Days 13-15: London, Baby!!!

In case you missed it:

• Days 1-3: Glasgow- Euro Trip Begins!
• Day 4: Edinburgh and A Lot of Rain
• Days 5-9: Absurdly Beautiful Norway
• Days 10-12: Everyone’s Irish in Dublin

After my (hopefully) last ever Ryanair flight, we arrived in London on Tuesday evening for the last leg of our trip and we made our way to Colleen and Dale’s apartment. We had never met Colleen and Dale, so it was really really amazingly awesome of them to let us stay with them at their cool flat in London (especially since after 2 weeks of traveling, we were running low on money).

Colleen has known Giselle, Blake’s sister, for quite some time when they used to dance together, and Giselle had mentioned that they might be nice enough to let us stay with them. Not only did we have our own room, but they had an adorable French Bulldog- Ozzy.

After a good nights sleep, we woke up on Wednesday ready to see some London. We were only a short walk to the Tower Bridge, so we decided to start there.

I had gone into the Tower of London when I visited London with my parents in 2004, and it was very cool, but since we were pretty much broke at the end of our trip, we just walked around the outside and across the bridge.

It was a beautiful day out though, so we had a good time just meandering along the water and enjoying the city.

In the afternoon, we made our way over to the Tate Modern. Blake took this cool pic of me in the escalator:

And then he did this:

So as we were walking out of the museum we noticed a RSPB booth and some telescopes for a pair of Peregrine Falcons have made the 99 meter (325 feet) high chimney of the Tate Modern their home. I wanted to see the Falcons, so we took a look-see into the telescopes, and sure enough- there was a nesting pair! After we looked they asked if we would sign a petition or something, and we said yes, and as we were signing, I heard someone behind me ask a stupid question. There was a box of stuffed animal falcons that I noticed earlier was clearly labeled 7£, and I heard someone ask, “How much for these stuffed falcons?” I thought to myself, “Idiot.” Then I heard someone else ask, “Can I take a picture with you?” To which the person replied, “Umm, no, I don’t allow pictures.” At this point, I turned around and noticed Leonardo Dicaprio was standing 2 feet behind me waiting for me to finish signing my name. Since I heard no pictures already, I just asked if I could shake his hand and said that I was a big fan (I’m not, but I do think he is a good actor). He said yes, I shook his hand, and then made eye-contact at Blake who looked at him, and then looked at me, and gave me the, “Who the hell is that?” look. Then I handed Leo the pen, and Blake and I walked away. As we were walking away Blake asked casually, “Who was that?” To which I replied, “Umm, Leonardo Dicaprio!!!!” He thought that it was some indie band guy or someone that he could care less about. You see, Leo was all in disguise, and really wasn’t much to look at up close. He was shorter than I thought (probably just barely 6 feet tall), and had nerdy glasses on. But it was cool that he was just hanging out and supporting the falcons and trying not to draw attention to himself. Even though he said no pictures, when we were a safe distance away from him, I whipped out the camera:


As we were walking across the Millennium Bridge, we were laughing about how random it was that he was there, and Blake mentioned that he was curios to see if he actually signed his real name after mine. So we ran back to see if he did sign it, and sure enough, he did! Right after mine- pretty cool, huh?

After that we ran home to update my facebook status to brag about meeting Leo. JK- we wandered around London some more before heading back to the apartment, and after much relaxing, then I posted it on facebook. I mean, give me a little credit here!

The next morning we decided to take another one of the free walking tours, since they had been so good in Berlin and Dublin. This one wasn’t as good, I think mostly since it was all about royalty, which I could honestly care less about. We did see the changing of the guards though (in the rain- surprise, surprise!) and apparently the Queen was at Buckingham Palace:

The tour ended at the Parliament, and the rain had cleared up, which made for some good pictures of the Parliament and Big Ben:


From there, we went to Brick Lane for some pretty good Indian food, and then over to the Natural History Museum. Since we were only in town for 2 days, we only had time for one of London’s many world-class museums. With Blake’s obsession with dinosaurs, the Natural History Museum was a no-brainer. Here is Blake and all the Dinosaurs he could ever want:

Blake took this cool one:

By the end of the exhibit, I think he thought he wanted to be a dinosaur!

From there we took the tube to Piccadilly Circus, which is one of my favorite areas to photograph (during my last visit I took some really cool pictures there. Pre-digital era, unfortunately).

Then we made our way back to Dale and Colleen’s flat to cook them some dinner for being great hosts. We had to catch another early flight back to Stockholm the next morning, so that was that. We were sad to leave London, but after 15 days of living out of a suitcase, we were ready to be back home in Stockholm. And luckily since we flew through Germany, there were no issues about my visa and we were back relaxing at our apartment by Friday afternoon. The end.

To see all of the pics from London, click here!