An American in Paris in London

Over the weekend of February 20th, one of my very good St. Norbert friends came to visit. Allyson is studying in Lille, France and decided to hop over the English Channel to good ol' London. So, in fact, the title of this post is misleading. She is studying in Lille but I thought the "American in Paris" bit was little more recognizable, thank you Gershwin. Anyway, it was so great seeing her. We had such an excellent weekend. I'll tell you a little about it now.

On her first day here I didn't get to see her until later in the evening but we still went out to one of the pubs near our flat and had a few drinks. The next day we got up early and headed out to Portobello Road market. I thought it would be cool to take her to something that she may not have thought to visit. It was really fun looking at all the vendors and stuff and she was even successful in getting some old vinyl to add to her collection. Later on we went shopping on Carnaby St. It's a pretty cool little area. There is a shop there that is really old called The Liberty I think. That night we went out to dinner on Brick Lane where all the Indian restaurants are. We got some excellent curry there. We turned in a little early that night though because we had plans to get up early again the next day.

To start off her second day in London, we headed over to the Westminster area. We took a look at Parliament and Big Ben and all the cool sights around there. We walked down towards Trafalgar Square and just took in all the landmarks as we went along. We stopped and got some lunch after walking around for a while and then we made a pilgrimage to Wimbledon. It was such a cool place. The little neighborhood is so cute and the park itself is really amazing. We didn't take the tour but we got to see some of the grass courts and we took pictures next to the name brackets. They still had the 2008 Wimbledon winner, Rafael Nadal, on the board. It's pretty cool that they leave that stuff up all year. I wasn't expecting that. We made our way back after a while. I was planning on making fajitas for dinner so I went to the store and got all the fixings. They were quite delicious if I do say so myself.

The next morning Allyson had to leave quite early to get on over to Scotland. I was so jealous! I had such a great time while she was here. It was so cool taking someone around and showing them the sights.

Hope you're having a great time Allyson!

Until next time,
Kelsey