A visit to London

Thursday ,March 26th

Author's note
This picture is the set up for the British high tea that I went to. The food was very good and it was an awesome experience.

The next day we could wake up whenever we wanted because we had the morning free to do just about anything. Our only requirement was that we had to meet at westminster abbey around 2:00 pm having eaten lunch. So before we went to bed the day before we got together as a group and figured out who was going where. Many of the girls wanted to go shopping and i did as well. we ended up going in a group of about 20 to a department store called Harrods. Harrods is the largest department store in the world and boasts that they can sell you anything from an airplane to a clothes pin, which after taking a look around i honestly thought they could sell more.

we took the tube, the London Underground, from our hotel to south Kensington and then from there we walked to Harrods. Harrods kind of reminded me of a Tardis it was much bigger on the inside then it appeared on the outside. Walking up to the brick store from the streets of London was actually unspectacular and pretty ordinary it wasn't until you walked inside did you realize how massive the place was.

The first room we walked into after walking through the front doors was devoted to solely handbags. The next room we walked into was also devoted to handbags and so was the next. In fact the entire first floor was devoted to designer accessories. All the floors were this way there were a total of seven floors completely devoted to one thing such as food, clothing, or toys. The store covered a total of 4.5 acres of space.

The group split soon after we got into the store and we went our separate ways. The first room Angie, Mrs. Molina and I stopped in was the chocolate room. We spent a good half an hour admiring the spectacular displays and wishing we could by the chocolate but it was all absurdly expensive. We could have easily blown all our money on a box of chocolates. After that we went up the escalators, which were the first escalators ever to used in a public place. And stopped in the Disney store. Now I know what you're thinking, Disney world is in the U.S., and there must be Disney stores everywhere, but that's not the case. In my whole life I have only been near two Disney store on the west coast of America and one of them was in Disney world and the other was more than an hour away from where I live and went out of business. I saw two just in London itself whereas in the states I would have to drive thousands of miles just to get to one. Needless to say Angie and I spent over an hour in there admiring all the dresses that were just shy of being tiny replicas of the dresses from the movies. They had a line of dresses from the new Cinderella movie that looked exactly like they did in the movie. When I was a little kid the dresses weren't nearly as nice as they are today and I was almost jealous.

After Angie bought a stuffed Stitch we went up the escalators and walked through the clothes department of the store. I was extremely unimpressed. You would think since they were selling designer clothes that they would at least have some cute outfits on display but everything I saw was ugly, almost unbearably so. After walking through the Adult clothing section we walked through the kids section and some of the dresses were just ridiculous they looked like little prom dresses for 8 year olds.

after that we walked through the house hold items to get to the bookstore. Everything was shinny and glamorous. I was starting to think that some of the tea pots were made of pure silver. Once we got to the bookstore we rummaged through the books for a while until we found the harry potter section. The first thing that caught my eye was that the covers were completely different than the ones you would see in america. They were much cooler in my opinion and i had to stop myself from buying all 7 because i already have them at home.

After looking through the bookstore we started to get hungry so we walked down to the food courts but quickly left because the price for a single slice of Italian pizza was 19£, which is over 30$. We walked for a little bit before settling on a pizza place that was much more reasonably priced. I ordered a hot chocolate and a mushroom pizza. The hot chocolate was like drinking melted chocolate. it was thick and actually made you more thirsty every time you took a sip of it. The pizza was also very good but there was way to much for one person to eat despite that fact that the description said so and so did the waiters. i ended up eating about half of it.

after that we meet up with the others outside of Harrods before getting back on the tube and heading to westminster abbey. When we got to Westminster Abbey we were spilt into two groups and then lead through the church. We were in the first group of people to enter the church because we had all scheduled appointments for a British high tea at 5:00 and needed to get through with plenty of time to get there. The tour guide gave us a wonderful tour of the church and showed us many of the featured places of the church such as the place where the king or queen is crowned and the burial places of some of the Kings and queens. My favorite thing about the church was the architecture. The whole place was carved from stone by hand and it took over 100 years to build. The arch way in the middle of the church was brightly painted with curbs and angels. And in the space above the arch way there was a space large enough for a 50 member orchestra to play. One of the last things we saw was the throne kings and queens are crowned on but it wasn't nearly as spectacular as it was made out to be. It was just a simple wooden chair covered in flicking gold paint with a faded red silk cushion and there was even graffiti on it where the boys from the choir a crossed the street had carved into the wood with their pencils when they would sneak into the church at night.

After the tour was over our group peeled off from the rest of the gang and we got back on the tube to go to our tea. We got there five til five and were met with pleasant hostesses that took our coats and hung them up. We followed the waiter to a large table that would fit all 26 of us. The waiter pulled out the chairs for each of us and then pushed it in for us. They even flicked out our cloth napkins and put them on our laps. We chatted idly for a bit until they came back and took our tea orders. I ordered the chai tea and Angie ordered the Jasmine green tea. Between the 26 of us we had ordered every kind of tea they offered, which was really convenient because they came in large tea pots which we shared with everyone so that we could taste them all. When they brought the tea they poured it for us and then walked back to get our sandwiches. After the first sip of the chai tea I was in love with it. It was by far the best tea I had ever had and I could not stop drinking it. By the end of the tea I had had 5 cups four of which were chai. The only other kind I tried was jasmine tea which reminded me of a flower when I tasted it.

When our sandwiches came they were payed out and decorated with parsley. I ate kind of from the inside out eating the top ones first and then moving into the middle ones. The first one I tried was tomato basil which was very good. The second was salmon which was by far the best one. The third was shrimp salad. The fourth was chicken salad. The fifth was cheese and mayo. The sixth was mushroom and pickle. They were all very good in there own way and left me hungry for more. Luckily we still had dessert.

When the desserts came they came on a carousel like tray with three layers. One for scones. One for cakes. And one for small pastries. The first thing I tried was a raisin scone with jelly and cream which was delicious. After that I ate a cinnamon scone each half with a different kind of jelly. Next I tried one of the many different kinds of small pastries, which was short cake with raspberries not top. I bit into the pastry and had to force myself to swallow and not spit it out so that I wouldn't seem rude. It was unbearably sour and I can't stand sour things. The next thing I tried was a cake that looked like pound cake which I really like but I was left with a nasty surprise. It was actually lemon cake and would have been very good if I liked lemons. After that I stuck to eating scones until I was full.

Once we had finished we payed and then all went to the bathroom before getting our coats and tipping the hostesses. After that we ventured back to the hotel and got ready to go to bed.