Long Time No See

I know I've been horrible at keeping up with this thing lately and I will accept full responsibility. TO BE FAIR though, I have been sick, again (I'm telling you, I have the worst immune system) and I was reminded by my homework that I am in fact here to 'study'. Which means doing the odd, extremely irritating poetry assignment every once in a while, reading a boat load of articles and watching movies. But luckily, today is the start of my weekly four day weekends and I am here to rectify my absence.

I had my birthday a few days ago and I'll blog about that as soon as I get the pictures uploaded but a few weeks ago, J and I went sight seeing again. We're a really distractable couple who like to go down side streets and into little random shops that catch our attention. We also really like to eat. A lot. So while a normal couple might be able to see Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, Chinatown and the Millenium Bridge, we were not so lucky. We hit four out of five and the funny part about that? We did it on accident.

See, what happens was that I really wanted to go here:

(source)

Because it seems like one of the London sights I just have to see. It's a pedestrian steel suspension bridge and it was featured in Harry Potter. How could I possibly refuse? 

So after I had made up my mind to go to ^ that bridge, we decided we didn't just want to go see the one thing. We should go to Buckingham Palace because my mom insisted I had to see it. So I got directions from my flat to the Palace and then from the Palace to the bridge. Cool, right? Well, we got to the Palace as planned and then we saw a really nifty park across the street. 

So we decided to walk down this beautiful sidewalk instead of down the boring sidewalk to the Bridge. Fine. Dandy. Then we saw this arch. Wellington arch.

And we (I) decided we just needed pictures by it. After we had admired it for a sufficient amount of time, we tried to find the path we had veered from but out pretty sidewalk had gone. It was replaced with an entire park. Hyde Park. For some unknown reason, we decided that the right thing to do would be to walk through it and I think we honestly believed we would find our way again. So we did. It was a beautiful park complete with rose gardens, ponds, swans, fountains, horses and we even saw the Princess Diana memorial. A+ park, for sure.

 

There were randomly set up lawnchairs with a view of the river. I really wanted to sit down in them but no one else was so I opted not to.

Beautiful, right? Well, while we were lost in our little wonderland, the weather grew stormy and cold and it rained on us. LUCKILY, I was prepared with an umbrella but that didn't help much when it kept blowing inside out. So we ran and sought refuge on a bus. That took us here:

Yay for Piccadilly Circus! As you can imagine, we stopped at a good number of shops (there was even one with a giant bear standing outside of it!) and ate lunch and I think it was around this time where we realized we had absolutely no idea where we were in relation to our directions. So I let J follow his "man instinct" and instead of Millenium Bridge, we ended up here:

No complaints though :) We had a fun walk through, bought some candies and saw some beautiful cakes. When we finally left Chinatown, I asked a policeman where we could find Millenium Bridge and he gave us directions. I only understood them partially but for SOME REASON I thought J would mentally log all this. 

You guessed it, folks. We did not end up at the bridge. Instead, we went here:

It was absolutely beautiful and I was having the time of my life exploring all of the Square's little nooks and crannies but no, J wanted to make sure I got to my bridge. He said that if we headed towards the River, and walked alongside it, we would ultimately find it. So down to the river we went.

Including some cool grafitti...

A statue who moved!

Needless to say, we didn't find the bridge that day but we'll go back and we're going to find it. Rest assured.

And I promise to do a better job of keeping everyone posted :)