Submitted by Haley Cohen on the 2014 spring semester study abroad program in London, England…
With classes kicking into full gear, our third week hasn’t been too eventful. Now that the initial overwhelming feeling of living in a foreign country is a bit subdued, and we are realizing that we do indeed have time to explore this amazing city, we decided to take it a little easy. Even though, I still feel as if there is so much I want to do and there is not enough time to do it all. We have been very busy planning our traveling throughout the semester, and as we are doing so, we have all realized that 15 weeks really isn’t enough to do everything we want to do! So on our free days, we have been trying to knock a few things off of our bucket lists and we are really trying to make the most of every minute we have here in London.
Monday morning brought sunny clear skies, so we decided to venture off to the iconic Abbey Road. We figured it would be a nice day to walk around outside, but unfortunately we made a rookie mistake, since most Londoners know the weather here is highly unpredictable. We left our flat wearing minimal layers, ignorantly assuming the sun would shine all day and ended up shivering as we posed for the legendary “crossing Abbey Road picture” mimicking The Beatles. I have to admit, I thought there would be a little more than a mere picture of The Beatles at the Abbey Road crossing. So, sorry to let you all down by saying that Abbey Road is really just a simple road that locals most likely detest with all the tourists running into the middle of it to take a picture. I was actually surprised at how much traffic crosses the road given the lines of tourists posing to take a picture in the middle of it. But don’t get me wrong; it was pretty cool to cross the road that The Beatles crossed and to sign the wall that everyone signs (even though we didn’t really know what the significance was of the wall we were signing). Regardless, we checked “cross Abbey Road” off of our bucket list.
After that, we headed over to Camden Markets which is a really neat area with tons of vendors and shops. Camden has a similar hipster vibe of The Village in New York City, but it is a bit more touristy with a lot of souvenir shops and such. We walked around for a while, grabbed a bite to eat, and shopped. We could have easily spent hours there, but it started to rain and of course most of us forgot our umbrellas so we headed back home.
This Thursday night, my roommates and I are leaving for Paris on an overnight bus which I had no idea even existed since London and Paris are separated by the English Channel, so I will be sure to let you all know how that goes. I am so excited for our first weekend trip outside of the United Kingdom, but I am a little nervous since this is the first trip I have booked without the help of my parents. It will definitely be an adventure!