A Busy Weekend In London

Thursday afternoon Marty and I skipped out on German Politics and Culture class and took the Train/Tram downtown to Universitat Bremen (Not to be confused with Jacobs University Bremen) where we picked up our passports, not fit with German residency permits (a requirement to get Russian Visas). We then just took the tram directly to Bremen Airport and checked in at the lovely garage that was the Ryanair terminal. The flight was only a little over an hour, and I slept through most of it, as did Marty, who was asleep before take-off. At the London-Stanstead airport, we got held up in customs and missed our scheduled EasyBus downtown, but were fortunately able to catch the following bus, for and hour and forty minute drive into London. We then proceeded to walk to our Hostel, the Smart Hyde Park Inn, which was very convieniently located within a minutes walk of a shopping district, Hyde Park, and two Underground stops. Later that night we explored the local area and planned our next days adventures along with a Turkish German from Stuttgart named Erdal whom we met at the hostel.
After consuming large quantities of toast from the Hostel's "breakfast" we set off to the far north of London to Colindale, where we found the Royal Air Force Museum and spent the remainder of the morning there. All three of us were studying mechanics (2 Mechanical Engineers and 1 Foundry Mechanic) and found the exhibits very interesting.
We then took the Underground to Trafalgar Square and essentially wandered around London until dark, seeing Trafalgar Square, the world's smallest police station, The National Gallery, the London Eye, Big Ben, the Admiralty Arch, Westminister Abby, the Tate Center, St. Paul's, the Globe Theater, the Tower Bridge, Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, the Golden Hinde (of Sir Francis Drake), Piccadilly Circus (pretty much the downtown area), Roosevelt and Churchill on a bench, and Buckingham Palace.
For the second and third nights our room in the hostel was moved, and we were now in a room full of long term french residents (they were there for about 4 months). I was able to stumble through conversations with them, and spent part of the night hanging out with them, and then later went out with Erdal and some others.
On Saturday, the weather was once again beautiful (atypical of London I believe) with blue skies and quite warm out. We first went to Leicester Square and visited the discount tickets booth. We then proceeded to go to Buckingham palace via a different station than we took the previous night, and ended up back at Big Ben and Westminster Abby by accident. We made it to the palace about 5 minutes after the changing of the guard ceremony started, but were able to get a good view from the Island in the middle of the road where the Victoria Monument is located. At this point Marty went off to meet with his Great-Uncle whom he had never met before, and Erdal also had an appointment with some friends. I then proceeded to Abbey Road (crossing and studio) with a group that I met from NY. I then attempted to see platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross Station, but could not get to that part of the station without a train ticket. I then spent the remainder of the afternoon at the Imperial War Museum, which also featured very extensive and interesting exhibits on secret british military and intelligence operations (MI5/MI6, secret troops in WWI/WWII, SAS), and also a very nice holocaust exhibit. That evening we went and saw the musical version of The Sound Of Music, which was on it's last night of performance. The show was excellent, and the scene changes were also very cool to watch, with a mountain that descended (giant tilting platform) and moving floors on the stage so that stage crew members never had to appear on the stage. At one point the entire theater was suddenly decorated with Nazi propaganda, which took me by surprise, and had a very cool immersive effect.
Overall the underground system was very convenient and easy to use, nearly foolproof for navigational purposes actually. Unfortunately there was repair work being done all day Saturday, and several lines were closed, making getting around slightly more difficult and crowded, but still feasible. Our plan for Sunday morning had been to sleep in our clothes, and then just wake up, check out of the hostel, and take the underground to where our bus would pick us up for the airport. When we got to the underground station, however, we were informed that it didn't open until 7 a.m. Armed with what we thought was a pretty good map of London, we set off running through London at 3 in the morning in search of our bus stop. We decided that it would be easier to run along a main road rather than try to cut corners and take a more complicated and direct route, and set off on Bayswater Road looking for Gloucester Place, or Baker Street if we missed our turn. What our map failed to show us was that Gloucester Place actually turned into Portman Street and Baker Street into Orchard Street for only the block directly before the intersection with Bayswater. As you can imagine this led to much confusion when we ended up at another underground station that we knew was too far down the road and had checked every street sign on the way there. This was one case where it was very fortunate to know the local dialect, english. We eventually found the station and had missed the bus time we were aiming for, but were able to catch the following bus, and thanks to our driver whizzing through london in his little mercedes bus, made it to the airport in about an hour less than it took on thursday night within plenty of time to get tickets for our flight, as did the other 2 students who had found a very helpful taxi driver.
After a comfortable trip back in the more-spacious emergency exit row, we all fell asleep and were then greeted by some lovely Bremen weather...dark grey skies again.