Chinese New Year in London!

Our trip to London was absolutely amazing! We completely filled our two days with activities and we still didn't even get close to doing everything that we wanted to do. When we arrived we checked into our hostel which was really quite nice. It was a really cool looking building and had a pretty decent location. 

After we checked in, we went on a quick walk around downtown before heading into our musical. We saw "We Will Rock You" which is a musical featuring all Queen songs. It was like going to a concert and we all loved it. It was also interesting to hear actors perform with British accents.

 

After the musical we headed down to the river to get some cool nighttime photos.

After a bit of exploration we headed over to Chinatown to met up with our tour guide and eat at a great little Chinese restaurant. It ended up being the four of us, the guide, and two others from the group and we all ordered different things to share. It was a really great meal and the also comical because of how rude servers were. Our tour guide had gone on quite of few of the Chinese New Year trips and she was telling us some of the things they had said to her on trips before. Our server ended up being alright and the food was very authentic and tasty.

 

After the meal she took us to a really great pub downtown and we met up with a bunch of the other students on the trip, which were mostly other international students that we had met at some point before. It was a really great group and we all had a lot of fun getting to know each other better.

The guy on the far left was the trip photographer. He was from Mexico and had won some kind of contest that allowed him to come take photos on weekend trips. He was one of the final two in the competition and the other competitor is going on the trip this weekend. I will have to find some of the photos he took and post them on here if they are any good. Two over from him, the girl in the black and the other girl behind her, are the girls from Wisconsin and Australia that we hung out with the very first weekend (third post). Chelsea also went to Liverpool with me. The girl with short brown hair behind Georgia was our tour guide and she was really great. The next day we got up early and basically went sightseeing.

Tower of London

Tower Bridge

Big Ben 

Westminster Abbey

Buckingham Palace, we thought the flag flying meant the Queen was home but someone told us there has to be another flag flying as well so we actually aren't sure if she was home or not.

I was disappointed they weren't in red

Sunday was the actual New Years celebration and Chinatown was absolutely packed. We did get to see a dragon and I was able to buy my own mini version from a street vendor. The trip was really great but I definitely want to get back to do some more exploring and some good shopping. Sunday night we went out to watch the Superbowl and it was pretty fun explaining everything to Erin since they don't watch American football. She said she enjoyed it so now me and Christina have to watch some cricket/rugby with her sometime. Today was Christina's birthday and we bought and decorated a cake for her and bought her some flowers and a card. I had such a fun weekend and I can't wait for more weekend trips to come!