On a day when I got out of class early and was heading home with a friend we were stopped by a man on stilts handing out flyers and with bags slung over an arm. He handed me a postcard telling me that he was from a travel agency and they were having a sweepstakes called Europe Never Goes Out of Style, and the winner would be sent to their city of choice. He also gave both of us a bag, that I carry around all the time. I entered, picking London because it was the city on the card I had been given and because I had spent the night at Heathrow in the Yotel, but had never actually been out of the airport. Afterwards I forgot about it and in the heat of summer found out I won. I was on my phone at the time checking my spam folder to see if anything important like financial aid info had fallen into the box like usual, and my dad thought my computer melted.
Taking the place of my weekend writings on my summer study abroad trip to Prague will be my shorter spring break trip to London. I went with my cousin on a trip I won from STA travel agency. It was a fun but exhausting trip where we somehow managed to pack almost everything we planned to do within about five days. My cousins smart phone worked for our trip so we used it to find our way around and she was use to the area having gone to London multiple times growing up and in college going there for her study abroad trip. She however had a surprise when we headed towards the airport to start our trip, one where she had been planning on drinking Guinness beer everywhere we went and ate, instead her surprise was that she had just found out she was pregnant. Traveling with someone newly pregnant was an interesting experience, and I must say my cousin was a trooper. Even though every form we had called her my travel companion, I followed her through the streets of London.
We also managed to meet up with two of my friends who were in London at the time, one studying abroad, the other living there now.
I spent the flight enjoying the food, not sleeping at all, and catching up on movies I hadn’t seen yet. I tried to sleep but was unable to so I opened up the shade to my window and had a beautiful view of the night sky with the moon over a bed of clouds and then a nice view watching the sun rise and the city appear below.
When we got to Heathrow it wasn’t as confusing as last time, since we arrived at a decent time in the morning and my cousin knew her way around better than I did. We bought our Oyster passes at the airport, going with a week pass even though we weren’t there for the entire week, but it was cheaper and at the end of our trip we returned them and got the unused days back in pounds.
And thus begins the journey in London.