England Day 4

Going Tubing by Emma

To get around, we took trains and the Tube system. The tube and rails are very intricate and for some of us, me included, had to rely on the others to tell us when to get off.  We made a few mistakes when it came to destination points and what station to go to. It was especially difficult when the lines would change or when one train wouldn’t stop at a station but a different one would. Despite the level of difficulty, by the end of the trip to London, most girls feel comfortable about being able to navigate themselves on the tubes. I, however am not one of those girls, I will follow their lead and hope they don’t lead me in the wrong direction. My experience on the tubes was ok, but I will be honest and say that I got irritated multiple occasions in which we would miss a stop or train and had to detour. Other than that, I think getting travel passes was a good use of our hard-earned money.

The Changing of the Guard by Brittany 

The changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace was something that my grandma said was a must-see in London. And I’ve got to say that it was really cool to watch. The new guards marched into the circle with a band playing and riders on horseback as escorts. There was a huge crowd of people around the gate, so I had to stand on a railing to be able to get good video of the march. We weren’t right up by the gate, so we didn’t get to see much of the actual change within the gate, but it was really interesting to watch from afar and see the guard marching through the gates. And there actually was one point were we weaseled our way up to the front gate and got a lot of up-close video. It was awesome!

After everything was done at the palace, we headed back towards the tube station to find lunch. We ended up getting food from Simply Food again (a grocery store like place) that we’d fallen in love with. The food was great, and it was all within our budget! I was able to get a sandwich, tea, and sushi all for under 6 pounds!! Mrs. Susan also got a bunch of pastries and an English cake that we all shared. We got our food and headed across the street to a park where we settled down under a tree to eat and talk for an hour before splitting up for the afternoon.

Meeting Andrew Scott & riding The London Eye by Lizzy

Ok so our last day in London, we had to last minute plan and we ended up going to the London Eye in the mid afternoon AND ON THE WAY THERE, GUESS WHO WE MET. WELL I SPOTTED HIM. AND THEN I PULLED SELINA OVER AND WE RAN OVER BECAUSE WE MET ANDREW SCOTT. The actor who plays Moriarty in Sherlock on BBC AND WE GOT A PICTURE. SO I”M STILL ON A HIGH EVERY TIME I TALK ABOUT IT. Oh and then we went on the London Eye. It was really beautiful, a little bit freaky to some of the girls, but seeing London from so high was really exhilarating. All in all it was a pretty amazing time.

 The Science Museum by Katie

On our last day in London we had to split into two groups because we had changed our flight to Iceland to be a day earlier. The splitting up was to ensure everyone got to do what they wanted to do. The first group--Rosie, Emma, Coumbah, Lizzy, and Mrs. Susan-- was more focused on shopping, and headed over to Oxford street. My group-- me, Brittany, Selina, and Mrs. Donna-- wanted to visit a book store and the British Science Museum. After all nine of us went to the London eye, we split at the tube station and my group headed off to the Science Museum. We didn’t have time to see everything, but what we did see was pretty amazing! We visited exhibits on space travel, computing, energy, cars, and airplanes. The exhibits often focused on a history behind the advancements of these things, and we all got to see old supercomputers and even some of the first personal computers and laptops. Some items in the exhibits were pretty recent as well, like the first gameboy-- not something I expected would be in a museum already! 

Shopping by Coumbah

Shopping was awesome. It was Lizzy,Rosie,Emma, and I as the shopping group and we were so excited to be able to finally see the shops of London. You know the saying of “shop until we drop”? Well, that is exactly what we did. The two main shops for us where H&M and Primark. Primark is a british based store so for sure we had to go and it was crazy , the store took forever to find and it was so far away from the meeting spot that Mrs. Susan told us to meet up but once we got to the store we went crazy. It is truly the best store in the whole entire world. There is just so much and its all so cheap.  We were able to meet back up with Mrs. Susan in time by mostly running because the cashiers in these stores where the slowest ever and the lines where so long but everyone was able to get some great clothes and accessories. The shopping all in all was a major success.   

Changing of Flights by Mrs. Donna

It was our plan to fly back to Iceland on Wednesday morning, change planes and fly home, however, that’s not quite how it happened.  We ran into a problem when we flew to England in that we were only allowed one carry on so we each had to check a bag at the gate.  Knowing this would be the way it worked when we returned to Iceland, we looked into all kinds of options for getting our bags home and us on our connecting flight.  As it turned out, there was just no way to make it all happen on Wednesday morning so we had to change our flight back to Iceland to Tuesday so that we could make our Wednesday flight home.  The girls did a great job combining two days into one and I was very proud at the way they worked together to make it happen!  

Then we had the issue of our hotel reservations at Holiday Inn Express by the Luton Airport.  Our reservations were, of course, for Tuesday night so I called the hotel to change it to Monday night.  They had no rooms available for that night but did find us a hotel a few miles away and while I was providing the information needed to hold the rooms, my cell phone dropped the call.  What else could go wrong.  I tried to call them back several times but never reached an agent so we decided to roll the dice and just show up at the Holiday Inn Express and beg for their mercy.  As it turned out, they had a couple of cancelations and were able to accommodate us.  The two gentlemen working that night, Mark and Lee, were so gracious and funny that it really turned our frowns upside down.  Thanks guys, we really needed the laughs.  In the end, it worked out fine and we made our flight to Iceland without incident.

Reflection from our Leader by Mrs. Susan

One of the things we wanted to do on this trip was to give the girls some independence.  For example, in the evenings, they were allowed to take an hour or two and go out with our sister troop, walk by the sea, go to the local convenience store on their own.  The shopping trip was a perfect place for this kind of experience, because I’m not a shopper at all, so I gave the four girls a couple of hours to shop together on Oxford street WITHOUT me - I found a fabulous Italian restaurant with outdoor seating and bought a big pot of tea and people watched.  If you’ve never been to Oxford street, I’ll tell you it’s not for the faint of heart - it’s very, very crowded with people from all over the world - some very fashionable people! - and difficult walk through a crowd.  Our Girl Scout jackets caught a lot of attention on the whole trip - there are a LOT of Girl Scouts out there!  Pretty soon some English women were chatting with me about the trip and the girls.  When I changed venues to eat some Chinese food outside of a noodle shop, a Girl Scout leader from San Francisco with her 9th grade daughter spent half an hour talking with me about the process of the trip.  Ironically, her name was Susan and her daughter was Emma!