The London Eye!

My lovely Katherine has been visiting me in London for six days now, and our friend Helga who lives in Estonia has come to visit as well, she has been with us for three days! We were an inseparable trio junior year of high school while Helga was studying at Beacon for the year, this is our first group reunion! Needless to say it has been a very good week, and my focus on school has been minimal. It's only the beginning of the semester though so I am not yet stressed out by schoolwork.

Before Helga got here, Katherine and I went on a long evening walk, where Katherine took this picture of the London eye—look at those Mardi Gras colors!

We went to a cheese store called Neil's Yard Dairy and got some yummy cheese.  These are the crackers that followed:

The following evening we attempted to go out, which was pretty much a fail aside from the fact that we got Mojitos... mmm.

The next morning Katherine and I went to a quaint diner in my neighborhood and got breakfast before Helga arrived. We ordered "coffee" and they brought us lattes, I love Europe! No grey drip coffee for me.

After a bit of downtime with the Helgster we walked to the National Portrait Gallery where we saw the Beatles to Bowie exhibit, which was in its final days. The exhibit was about Pop music in the 60s and it was pretty well put together, I thought. The only problem was that it was so crowded! That's what I get for going on one of the last days.

The girls in front of one of the exhibit posters

All of us in front of the National Portrait Gallery

Yesterday, we wandered around Notting Hill, where I only took one mediocre photo, many of the houses in the neighborhood are painted pastel colors.

A picture Katherine took of a pink door.

We walked down Portobello Road which has a famous market that goes along the road as far as the eye can see. Vendors there sell a variety of things such as cheesy touristy souvenirs, handmade leather goods, knick knacks, and antiques. We stopped into a shop along the road which had a lot of antiquey British knick knacks, it was really cool.

After Notting Hill, we went on the London Eye!

A view of one of the bridges near the eye as we began to ascend.

People on the promenade below.

The BT tower in the distance—it's in my school's neighborhood and always a good reference point when I am walking around.

Big Ben...obv.

St. James Park & Buckingham Palace.

When we were approaching the top of the Eye!

From way up above

Spaceship

Obligatory photos of us on the Eye

Preparing to cross back to the other side of the river.

Later in the evening, we went to a club called Proud which had three live bands performed followed by DJing. It was a lot of fun despite the fact that at one point an old man tickled my armpit.

One of the bands, Race Horses, on stage. Our favorite band was called Fool's Gold but we don't have a picture of them.

The four of us in the fogginess.

There were two main rooms, and after the live music, we went in the other room where the DJ was playing mostly soul music—it was amazing. He played lots of Otis Redding and Stevie Wonder... this turned our good night into an absolutely spectacular one! I was dancing so ferociously I actually managed to hurt my knee, which resulted in a slight limp on the way home and some pain today. Tis the price you pay for a good time.

Today has been pretty low key, we wandered a bit around Camden and went into my favorite tea shop (Yumchaa) for some tea and cake. Tomorrow after my Russian class, we are headed to Birmingham for 24 hours!