Today was our final day on the trip! While it is sad that it is over, I am glad to be heading home. Today, we had our first and only day in London. We started off the day with breakfast at the hotel. I had pancakes and they were really good. After breakfast, we went to Paddington Station to catch a tube to go to the center of London. It was very interesting to try out all the different public transportation a city has to offer, since I have not used much city transportation before. After getting off the tube, we walked over to the Florence Nightengale Museum. The museum was really cool to walk through, but smaller than I expected. We got through the museum and finally started our sight seeing in the city.

Our first stop was some little food stands, where we took a group picture in front of Big Ben. We then split off and went our own way to start looking at the different parts of London. We walked over to the London Eye, where we spotted a build a bear workshop. I have never gotten a bear from there before, so this seemed like the perfect time to get one. Three of us ended up getting matching bears with sweaters, and we took pictures of them everywhere like they were a Flat Stanley. I named mine Abbey, after Westminster Abbey, and I carried her all around London with me. After getting Abbey, I also got a smoothie because I was hungry. The smoothie was actually really runny and not a smoothie consistency at all, so that kind of sucked. We went to Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Parliament, and Buckingham Palace. We only were outside the buildings, but they were still really cool to see and take pictures of. After visiting Buckingham Palace, we sat in the park for a while before walking over to Hard Rock Cafe for lunch. I had to buy my mom a t-shirt from the restaurants store since she collects them, so we ended up just eating in the restaurant as well. Did you know that the original Hard Rock Cafe was in London? Once I found this out, I knew we had to eat in there. It was so cool inside, with a lot of different relics from different singers. My favorite was an outfit that Elton John wore.

After lunch, we did not really know what we wanted to do. We started walking back towards the theater that our show was going to be in, stopping at random cafes along the way. We tried to go to a mall, but when we got there, it did not actually exist. I don’t really know what happened, but we just ended up walking over to Cafe Nero to sit for a little. I got a slice of chocolate cake, but it was actually really bad. It was dry and a little stale, which was unfortunate. Around 7:45, we walked over to the theater, where we met Dr. Marks outside and got our tickets for Mamma Mia! I actually really loved this show. The acting was absolutely amazing, and even though we were not allowed to sing along during the musical, they sang the songs again at the end and everyone was up singing and dancing. The environment was amazing, and I would definitely watch that again. We caught the tube back to Paddington Station, and I immediately went back to the hotel to get ready for bed. Overall, I really enjoyed this trip, but I am happy to be going home!