This is where Bates came in. They offer up to $500 grants for students abroad who are looking to "enrich" their experience. I applied for one and got one for the full $500. Yay! So London here I come. Picked up an EasyJet flight for $100 round trip Munich to London, and a hotel in West London for $200 for 4 nights, including breakfast. On the flight I could not help but laugh because the two people next to me were talking about how much money their flight cost. The dude next to me spent $175 and the girl next to him $250. I was sitting there thinking "Wow, you guys are suckers"
But anyways, I manged to get to London with 200 bucks from Bates to towards the trip, which I soon learned is not nearly enough for 4 days in London. At the end of it all I spent $750, including flight and hotel, so very thankful for Bates for the $500, and knocking the price down to $250. Great deal!
I landed, took the train into the center, arrived at my hotel, and immediately went in search of fish and chips, which wasn't too hard because right around the corner from my hotel is this place called Mickey's Fish n Chips, with a sign that said "As seen on (some dude's show)'s Search for Perfection." Sounds good to me. So I tried it out and it was quite good.
Also, I must mention at this point how amazing it felt to be able to speak English everywhere I went and not have to feel apologetic for it. This certainly contributed to my love of London. It was just so relieving.
Hit the hay and got ready for tomorrow.
The next morning breakfast was served to me in my room at precisely 8:30 am, as it would be for the remainder of my stay. I thought this was kind of cool. Breakfast was simple with fruits and cereal bars, breads, jams, stuff like that. But they gave you multiple of each thing so it was sufficiently filling.
First thing I did was went on over to Westminster Palace, Big Ben, and Westminster Abbey. I didn't go into the Abbey because it cost 20 pounds, which is $30, which I thought was a huge rip off. London is amazingly expensive.
Big Ben
Big Ben at night
West Minster Abbey
I then went over to the main event: the Imperial War Museums, which actually consists of 5 different museums. The first stop for me was the Churchill War Rooms. This is a large underground complex in the heart of London, beneath 10 Downing St and other major government buildings. The Churchill War rooms is where Churchill and his War Cabinet essentially ran WWII, making major decisions about what to do. It is set up like it was during the war, which is cool. It also has a large museum attached to it which is completely dedicated to Winston Churchill. Here are some photos of the War Rooms.
The main room where the meetings would happen.The wooden chair in the middle is where Churchill would sit
This is a room where Churchill had a direct telephone line to the White House
This is a gas mask designed so that the switchboard operator could still do their job under attack
This is a chart recording the number of V-1s and V-2s launched on London
A board essentially keeping score of the air battle during the Battle of Britain
One of Churchill Cigars
There were a lot of other cool things, like maps recording ships and the front lines and things like that.
After this I went on down to another part of the Imperial War Museums: The HMS Belfast. The Belfast was a Royal Navy light cruiser which saw action during WWII and Korea. You walk through the ship and learn about everyday life, the weapons, see the quarters, stuff like that. It is actually really cool and really well done. You always get a great view of the Tower Bridge from the stern of the ship.
Tower Bridge
When it wasn't so dark
HMS Belfast
Butcher
Making bread
Potatoes
Guys serving food
Shells
Medical Ward
Surgery, only done in emergencies of course. One time they had to do a blood transfusion aboard the ship, and the Surgeon lined every sailor up on the ship and took his blood and saved the guys life
The sailors sleep in hammocks strung from the ceiling, right above where they eat
Translation: If this ship is hit, you will die
I then walked over to the Tower of London, which was a defense built by William the Conqueror, but it was closed by the time I got there, so I walked over to a pub called the Mayflower pub, which is wicked old, and situated right on the mooring where the Mayflower was once anchored. Pretty cool.
Tower of London
The next day I went to the main museum, dedicated to Britain's wars throughout time. The natural highlights for me were the WWI, WWII, and Holocaust sections, as well as this section which I thought was particularly cool, dedicated to MI5 and MI6 and special operations throughout time. They even had equipment used by the SAS during the Iranian embassy hostage situation in London. Thought that was pretty cool.
Here are just a few photos from the exhibits at the museums. I think there were 5 or 6 floors there, so it was pretty big.
Naval guns outside the museum
These shells are as tall as me
Signs with bullet holes from WW1
A Harrier
A boat used during the evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk
The tail of a German fighter, with the number of aircraft its downed and the dates
A close up of the tally
A Japanese Zero fighter
After the Imperial War Museum, I went over to Hard Rock for dinner. This is actually the first Hard Rock Cafe in the world, so I was anxious to go and try it out. Across from the Cafe is a park, which has a memorial to the RAF, which was cool.
The world's first Hard Rock Cafe
The RAF memorial
After Hard Rock I walked down the street to Buckingham Palace and down the Mall and throughout London
Buckingham Palace
The guards at the palace. Unfortunately I did not get to see the changing of the guards. I actually thought these guys were pretty funny, because you are so far away from them that they look tiny with giant hats and giant shoes, and the way they walk makes them look like they are waddling, and then they always stomp their feet, so it kind of makes them look like kids. I do not mean to disrespect them, of course, but that is just my thoughts on it
The next day I took a sort of unexpected trip. It was to the Warner Brothers Studio outside of London where they filmed all of the Harry Potter movies. I say unexpected because it wasn't on my radar before I got to London, and also I have only seen a couple of the movies and a couple of the books, since I do not really care for Harry Potter. But this place was actually really cool and the highlight of the trip for me. They told you a lot about how they filmed the movies and where they got the props and stuff like that. For example, the curtains of the beds in the Gryffindor dorms were bought on a whim by a producer at a a flea market.
Everything there is original. You get to see the original costumes, sets, props, stuff like that. It was actually really really cool, and you also learned a lot about movie magic, which I like.
So you take a bus from London out to the studio. Its about an hour drive from London to the studio, and the tour is 3 hours. The bus company was actually really evil to us, because we were all standing there in from of this awesome double decker bus that is decked out in Harry Potter stuff. It was really cool. We are all about to get on it and the guy says no that's not your bus, its this single decker one painted to look like Stonehenge. You should have seen the heartbreak on these massive Harry Potter fans' faces when they told us we weren't taking the Harry Potter Bus. There was unrest in the ranks. But, we got to take the cool, Harry Potter bus on the way back, so that works
The bus. Of course I sat on the second deck
This tour was sort of ironic for me. First of all, the tour and bus ride cost 63 pounds, which is over $90, which I thought was a little steep for someone who doesn't even like Harry Potter, but I thought it would be cool, and I was right, so whatever. But as I was walking through the sets of the movie and looking at the props, I barely recognized anything. For example I walked down Diagon Alley and was thinking "What the heck they don't even have the wand shop?" About 5 seconds later I heard someone gasp at the sight of the wand shop, which I had walked by because I had no idea what it looked like Whoops.
So here are some photos I took, especially for you Harry Potter fans. Enjoy!
The entrance
The highlight of the tour for me was this Butter Beer. Tasted so good. Like liquid caramel or something
The actual room under the stairs
The great hall or grand hall or whatever. Note the lack of ceiling. They built a tiny ceiling and used CGI to make it be there in the movie
The entry to the hall
Some of Harry's clothes
Dumbledore and Snape and that Lady
This cool ice thing from that ball when that Russian looking dude shows up and like Hermione
Gryffindor's bedroom. They had the actors carve into the wood and stuff like that, as you would at a normal school
Gryffindor's common room
This was cool. It's called forced perspective. Basically this chair looks like it is 50 feet away, but it is really on 10, and they used a narrowing hallway and tiny chair to make it look 50 feet away
Dumbledore's office
The main staircase
The original brooms
The original wands. If I remember right, Voldemort's is 9 o clock and Harry's is 3 o clock
The triple decker knight bus. The back says all stops except underwater or something funny like that
Explaining the bus
A famous bridge, from... something...
Harry's first house
Another house. No idea whose it is or what it's doing here
The chess pieces
Diagon Alley
The wand shop which eluded me
I'm glad we make this clear
I was really hoping this ice cream was real
Then came a really cool part of the tour. They made a real 1:24 scale model of Hogwarts to help with the filming. It was incredible
Explaining the model
The model
The model
The model
The last thing you see is this room full of wand boxes, each with the name of someone who helped make the film
Like this
Of course the main characters have theirs
Then it was time to hit the store. I cannot tell you what I bought, because some people I bought stuff for may be reading this, but needless to say it included some of the famous candy, excluding those god awful jelly beans of course. Overall I think I spent like $200 at Harry Potter, which I have barely seen or read. Interesting. But totally worth it. I think that when I get back to the States I will read the books and watch the movies. They all seemed pretty cool.
But that is all for my grand tour. 13 cities total, including Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, the D-Day Beaches, Vienna, Berlin, and London in a total of 34 days. Not too bad! Back in Munich now until school starts April 13.
And again thank you to Bates for the $500!
