London

Wichert:

Friday

This weekend was definitely a weekend were I was looking forward to because my parents were coming to London to visit me and Jeroen and to go into the city. First we had school as normal. We had the first two hours off. That sounds amazing, but it isn't here at Reed's because you still have to wake up early to go to registration. So we woke up early went to registration were nothing really special happened. When we came back we had to empty hours were Jeroen and I did some homework in for the Rijnlands. After the two empty hours we had economics, one empty hour (again) and two hours of chemistry. During chemistry we had to make a test. The tests are really different from the ones in the Netherlands because over here they focus more on things that you can really learn by heart instead of understanding. So Jeroen and I didn't do the test very well except for the understanding part. We told this to our teacher and he understood our problem completely.
My parents should contact us when they had arrived at Reeds to pick us up. The problem is at Reed's that you don't have any mobile-phone connection except for in an area of 10m2. It is really funny because everybody is calling to people there at night.
So after chemistry we were walking back from our classroom and I saw my parents sitting in front of the sixth form house. I was so happy to see them. I gave my parents a quick tour around Reed's because they were very curious how we actually lived here for 5 weeks. After the tour Jeroen and I collected all the stuff that we wanted to bring to London.
We didn't go to the hotel immediately. We first went to old neighbours from us who live in London now. We had dinner there it was really nice because I could finally Skype with Steph and see her again and we had a really nice dinner. When we had finished our dinner we went to the hotel quite soon after that because tomorrow we had a long day. Jeroen and I went to bed quite late because we had internet on our computer so we msnt and skyped quite long.

Saturday

We had to wake up early that morning and had breakfast really early so that we could be longer in London. The hotel was about 10 miles from the center of London. There was a station very close to our hotel and we had a straight connection to the center of London. So we were there in 30 minutes. We decided to go and see all the touristic sites because my sister had never been to London before. When we arrived in the center we took the tube to Leicester square. Jeroen and I guided our parents around because we had worked out a route the evening before. We showed my family where we went to the movie when we were in England on the London trip. When everybody had a good look on Leicester square we went on to Piccadilly circus. While my father, Jeroen and I were walking around my mother and sister saw a store with nice clothes and my sister wanted to buy some. While we were waiting we just started to look around and Jeroen made a few movies that we will place on the blog. It seemed like an hour but my mother and sister came finally back. We carried on with our tour and walked through Regent Street to Oxford circus. After we had seen oxford circus we asked one of the people in the red jackets how we could go to the Abercrombie store. They gave us the exact direction to the store they know all the streets in London by heart it's quite amazing. We arrived at the Abercrombie store and I had the good hope that I could buy a lot of clothes. When we got in to the shop we couldn't see a thing because it was very dark inside and there were 500 people in the store all wanting to buy clothes. There was also a very big queue and with very big I mean very long, approximately 50 minutes. My mother went absolutely crazy in there so we decided to go out of the store and search for a Hollister store. We had printed out the address and the guys in the red jackets helped us out again and said that we had to get out at Sheppard’s Bush. So we did this and arrived in the one of the biggest shopping malls I have ever seen there were probably 50 stores in it. We went in to the Hollister store where it was much more quiet and bought a lot of clothes. After Hollister we went back to the center of London to get lunch. We went to the city to see the tower bridge and had lunch in the Mc Donald’s, because Jeroen and I really missed that food. When we finished our lunch we took the tube to Westminster station because we wanted to see the Big Ben. We all found the Big Ben a pretty impressive building if you consider the fact that it was build so long ago. After we had seen the Big Ben we walked along the Thames for a while. We had a look to all the bridges, we also wanted to go in to the London Eye, but there was such an immense row of people that we decided not to do this. So we walked back to Westminster station and decided to go to Buckingham palace. We missed the change of the guards but we enjoyed to just have a look at him and see how they made themselves ridiculous by walking so strange and wearing very strange uniforms. We were very entertained by them. We took the bus to Covent garden because my mother just had to sit because she was very tired. So we took the bus along Piccadilly Circus to Covent Garden we saw a short bit of a show. In the show a man was standing on a 9 feet ladder and was walking around. It was really nice there but also very busy. I also wanted to buy some play station games and an internet cable and we couldn’t find a store that sold things like that. Until my mother came up with the brilliant idea of going to Harrods. Before we went to Harrods we first ate a few slices of Pizza as dinner and then went on to the store. I love that store because they simply have everything there. When Jeroen and I arrived at the games department we became very happy. I bought two play station games and an Internet cable. After we had shopped at Harrods we went home again. Jeroen and I were so tired that we went to bed straight away.

Sunday
We woke up at 9:00 o’clock and had breakfast in the hotel. My parents were already going home at 13:00 o’clock so we didn’t do anything special except for talking to each other and relaxing on our rooms. My parents dropped us of at Reed’s and we said goodbye to each other. Jeroen and I had a perfect weekend with a lot of nice things and we are already looking forward to next weekend with the father of Jeroen.