Please mind the gap between the train and the platform edge.

Steph, her friend, and Megan.
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Day 3: Sunday. "Please mind the gap between the train and the platform edge." That phrase will never leave my mind, I've coined it with my memories of London, and it's stuck. But, a good piece of advice, nonetheless. I did happen to actually see a drunk man forget to mind the gap, his leg slipped right down into it! Scary, luckily, someone helped him up...who knows what would have happened had he not moved quick enough. Snap! Yuck..

Anyway, Megan and I hopped a train again to Waterloo station to meet a friend[Stephanie]from back home who was studying in London for the semester. It was so good to see Steph, and so weird at the same time. Weird because we were haning out in LONDON. Hah. I'm not quite sure why, but I always feel the need to capitalize the entire word LONDON. Could be excitement, could be... I dont know, maybe that I'm just strange like that. Who knows. So back to meeting up with Steph...

Hidden Eye.
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She brought one of her friends with her who was from the states somewhere out east, I can't remember and we all just sort of walked around London and went by Big Ben, the London Eye, Buckingham Palace, and Westminster Abbey. (Not in that specific order) This was my first experience of London in the light, and it all looked very very different from the night before. So much prettier and ancient, in a way. We had such beautiful weather, too, the sun just made all of the buildings glow and shine and sparkle. I was under the impression that we would have rainy, foggy London weather, but going on day 3, we had only whitnessed a very short and light rainshower. London must have decided to welcome it's American travellers with sunshine and bless us with great weather for the rest of our stay.

My boyfriend, Big Ben, being carefully guarded.
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Stephanie was excited to see us too, we brought a little bit of home to her. We got to check out her flat and her school Queen Mary (which is different from Megan's school in Twickenham called St. Mary's). Steph cooked us dinner, and then Megan and I headed over to a pub to meet up with some of her friends that she studied with from Wisconsin--John and Jason and their friend Todd, who was actually studying in Australia the same time I was in New Zealand. [What a small world.] I also got to meet Megan's friend Jamal who is from England, and who the Wisc. boys were staying with.

Street life.
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We ate fish n chips with the boys and then went to Tesco's (supermarket) and bought some Strongbow cider and drank it outside of the pub because we were too poor to buy a pint IN the pub. London is quite expensive, if I haven't already metioned that. It was fun, and quite an experience sitting on a bench chugging cider IN PUBLIC. I felt so American.