Finding Mariana ♪: London

I had been dreaming of visiting London for years, and in September 2013, my dream finally came true!

Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square

Despite the fact that I've always considered London 'the city of my dreams', I never expected it to surprise me so much! In five days, I visited most of its main attractions and came back completely fascinated with all that London had to offer.

On the first day, we caught the plane REALLY early (before the sun was up!), so that we would still arrive in London in the morning. We caught a bus from the airport to Liverpool Street, and then we took the underground to the apartment we had rented for our stay. This apartment brought a lot of issues because it was nothing like we expected: there was no TV, the fridge didn't work, the dishes were dirty, and we had to walk without shoes on or else we'd ruin the white carpet (my sister fell off the stairs because of that rule!!)

After that, we took our first tour through the city:

the Tower Bridge - we got to walk over it! I still can't get over how beautiful it is

Britain at War Museum

my sister and I in Trafalgar Square

In the second day, we went to Buckingham Palace and we got to watch Changing the Guard! We were amazed at how good the weather was. The sun was shining and it was pretty warm!

sadly, the Queen was away in Scotland...

In the afternoon, we went on a boat trip to Greenwich. Sadly, our camera had no battery so I couldn't take pictures... It was beautiful, though! We got an excellent view of the whole city, and there was a man who commented on the places we were passing by, which really helped us identify them. Greenwich was also great, we had a picnic in there next to the Trinity College of Music and just hung around until it was time to catch the boat back to London!

After that, we wandered around the city and we saw some of the main places, like Piccadilly Circus and Downing Street. Then, we went searching for Abercrombie and Fitch because we had never been to one, and in that endless search we found ourselves surrounded by really fancy shops like Chanel or Prada! It was quite funny to see so many Ferraris and Rolls Royces! We finally found A&F but I didn't like it much...

On the way back, we passed by Chinatown and the West End. I am addicted to musicals and musical theatre in general, so I was kinda sad that I didn't get to see one of those. However, I'm happy I got to be near the place where so much magic has happened!

On the third day, it was raining, the most usual weather in England! We went to Camden Town, which was one of my favourite places.

We did some shopping and, after that, we visited the Kings Cross Station. We had to pay to take a picture by Platform 9 3/4, so my sister and I were okay with taking a picture by the Harry Potter shop in there! I am a huge Potterhead and it was really nice to be near the place where parts of the movies were filmed!

We had lunch at Regent's Park. I even fed some squirrels! After lunch, my mum, my sister and I visited Madame Tussauds, one of the world's greatest wax museums. We took pictures with many celebrity statues (but the quality wasn't great), and, following that, we met the rest of the group at Covent Garden, where a really nice band was playing.

On the fourth day, we visited the famous Natural History Museum!

After many pictures of the animals, we took the bus to Hyde Park, where we had lunch (without any sight of a squirrel!)

There was a festival in which people took their meals and blankets and spent the night there, and Jessie J was going to perform in it!

After this visit, we went shopping: I was especially surprised by Harrods, because of all the chocolate there was! It was amazing! I also bought some clothes from Forever 21, a shop that doesn't exist in my country.

Then the fifth (and last) day arrived. We had to leave the apartment pretty early, and we had an argument with the lady I mentioned before due to the many issues the apartment had. Because we were carrying our bags, we couldn't move around much, so we found a really nice market next to Liverpool Street and went on our last shopping spree!

Finally, we took the bus to the airport, and we said goodbye to this amazing city.