Mal in London: London Sightseeing

Yesterday, was absolutely amazing, but so tiring. We started off the day with a sightseeing tour of London. We started at the Olympic Park and went on to see things such as Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, and St. Paul's Cathedral.

I learned so many interesting things during this tour. For starters, the West End of London is considered the more prominent part due historically to smell (back in the old days when cities were more smelly, the scent would go from the West to the East so richer people would want to avoid this by living in the West). The Olympic Park is located more Eastern in an industrial part. The area around the Olympic Park has more lower income persons, with women having a 5 year lower life expectancy than those living on the West End. Part of the reason why London was chosen to host the 2012 Summer Olympics was because London planned to use the Olympics to revitalize this part of town. A sad thing though is that many of the people living in this area don't get to benefit from the Olympics because tickets are too expensive for them. There was going to be a marathon that would run by the Olympic Park so that the locals who couldn't afford tickets could at least enjoy watching the marathon, but LOCOG (London Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games) changed the location to a "prettier" site. Our tour guide, Brian, was also telling us that no one he knows, including himself, did not receive any tickets to the Games through their ticket process. It seems that many Londoners have become very frustrated with the Olympics since they are only reaping the disadvantages and not any of the positives. For example, local businesses surrounding the Olympic Park are looking to sue LOCOG since the construction has severely hurt their businesses through the shutting down of roads when LOCOG apparently had told them that these roads wouldn't be shut down.

After the Olympic Park, we saw other sites such as St. Paul's Cathedral, Buckingham Palace, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, the London Eye, and more. We were in a tour bus though so I will definitely try to go back to these places and experience them more fully.

After the sightseeing tour, the group divided into teams of 3 or 4 for a scavenger hunt, put on by our teachers/chaperones: Tom George and Bruce Watkins. They had us running around London, taking the tube to all these different stops, and wandering through local museums (such as the British Museum and the Natural History Museum) to complete this scavenger hunt. It definitely made me feel more comfortable with the city knowing that I can navigate it on my own, and gave me a little preview to these museums that I may want to go back to.

Today, I'm off to Wembley Stadium and a meeting with a VISA executive! I also posted some pictures below of yesterday's tour so be sure to check that out.