I'm in London!!

So, I got into london early on Friday morning. After I was finished in the airport (which took about 2 and half hours, it took forever to go through customs) I took a train to Victoria station to meet Whitney. Before I got on the train, though, i had to take a tram to get to the south terminal, a girl who was also waiting asked another woman where she could buy a ticket for the gatwick express, which was the train i was taking. long story short, i introduced myself because i was also traveling alone and thought it would be fun to take the ride together, it ended up she is from stone mountain which is ten minutes from where i live and we had several mutual friends. I love small world stories!! Anyway that day Whitney, Patricia, and I decided to get some lunch and take it to a park. It was such a beautiful day, even though it was cloudy. We ended up spending a lot of time in Hyde Park, which is huge. It was wonderful, the parks here are beautiful. The trees here are amazingly beautiful. I love that I get to see them when the leaves are gone and you can see the gnarly branches, they are so knotty, i love love love it!! After the park we went shopping in the Piccadilly section of town and basically window shopped which was fun. We decided to make a quick stop at St. Paul's cathedral before getting ready for the theater and i am so so so glad we did. The outside is huge and a pretty building, but when you walk in and turn into the abby your breath is literally taken away. The ceilings were so tall with the most beautiful mosaics in the front of the cathedral on the ceilings. Oh and we just happened to be there during the evensong which was beautiful, it is basically an evening service. The choir was singing kyrie eleison; it was absolutely beautiful and we just watched and took in the beauty for as long as we could. Oh and outside St. Paul's in the square, is where "Feed the Birds" takes place from Mary Poppins. I thought that was really fun!! Later that night we were starving and racing to get to the theater in time, so we stopped at Marks & Spencer Simply Food (which is probably the best healthy food store in the world, america seriously needs these around everywhere!!) and grabbed some sushi to hide and take into the theater. We saw Billy Elliot, which was fantastic! It is a musical, and a majority of the cast is young children and the talent they have is astounding. It was funny and moving all at the same time, i highly recommend it to anyone!! The theater here is amazing! There is so much to see, i love it! We are trying to go see The Lion King on sunday! Today we went and did the typical tourist thing. Went to Big Ben, Parliment, Westminster Abbey. There were so many people!! It was nice to see those things and take pictures, but I would not want to stay there for too long, so we didnt. After seeing those things (it took um, 30 min.) We walked to St. James park which is right around the corner, and it was amazing. Such a beautiful park, with again tons of beautiful trees. Oh and there are yellow daffodils everywhere in all the parks! We had a flapjack and coffee in the park. Flapjacks are amazing, they are like a glorified granola bar, mine had fruit and seeds in it and i'm absolutely in love with them! We heard a marching band going on in the opposite end of the park and tried to find it and were sad when the march had taken a turn and gone the other way. We stumbled into a diplomatic looking area though. There were flags everywhere and lots of gates too. It ended up that we were at Buckingham palace. It took us a while to figure out what it was. There were tons of people around, so we kind of assumed that it was in face buckingham palace, but were not sure because there was nothing there to tell us that it was. Well let me just say this, i was kind of disappointed with the palace, we took a few picture and were off again. Oh and we realized that the march we heard was actually changing of the guards (that would probably be the only things i would want to see, other than that, not really that exciting) But to the right of the palace is another park, which was also huge and beautiful!! we took a rest there and did some wonderful people watching. I enjoy that so much more than the tourist sites. It is suppose to rain tomorrow so we are going to the british museum, and that national gallery, and hopefully The Lion King, and it parts of the day are nice, go to notting hill and holland park. I'm so very excited about spending my birthday doing that !!!!! London is great, but i cant wait for Irealnd!!! It will be amazing as well!