Last Impressions of London

On the morning of July 29 I set out on foot to continue my exploration of London. I had discovered how expensive the ¨tube¨ was (aka. the subway, as us Canadians know it as), charging 4 Pounds for a single ticket (which is equivalent to $8 Canadian). If you live in the city and use the tube every day then buying an ¨oyster¨card (a pay as you go refillable card) makes each trip much more affordable, or day passes are also available. But since I was hardly using the tube, none of those other options made traveling too cheap.
I first walked through Hyde park. I had been there the previous day with Adam, but the park is so large and beautiful that I wanted to see it again!
I spent the rest of the day walking around the city, checking out the shops, markets and other parks.
I really enjoyed the Piccadilly area, and I spent a lot of time walking through the streets around Piccadilly Circus shopping. Actually ¨shopping¨ is the wrong word for what I was doing, as everything was completely unaffordable for regular people. So I was walking through the stores, wishing I could be purchasing all the amazing and beautiful things I was seeing, and promising myself that one day  in the future I will go back and will be able to do some major shopping in this incredible city!
One thing I noticed about the city and the streets is that since the cars drive on the opposite side of the street than they do in Canada (and most of the world), they have signs at most crosswalks telling you in what direction to look when crossing! It helped me immensely since I was always so confused when crossing the street!!
Later that day I met up with my friend Patrycja, who is living in London for the summer. She took me to Covent Garden, and the Covent Gardens Market, which is a market with lots of shops and restaurants.
We had a dinner and drinks at a bar and restaurant overlooking the square. The square featured some street performers doing all their standard tricks.
We had a great evening together, and it was really good to catch up with her!
The following day, July 30th, I woke up super early so I could spend the whole day at the British Museum. It was founded in 1753, is the oldest public  museum, and it is one of the world´s most visited museums. It´s collection spans over 2 million years of history, and has collections from Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americans and the Ancient world. As an added bonus, entrance to the museum is free!! It was the first thing that I haven´t paid a fortune for since arriving in London!!
The building:

The Great Court, in the center of the museum:

Visiting the museum was one of the most amazing things I´ve done since arriving! I´m so happy I decided to visit it! I spent hours walking through the museum, but I will only highlight my favourite parts.
The first thing I saw, and my most favourite piece in the museum was the Rosetta stone, a famous stone which contains texts written in two Egyptian scripts and Greek. This stone enabled historians to finally decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs.
  After the Rosetta stone I went through the galleries on Greece and Rome. It was interesting to see the Parthenon gallery because they boast that the museum contains about half of the artifacts recovered at the Acropolis (the other half are in Athens at the New Acropolis Museum). What´s interesting, and what they do not mention anywhere in the British museum, is that I remember our tour guide in Athens telling us that the city of Athens was trying to get back these Parthenon and Acropolis artifacts, and Britain wouldn´t give them back as they were taken many many years ago. I´m not sure how accurate this information is, and it could have just been the opinion of our tour guide, but it´s still interesting!!
They also had a large exhibit on Ancient Egypt, and had many mummies on display.
Here are some photos from the museum:

Cleopatra´s Mummy:
The museum also had pieces from the Mausoleum at Halikarnassos, which is one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Below is a set of sculptures from this Mausoleum:
Below is the cameo-glass Portland Vase from Rome, made during the turn of the 1st century. It is a masterpiece, that is very difficult to make. It was preliminarily blown into shape and coated in opaque white, and then blown into full size. Once at full size, then the design was carved out of the white layer to create this masterpiece.

After the museum I went back to my hotel to rest and pack my luggage before going out for dinner with some friends. But I arrived at my hotel room to a very unpleasant surprise. The door to my room was open, and the lights to my bathroom were turned on. I searched my room for another person, but I couldn´t find anyone. Apparently the cleaning staff at my hotel had forgotten to close the door after they were done cleaning, and it was left open all day!! Luckily all my belongings were intact, and nothing was stolen, but I was very angry.
I immediately went down to the front desk and told them what happened. They assured me they would talk to the manager and the housekeeping staff. This wasn´t really enough for me, so I convinced them to let me have a meeting with the manager. I told the manager how upset I was about having my hotel room left open all day, and that I was really disappointed in management, and if I wasn´t leaving London the following day I would have switched hotels. The manager was very nice about it and came up to my room with me, and then she had my room switched to a larger room, with a larger bed and a larger bathroom. She also offered me wine and drinks to make up for what happened. She even carried my extra large and heavy backpack down to the new room for me!! I was satisfied with the service after that (even though I was still unimpressed with why it happened in the first place).
After my meeting with the manager and my room change I went out to meet some of my contiki friends for dinner.
This was my last night in London, and I was sad to leave!! I loved the city (apart from how expensive and unaffordable everything was), but I was super excited for my next stop: Amsterdam!!