Last days in London

Hello all! Madi here. I decided to compose this next post seeing as how Todd likes to take his time and I want to get to the good stuff (the proposal, duh!). Our next two days in London were filled with further exploration to see everything we wanted to. The many sights and experiences we took part in included:

• Shakespeare's Globe Theater: Touring the third building made as closely as possible to the original (after the first burned down and the second was destroyed in the Puritan movement), complete with an authentic thatched roof and a perfectly British tour guide named Katie. 
• St. Paul's Cathedral: The sight of Princess Diana's wedding and a ten second clip in Harry Potter: The Prisoner of Azkaban 
• Buckingham Palace: Home of the Queen
• Hyde Park: Filled with adorable British baby children, swan families, and the Peter Pan statue!
• 221 Baker Street: The address of the infamous Sherlock Holmes (We passed on the huge line for the museum though.. He is fictional after all.)
• Abbey Road! : One of Todd's favorite moments. Standing in front of Abbey Road Studio and crossing the same street featured on the Beatles' album cover was an awesome experience (even with the disheartening amount of crazy tourists blocking traffic and trying to make their mark by scribbling their names in Sharpie everywhere).
• The British Museum: Home of the Rosetta Stone and around 3 million other exhibits (!). All of the ones on ancient Egyptian civilizations were my favorite.
• Portabello Road Market: A lovely street in Notting Hill filled with antiques and other goodies.
• Natural History Museum: Dinosaurs! And a pretty in depth look at human biology/ the baby making process.
• Kensington Palace and gardens: Where we had a traditional English tea service, complete with overpriced triangle sandwiches, scones with heavenly jam and clotted cream, and mini desserts.
• The London Eye: With fantastic views and not so fantastic queues. (Don't worry, we splurged to upgrade our tickets to fast track ones.) 

Tour of the English Countryside

Today, we went on a tour of the English countryside about 2 hours away in total and saw: Windsor Castle, the city of Bath, the old city of Lacock, and the famous Stonehenge. It was a ton of fun and our tour guide was pretty awesome too. He was funny/rude to annoying tourists which was hilarious. Once this Asian man was trying to get on our bus, but the guide was trying to explain to him that we were full and there was another bus to get on for the same tour, and so he basically just shut the doors on him and then muttered to the coach driver; "Run him over."

Windsor Castle Gardens

      The first stop was Windsor Castle, which is the largest inhabited castle in England. It is an awesome castle with beautiful green flawless gardens and lawns. It is where the Queen spends most of her free time we were informed, however the queen was not present when we had our visit. We also saw the changing of the guard in the castle which was a pretty cool ceremony to see in England. We had fish and chips for our lunch at an old English pub called 'The Duchess of Cambridge' which was awesome fish and chips by the way, and it was free with our tour. Then we were off to the the city of Bath.

Roman statue next to the Roman Bath house.

                                                                                                                   
The city of Bath was very cool and has a ton of history. As the name suggests there are old bath houses that the Romans used to use, with a ton of the structures still there. We took a tour of the inside and it was pretty cool to see the original floor, ceiling and things like the altar they used for sacrifices. Also, there are a ton of very old shops, one dating back over 800 years ago.

Building in Lacock.

The next two stops were the ancient city of Lacock, and Stonehenge. Lacock was very cool, it looked like the city had stopped aging hundreds of year ago, with almost no modern technologies seen from outside. It was also the site where many popular movies are filmed, including Harry Potter. Finally Stonehenge. It was so cool to actually see Stonehenge. I've read so much about it and watched plenty of shows talking about the possibilities of what it could be, how it was built, and who built it, but nothing compares to standing in front of it. It was extremely windy and cold but well worth every second.
       Apart from all of the sites we stopped at, the English country views were very pretty as well. It made the whole trip worth the two hour drive there and back. Tomorrow is our last day in London! We are going to miss our Brixton flat.

A picture snapped from inside the bus.

London Day 2

Today we saw Westminster Abbey, the site of coronations in London. Standing anywhere inside the Abbey or around it is breathtaking. It's such a beautiful building and the history inside is also very interesting. It makes you wonder how they ever could have built such an amazing structure with the tools they were armed with back then.

The Ceiling inside the Abbey with the Knights Sigils hung.

The Westminster Abbey

It is also the resting place of many kings, queens, knights and other royalty. They are entombed in very intricate burial chambers, with the most amazing detail. I would highly recommend the Westminster Abbey if you ever find yourself in London. We also walked along the River Thames to get a better glimpse of Big Ben and Parliament, walked over the Tower Bridge, and went to the Tower of London.
  The Tower of London is not just a tower or castle but instead an entire fortress and its grounds which is still inhabited today. It is the home of the crown jewels, and an incredible amount of history as well. It was built by William the Conquerer in 1066AD and from that time on was home to many kings and queens, was a site of torture, imprisonment, and protection. My favorite historical events are the beheading of queen Anne Boleyn(the first queen to ever be executed there) and the room where they tortured Guy Fawkes which is still celebrated every year on November 5th with fireworks, and bon fires: (Remember, remember the fifth of november…) Pretty awesome!

A Beef Eater outside the keep where the crown jewels are kept.

 Learning so much of the history of London between 1000-1900AD makes you want to learn more, and know what it must have been like to live in the time of William the Conquerer, and when kings and queens ruled the land. We still have so much to see in London, and it's astonishing how much we've already seen. Tomorrow we have a tour to Bath, Stonehenge, Lacock, and Windsor Castle. It's gonna be awesome.

Madi, Big Ben and I.

Our first two days in London

We are in London! The flights were long, but we made it! Getting out of the airport was quick and a pretty painless task. We even got our 'Oyster' cards for traveling in the "Underground" (Which is London's subway: the easiest way to travel through the city.) The neighborhood that we are staying in the Brixton, which is only about 5 miles from the heart of London. The actual flat that we are staying in is beautiful as well. It's the top story of a 5 story building and we have full roof access, and actually have the flat to ourselves. Today though, we explored a ton of the most popular grand architecture, a ton of the oldest history in the city, and even had our first Fish and Chips. And after all of the things we did today, we are very tired. Also, we have a tour to the famous Stonehenge tomorrow at 8 in the morning. The next post will include in more detail and pictures about our day today. See you guys soon!

Boston Layover

Our first layover in an airport: we are stuck in Boston. Only 9 more hours on a plane and we will be landing in London!

Next stop; layover in Iceland.

In the Airport

We are at the airport! I guess 8AM on a Monday is a good time to fly, since it took us about 17 minutes to get all the way from curbside to the terminal.
Our flight leaves at 8AM and we land in London 11AM tomorrow morning. We have a layover in Boston and another in Iceland but shouldn't be all too bad.
We are so excited for London!! The time change will be interesting to experience but hopefully easily adaptable, we land 11am but here in Sacramento it will be only 3 in the morning.

I'll try to post some videos soon as well!

Here goes nothin'!

Okay, we are 1 day away from our trip and everything is packed!

We are both packing 1 backpack each to travel Europe. Going from London, to Paris, to The Netherlands, Berlin and Prague from June 10th to July 2nd. On our way there I'll try to keep uploading everything new about the vacation and you guys can follow along on the blog and on my YouTube channel, at YouTube.com/seydelstudio.

If anyone has any questions let me know! We'll let you know what we're planning, what we've packed, where we're staying and the places we go.

See you guys soon!