Country Boy Goes to the Big City...

Wow! I've only been in London for the past 5 days, but I even remotely explain how amazing it is here. I was talking with my flatmates tonight and realized that every day here is so unreal because I feel like I can accomplish so many amazing feats in a single day, by 9pm, I feel like I've taken advantage of so much.

For example, Friday, day 3, barely recovered on sleep at all and stoked to have touched down safely, our group of 35 took off fast. We woke up early and started off the day with a walking tour around our general neighborhood of Little Venice, the reason it's called Little Venice of course is because there is a quaint little river that flows through the block with narrowboats in it, all of which look like gondolas from Italy. It's a beautiful, classy, and upscale place to live, and of course, if anyone was wondering, I live in...the Penthouse Flat. Yes, top floor of the 4 story building with a upper loft that has our Lounge and Kitchen areas in it. You could describe it as "pimping" or "ballin." Regardless, everyone in the building enjoys our flat and visits often. There's never a dull moment in Flat L, the Penthouse Flat.

After the walking tour, we followed it by a bus tour around the city, it was good to see all the big sites quickly and try to get some of our bearings on what we needed to take in while we're here. (Get the tourist stuff out of the way and acclimate quickly of course). So we saw the London Eye, Big Ben, the Tower of London, etc etc etc all in 2 hours time and called it a day. Flat L hosted some of the Elon students that evening to get to know each other (since we just met days before) and we even found a small pub down the street called the Warwick Castle where I talked to a few locals about football, directions, and pints.

Saturday, Day 4, was a trip that any history buff would have drooled over. We were up early, on a bus out of the city and ended up in Salisbury Cathedral, staring at the tallest steeple in all of England. Of course, don't worry, I took my artsy-photographic time and made sure I got lots of pictures. They also have in the Cathedral one of the best preserved original copies of the Magna Carta to this day (DC has a more recent copy, so obviously it's not as cool). I couldn't get over the fact that this amazing building was made by hand 750 years ago to this year (we're here at the anniversy of the church). Not to mention the stunning size, shear amazingness of the stained glass, and of course, the town of Salisbury is gorgeous. When I'm at age 40 and touring pubs with my folk band, I'm living there in my downtime.

Stonehenge was the next stop on the trip and some of the Elon kids thought it was lame, however, I found it absoutely stellar, and made sure I also took some great photos with it, and of it. Including a classy, "Zoolander" photo as well. Regardless, we had a great time, and headed to Avesbury, which is basically a 14 time larger version of stonehenge which was less tourist-like, and I enjoyed that a lot too. It rained and poured for a while in the afternoon, but contrary to popular belief, it doesn't always rain in London :-).

Lastly, for today's blog summary, I feel like I've already accomplished so much (as you can tell by the length of this). I woke up early this morning, hopped the tube with my friend Jenn from Elon I met here, and we went to 1.5 services at Westminster Abbey. We caught the tail end of the first service, which was a traditional latin service that is primarily sung by the choir (all guys mind you). Then stayed for the official service at 11:15am which is the Sung Eucharist service, and I must say the place is absolutely stunning. The experience is indescribable. Not only were we able to sit in the Choir Loft (which was epic) but we got to sit right by the choir, watched the whole service with people all over the world and also of course watched a traditional communion as well. It's crazy to think of sitting in seats that were once reserved for noblemen, scholars, dukes, earls, and of course used for all great big ceremonies. Naturally I felt like a rockstar. Additionally, of course Big Ben sits right beside the Abbey and Parliament and of course I got some nice photo ops as well. All of which happened before lunch time, incredible to think about since it happened mostly before anyone in the states woke up :-).

Tomorrow I'm heading for my first day at my Internship at Xtreme Information, school starts this week, and I'm pumped to be a city-goer and becoming more London-oriented, I rode my first double decker bus tonight, have settled down, and of course have cooked myself a lot of pasta lately, but it's all good, please tune back in for more long-updates and email me any of your fun adventures in the states, I miss you all and as the Brits say...CHEERS!