tour guide and ice skating with king henry VIII

so this past weekend i had a friend come stay with me from france. his name is mitch and we go to school together back at msu, anyways he is studying in france and he decided to come to foggy london town to escape for a bit. also he brought a friend with him named pat...and sarah and mike you will like this one. pat is the kid of who mike works with back in bend. how crazy. finally met him and he stayed on my floor for 2 nights. small world, i think. anyways so the adventure begins...

without missing a beat london turned predictable by getting really rainy on friday the day that the two boys came in, and of course before than the weather has been very very nice. blue skies, no rain, little windy, and no rain. its like the beginnign of fall back in montana but everything is still green and alive. its crazy. anyways so the day they come in its rainy, but amaya and i pick them up liverpool street, grabbed a bite to eat and headed back to hampton wick. showed the sweetness that is my flat. and actually they were really impressed they were talking about how they share 2 hobs between like 2 floors of people, while we have 8 hobs for 6 people. their set up would make cooking a little harder i would say. anyways so we dropped off their stuff and headed back into london since our tickets were still good and walked from london waterloo (london eye and big ben area) all the way down the south bank past the globe theater to the tower bridge. some of the biggest sights in london basically all in a row. after that we called it a night, grabbed a train, and went back to hampton wick and all stayed in and hung out with the flatmates.

the next consisted of a crazy amount of walking...ugh. we hit a lot of things that they boys wanted to see (about this time i have seen most of the big touristy things and i am just along for the ride and being a tourist guide...which i am getting really good at, didnt get lost one! ha!) so we hit trafalgar square (well that is my favorite place in london) it has the national gallery looking on a square with a tower of lord nelson, 2 fountains and giant lions to climb on. here is a not very good picture of lord nelson tower/column and you can sorta see big ben poking out in the background. ok well moving on, back to my story and my sweet adventures. we hit up the national gallery in trafalgar square, st. james park, buckingham palace, national history museum (which i did learn a lot at....3 hours and it was amazing), past harrod's, hyde park, and then piccadilly circus. a lot of walking to say the least. but we had a good time. we hit the waterloo station and grabbed a train home. we went out with almost all the flatmates and called an early night and came home and watched scrubs....

so on sunday we all had tickets to go skating at the hampton court palace on the ice skating rink that they set up for the holiday season. we all bundled up (even though it was warm enough we didnt need to...but you have to go skating all bundled up!!!) and walked down to the palace and grabbed our blue skates and jumped on the ice!!!! this ice sucked. it had a nice sheet of water on top of the ice and well i have seen better. so we had an hour on the ice. and it was a lot of fun. it really highlighted how bad i really am at skating. i can go forward....and i can go forward. i am very limited in my ability of skating on the ice. but no worries no falling here. ahaha. there were some close calls.

i would upload some photos but this awesome blogger program is not letting me. great. but they are pretty sweet, i will upload them later. but we skated around for an hour with hampton court palace in the background...very charming and british. i loved it. they had a huge thing with concessions including hot chocolate, hot dogs, all sorts of super sweet stuff. so we had a good time but we had to get the boys back so they could grab their stuff and head back into central london to meet up with another friend they have in central london. but on our way home we walked past the maze on the grounds and got in with our skating tickets. it was boys vs. girls and the girls won....ahahahhahaha. so we get back and i threw them on a train and came back home and picked up my room from having people sleeping on my floor and let me tell you what i found when cleaning up....
1. mitch's glasses
2. toothbrush
3. a blood donor card
4. a pair of jeans
5. a tshirt
...this is even when i asked the boys if they got everything...oh goodness. anyways it was a good weekend and now its back to reality and back to homework. oh well.