass, not us. But, it was still kind of creepy having a shark coming straight at you. Veronica and I were picking out all of the fish that were on Finding Nemo and decided that we needed to watch that movie again soon.

After the aquarium we headed to the London Eye, which is like a big ferris wheel that’s 136 meters high if I remember correctly. That was a bit more expensive; it cost each of us about $25. You go inside of this glass submarine looking compartment, with about ten other people. It never stops revolving, even when you get on and off, unless there are disabled people that need it to stop. The entire ride took about thirty minutes and we could see all of London. Big Ben and Buckingham Palace didn’t look as big as we remembered them now that we were looking down on them. I was surprised that Veronica, with her fear of heights, didn’t even get scared when we were at the top.

We then wanted to find the salon/spa that we were going to for our hair and makeover promotion thing. On the way we were distracted by all of the places to go shopping and we just couldn’t pass them up. We finally found the place we were looking for and scheduled our appointments. By now, we were getting hungry and found our second favorite restaurant to date, T.G.I. Fridays. When eating out in England you better give yourself a good hour-and-a-half to two hours time because service is very slow.

Next we hopped on the metro and were off to the theatre. It was very easy to find, and on our way we ran into some very popular name brand shops (which were very expensive). We had time to kill so we explored the area for a few hours. Finally, we returned to the theatre to find our seats. The theatre was nothing like we expected; it was smaller and not very elegant looking, I guess you would say. We had pretty good seats just three rows away from the stage.

The show was great!  They followed the movie very well. Supposedly Jessica Simpson, aka “America’s Sweetheart”, was to play Roxy, the main character. I must say we weren’t disappointed that she didn’t. 

We are back to class now. Reading Week flew by so fast that I can’t even remember what we did the entire time. Friday, Veronica and I had our hair cut and dyed. It was a lot of fun. We basically just hung out around Kingston for the better part of the week and went to the Odeon Theatre to see Marie Antoinette. In my opinion, it could be the worst film ever (extremely boring). So, the next time we went to the theatre, we decided to change things up. We watched Saw III.

Until next week,