Long overdue- London August 2010

Horrible blogging family! I am sure by now you have all seen our pictures on facebook from our trip to London and Ireland this past August. I warn you this will be a long bloggy, but I will break it up into sections of our trip to make it a bit easier to follow. This entry is just London, I will post the Ireland part soon.

London

Well we flew into Hethrow and were greeted by my 2 aunts and 2 uncles. This was the first time Erik got to meet my aunt and uncle from Iran, I hadn’t seen either of them in 7 years, so I obviously cried when I hugged my aunt :) After a long nap at my aunt’s house we headed out to see the city. It was quite the long day, we walked around London and got to see Big Ben, House of Parliament, and the London Eye.

My cousin Farnaz, was doing some sweet karate moves with this weirdo on side of the road. We tried to take a video of it but we were too late.

There were a lot of street entertainers along our 3-4 hour walk to find a place called Nando’s. My cousins Parsa and Kian said that we just HAD to try Nando’s. So we walked... and walked... and walked... a few hours later we found the Nando’s and finally sat down to eat! It was definitely worth the wait.

After Nando’s we walked across the bridge that is featured in Harry Potter to the train station where we headed back to my Aunt’s house to rest up for the next day.

The next day my cousin Farnaz had the day off so she took us shopping on Oxford street. That place was INSANE. We need a lot of walking all day, going from shop to shop. We were mainly window shopping because everything is so much more expensive in Europe but we did go to a place called Primark. This is where we did most of our shopping, because the prices here were amazing. That night we went on a walking tour of all the places “Jack the Ripper” committed his murders. It was a really cool experience, and a bit creepy, ok it was really creepy, but I am really glad we got to do it.

The next day we headed out again to the British Museum. They had some really cool Iranian artifacts and we got to learn a bit about ancient Iran. After we walked through the Iranian exhibit we went to the ancient Egyptian exhibit. They had ACTUAL mummies there, like with real people inside them, I mean they were dead, but regardless there was actually a dead human inside the displays. Ew

Then we walked to Covent Garden Market, which is most similar to eastern market here in DC. We saw a guy playing the “Du Xian Qin” a Chinese musical instrument. It consisted of just ONE string, and he was playing some of the most beautiful music.

We then stopped and sat to watch a street show. It was performed by 2 brothers, it was a very entertaining performance. They had some crazy funny British humor, and they did really cool tricks. The one guy ( who was really tall) even did some crazy limbo.

The next day we went to Oxford, England to pick up my other cousin Farzam. We had to stop at the outlet mall on our way to Oxford, but when we got to Oxford we walked around and saw a bit of the University. The dork that I am thought this next picture was really awesome!

The following morning we set off for the weekend to a place called Center parcs which was a place full of small cabins in the middle of nowhere. But before we went we had to stop at the Costco to go food shopping. The lady at the cash register was amazed that we had 13 people there.

It was a very long drive but when we got there, we realized it was well worth it. They had a central building where they had a bunch of water slides and pools, and different sports activities. When we got there we went straight to the pool area, and rode the “rapids” water slide about 200 times, seriously. haha. The boys played paintball one morning while us ladies went to the Spa! Oh boy was the spa wonderful. It consisted of a series of different steam rooms and saunas. It was so relaxing, and it was really great to spend time with the ladies. We ate a lot and rode our bikes (which we rented) all around the park. It was a wonderful weekend.

Monday morning we left early with my cousin Farzam, and headed back to London, while the family spent the day at Center Parcs. When we got back to London, Erik and I went back into the city. We went to the London Bridge, which was really cool and HUGE.

Then took the train to Buckingham Palace, which was completely closed in by really tall walls, so we didn’t actually get to see the Palace. Then we took a nice walk over to Hyde Park. The park was really beautiful, but we were so exhausted we didn’t walk around the park. We then headed back to my aunt’s house and spent the rest of the day with my family. We left the next morning (verrrry early) for IRELAND! Ireland blog to be posted soon.. Stay Tuned :)