My second day in London was just as fun as the first! We started off the day by going to Buckingham palace to watch the changing of the guards. Even though it was a Monday it was still extremely crowded, we got there an hour early and still didn’t have the greatest view. It was interesting to see all the different languages being spoken in one area when you are in a huge crowd. We heard Spanish, French, Japanese and Chinese; just from the people surrounding us. After we left the changing of the guards we walked across the street to go to St. Paul’s Cathedral. I wish we would have been able to go on the inside but we didn’t have enough time and there were no masses going on at the time we were there. The outside is still breathtaking though and we got a lot of souvenirs from the gift shop! After that we took the tube to a flee market at Notting Hill! This was my favorite part of all =) I looove seeing the different styles of clothing and all the stuff with the British flag on it. Nicki bought a couple scarves at the beginning of the flee market, and as we walked down a while we noticed everything started to get cheaper. They purposely hiked up prices at places near the front of the market because they know people will buy things and not realize they are overpaying until it’s too late. We went back and tried to return it but they refused to give her a refund. I bought a lot of cute scarves, I’m not sure how I am going to wear them yet… but they are pretty! After the market we had to rush home and get ready for Wicked on Broadway! I have never seen a Broadway show so I was so excited! It was amazing and the talent was incredible! After we left we took a night walk past the London Eye and Big Ben. The view at night is so beautiful because everything is lit up. It looks like something out of a movie! There was this lady singing by the Eye and her voice was incredible. She was also playing the guitar and the harmonica. We stopped to talk to her and a couple of the girls bought her CD. She said she is Italian, born in Brazil, but speaks Portuguese and Italian. She had a very strong accent which didn’t show through in her singing. We got a picture with her; maybe she’ll be famous one day! =-)
The scavenger hunt was an interesting thing to do while we were in London. While we were riding on the bus back from Greenwich, we went though a neighborhood on a street called “Jamaica.” Several of the ladies were wearing traditional African head dresses and speaking a language I did not recognize. Also while we were on the bus there were so many different languages being spoken, we may have been the only ones speaking English on the whole bus which is a little ironic because we were in the UK. Also all these people speaking the different languages were not tourists, they were going to and from work or going grocery shopping. The diversity in language is amazing because there are so many different kinds of languages in a quite small area. I might even go as far to say more people are speaking different languages other than English. Even at stores and restaurants people spoke very broken English, I felt like I wasn’t even in Brittan anymore! I guess it’s good practice for when I go to Italy and can’t understand anyone at all! We also observed what many of the children were doing while they were on vacation. There was this really cool piece of “art” that many of the kids appeared to enjoy. It was several tall poles that light up and make noise according how people move around. The faster you move the louder the music, and the way your body interacts with other people on the art platform can also change the volume and lights. The kids were running around like crazy having a blast.
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