Storm Troopers Attack Parliament!

Waking up this morning was kinda rough. Lack of sleep hurts. After Shelby, Amanda, and I got up and out of bed, we headed off toward Tower Bridge, where Thomas is staying with his aunt and uncle, so they could do laundry. We got off the Underground at London Bridge and walked along the River Thames to their apartment. It was a really nice day - I wish I had my camera. We passed city hall and this sidewalk art exhibit that had lots of differently designed guitars. It had a nice effect. When we met up with Thomas, we headed up to his relatives palatial apartment. It's on the river, right next to Tower Bridge, and occupies the top floor of the apartment complex. Pretty cool. After they started their laundry, we all headed downstairs to get some lunch at one of the nearby cafes. We just got some sandwiches and sat outside enjoying the weather.

After a bit we went back up to the apartment where everyone sat around waiting for the laundry. I was getting impatient, and had gotten texts from my friend Lori who was nearby, so I headed off to meet her near the London Eye. After a bit of wandering, we finally found each other, and it was excellent. We decided to check out the Star Wars exhibit at the County Hall (nerdy, yes, but super cool). Again, I was really sad I didn't have a camera. Hers had died as well, so it was overall bad luck for us and pictures. The exhibit was really nifty. They had outfits from all the movies, a life-size podracer and Naboo fighter, and C-3PO, R2D2, and Yoda. Very cool. We were both really excited. After we'd seen the whole exhibit, we went to this "Jedi School", where some Jedi trained some young Padawans in the arts of the Force. It was super cheesy, complete with appearances from both Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine, and even a "everyone use the force together to defeat the Dark Side together" moment. Awesome.


We hung around the Storm Troopers outside for a little while and were thoroughly amused that from a certain angle it looked like they were firing at Big Ben. (The picture I took above - along with all the others in this post - was from Monday when I ran around the city trying to re-take pictures. It was a sad day without a camera). From there, we walked around by the river and looked at some of the "statue" performers. Lori decided she wanted to stop by the National Gallery, so we walked down to Trafalgar Square to see what was up. We made it just in time to use the restroom and look at the gift shop for five minutes before closing. After that we made a sad attempt to find a camera battery for me, but everything was closed.


I got a text from Shelby soon after, and Lori and I parted ways on the Underground. It was excellent seeing her, though. I met up with Shelby, Amanda, and Thomas at the London Bridge station, where we walked down to Nando's for dinner. It's this Portuguese chicken place that lets you select how spicy your food was. We all got the mild, and that was hot enough. It was really yummy though. From there, we rushed off to catch our "flight" on the London Eye. It's this huge ferris wheel type thing that was built for the Millennium celebrations that has fantastic views of the city. We timed it just right to make it up in time for sunset. I cried (almost) because I didn't have my camera. But Shelby promises she'll give me her pictures, so that should be okay.


After that, we decided to look around at some of London's pubs, since it was my last night there. We went to two on the River and sat outside enjoying the nice weather and looking at the stars. At the last one, nearest to Thomas's apartment, we played Scrabble, which was a whole lot of fun. We laughed so hard, but probably just because of lack of sleep. It was fun trying to navigate back to Victoria, since the Underground was closed, but we finally made it and went to bed with plans to wake up early in the morning. Exciting!

(Note that the weather was much nicer the day before I got to take all these pictures. You know. The one when my camera battery was dead. Sigh.)