Friday night, by the time we headed out for dinner it was around 10. Since arriving in Paris, I haven’t eaten until 9 or 10 pm. This is another way that London differs from Paris. Almost everywhere in London closes at midnight and the kitchens closes long before that. Kim and I finally found somewhere that was still serving food, although I didn’t get to have the fish and chips I was craving.

This past week was the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and Saturday was the Queen’s annual birthday parade (go figure… an annual birthday). Kim and I went over to Buckingham palace and stood on the mall with the rest of the masses to wait for the royal family to process down the mall and waive from the balcony. After about 20 minutes of waiting (the royals weren’t coming for another hour), we decided that we should continue on as tourists since we wouldn’t see anything anyway.

We did a bunch of touristy stuff: saw Big Ben, toured St. Paul’s, went to Picadilly Circus, went to the British Museum and got lost a bunch. We got to see the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum… everyone’s been saying that I should use Rosetta Stone to learn French but I didn’t see how it could help me ;)

My other friend Kim (from college) lived in London for a few years and gave me a bunch of recs. Saturday night we went to a place she suggested, Rosa’s Thai in Soho, and it was amazing. We didn’t have as good luck finding fun night life. All of the pubs were packed because England was playing in the Euro. We finally ended up going to a place, that as college-Kim described, “totally feels like Varsity Blues or a larger version of Two Keys”. My college friends will get that reference. For those of you that didn’t go to UK, 1) that’s too bad, Kentucky is beautiful and we have an awesome basketball team; and 2) my reference means that the bar was a mixture of a bar and dance club where there were a lot of hen (bachelorette) parties and people who drank too much and thought they were better dancers than they actually are. Needless to say, it made for some great people watching. Speaking of drinking too much, there are signs all over London marking “restricted drinking zones”. Hilarious.

Overall, the trip was a lot of fun, although I was completely exhausted. By the way, I did get to eat fish and chips, twice! Is it bad that I think that the fish and chips in America are better?