 Okay, so this past week I took a four-day trip to London. We left on a Thursday morning and we took the train, we took this new like train line called LUMO trains. And what I've been hearing from people who actually live here is that LUMO trains is supposed to be this discounted ticket rail, which I guess it's not really that discounted, but at the end of the day, like it really wasn't that much. I think for round trip tickets, it was about like 40 pounds or $40, I don't remember. But so we had been planning this for about a month and we knew that we wanted to go in Christmas time and it was pretty easy to do because our academic schedules are like very loose and I would attribute some of that to COVID, but I think that's just kind of like how the system is here. So I missed one lecture while I was gone because all my tutorials were like sort of in the middle of the week. I actually could just watch the lecture when I got back because it's reported online. So for any students who are going to London, we stayed in a hostel by Tower Bridge called Wombats and this one had the best reviews out of all the hostels that we looked at, which is a really, it's a cheap option for students and it was really safe and you can look up reviews beforehand. This one was very highly rated for safety and it was in like a good location and we got there and there was like a waterfall shower. Like I swear to God, this place was actually like, I'm gonna put a picture, but it was literally nicer than like the dorm showers here. So it was very nice. One thing that I didn't know about hostels is you can actually book them like for like your gender. So we stayed in like an all-female room, which just takes a lot of the pressure off if you are gonna be staying with strangers and you are like a woman and you're, you know, solo traveling, just a little food for thought because that's not something that I actually knew that you could do. The first day we got there, we went to Burl Market, which is this really cool outdoor food market and they have just tons and tons of stalls. So before that, we crossed over Tower Bridge and we walked past the river market by Tower, river, no, is that what it's called? I think that's what it's called. It's like right by Tower Bridge and it's like one of the Christmas markets. It was so fun. We got some mulled wine, which they sell this literally everywhere in London and Edinburgh too. It's just like a huge thing here, which it's so fun and it's, it's so good. I wish we did that more in the US, but we don't really. And I'm gonna try and figure out a recipe to make it because it was so just like fun walking around with it. There were so many Christmas trees this weekend and Christmas lights. I thought that the US had, I've been to New York during Christmas a bunch and this was something different. Like I have never seen so much, so much Christmas explode in a city. And then that night we randomly ended up booking tickets to see Wicked. We looked up the prices the day of because we thought like, oh, maybe there's like some student discounts and we got tickets for, I think it was like $35, which if you have ever tried to go see a show in New York, I have seen Wicked a handful of times and like it is a special, special occasion because those tickets are so expensive. The theater is a, it's so much smaller than New York. I wanna say the Gershwin Theater is like, double the size of the one that we saw it in. The, I just, I literally just Googled how much our seats would have cost like in New York. And it was like, it's like the cheapest seats to see Wicked or like start like over $100, like discounted. Okay, so day two, we went to South Kensington and we went to breakfast at this place called Murials. I had been here before. It's just like a really cute restaurant. We sat in the window. We got some good people washing some excellent coffee. Then we walked down to the V&A, which I have been to before, but you could spend so many hours in there. There's so much to see. There's like fashion, jewelry, art from like so many different eras. Stained glass, window room, we went in there. Photography, the architecture stuff, like there's absolutely so much that you can see in there. After that, we went to Oxford and Regent Street, which are like two very sort of like famous streets in London for shopping. And there were so many Christmas lights. A lot of the stores here are like a little bit on the pricier end, but it's definitely worth just like going through and walking through all the stores and seeing it all lit up at night. We also went into the like famous department store, like I think it's called Liberty. It was in the new like Corella Deville movie with Emma Stone. And yeah, we went in there and it was crazy crowds. Like we had our mask on the whole time just like getting through the crowds, just like see it, but that it was very cool, definitely with it. And then on day three, we actually went to Notting Hill and we obviously knew about this because of the movie. We went to like the big market on Portobello Road. The market on Portobello Road is insane. So we started walking it and we started, I guess, like kind of in the middle of where it went. We walked about eight blocks of it and then we turned around and then when we got to the middle, we walked like maybe two more blocks and then we got to this other section that just like opened up like crazy. And we had already seen so much, like we were honestly a little overwhelmed because there was so much. And there's, you know, there stands for like art books, crafts, antiques, vintage clothes. There were so many vintage clothing places. Then finally on our last day, we had tickets to Phantom of the Opera. Yeah, so this is one of my favorite musicals. I've written so many papers about Phantom of the Opera and cats in college. Like I don't even, I don't know why, but it's like one of those topics that I just like fit into every class if I can. And then, yeah, before that, we walked around like having gardens and then we actually went back in the nighttime to see it all like lit up at night after our dinner. And it was really fun. There was like this guy singing like all these like classic like, you know, songs that everybody knows. Yeah, it was just, it was a really good trip. So I definitely recommend all of the places that I mentioned so far and leave any other recommendations down below because I'm sure people would love to read that.