I know I talk about the weather all the time and I know that when you talk about the weather, it means you have nothing else to talk about (not true. I have a lot to talk about), but in the five weeks I’ve been in London and in all the hundreds of times it’s rained, I’ve never once seen lightning or heard thunder. Except now. It’s pouring outside and it lightning just flashed and a huge clap of thunder sounded. So, clearly, this is not your typical, “It’s going to rain today in the city of London like it does 95% of the time.” I heard, though, earlier in the summer, that it has been unseasonably rainy here for this time of year. How wonderful for me.
Thursday, after I went to the Olympic Park, I did homework all day. Friday morning, our group took one last group field trip to Kew Gardens. It was nice because it could have been raining, but it was partly sunny and pretty warm. The gardens were beautiful.
Giant greenhouses all over the place.
We were very close to Heathrow so airplanes kept flying over us and they were a lot closer to the ground than usual.
The flowers were all so colorful. At least I know England (or London, more specifically) has flowers.
We basically wandered around and had no direction where to go. We had a ticket to the Kew Palace, as well.
We found this treetop boardwalk thing that just went in this huge circle, but you could see the whole gardens from up there.
I was a little sleepy.
We stopped at this cafe we found and I was hungry so I bought a piece of Lemon Poppyseed cake. It was delicious and I wanted more. I also managed to FaceTime with my mom! Right there in the gardens!
This was called the “Ruined Arch.”
There were chickens walking around free!
CHICKENS.
And yes, I HAVE seen chickens before. It was just funny because it was similar to the peacocks that roam around the zoo uncaged.
There’s not much to say about it because it’s pretty self-explanatory. It was a royal botanical garden where you could pay to go in and walk around and eat lunch and visit the “Kew Palace” which I think was more or less a giant house/mansion. It was worth it, but if it hadn’t been included in our program, I don’t know if I would have paid to go see it.
So now I have less than a week left in London. A week from now I will either be a)sleeping or b)home in general, unpacking, relaxing, doing absolutely nothing before heading back to school. It’s a bittersweet feeling, this whole “time to go home” thing. On one hand, I miss my family and friends immensely, but on the other hand, this has been the most wonderful experience that I could never have imagined passing up.
But I can’t think about that yet! I still have five full days and there are several things on my “To-Do List” that I have to get done. Along with several papers I have yet to write. Speaking of which…
London Town 