London and All That It Has to Offer

Everybody knows of Stonehenge and everybody likes to call it just a pile of rocks. Well, it is a pile of rocks, but the great thing about visiting Stonehenge is to give yourself a chance to think of how this awesome pile of rocks got here. As my hosts kept on saying, the only reason to visit Stonehenge is "it's for the atmosphere."

Usually visiting Stonehenge requires the visitor to stand behind a rope about 30 feet away from the actual pile of rocks. However, we obtained a pass for the "Inner Circle Tour." By paying about double the entrance fee you get to step over the rope and walk amongst the rock. To obtain the pass you need to contact the Stonehenge visitor office by phone or email to set up an appointment for the date of your visit. However, the inner circle tours are only allowed before and after normal visiting hours.

The only available time for our visit was before regular visitor hours, which means we had to be there by 8am. We started our day off at 6am to make it to the site for our time slot. Talk about getting up early for a vacation! However, it was well worth it. We were the only visitors at the site that morning. It was spectacular to get a chance to walk through these amazing slabs of rock.

To get out to Stonehenge at this time of day we decided to hire a tour guide. Since we had a party of 6 to hire a personal tour guide with a mini van wasn't much more than if we each paid the price for one of the huge 50 person coach tours. Furthermore, the coach tours didn't have the inner circle access for our dates. Our guide was from www.londoncountrytours.com and he was great! Not only was he easy to work with and very accommodating, we didn't have to work with a strict time table. To top it off we found out that he even took Orlando Bloom on a tour before.

Back to Stonehenge, one thing to take notice is that there are 2 different colors of stone, the regular "gray" stone, and some "blue" stones. My eye couldn't tell the difference, then again I was not fortunate enough to know about this tidbit of information until I was back in the car, so I really wasn't paying attention.

Surrounding Stonehenge you will also see sporadic mounds or little hills. These are actually burial mounds. Apparently the more important you are the closer you get to be buried to the stones.

Some may say that Stonehenge is not worth seeing on your first trip to the UK, however, for me, it was one of the highlights of the trip.

I love nightclubs, I love to dance, and I love electronic music. Being a semi LA native, I was excited to go out to the nightclubs in London, where the "scene" all started. I did my research and decided it was going to be Fabric or The End nightclub. Fabric is off of the Farringdon stop on the tube, which meant it was only one stop away from our flat, which meant that the decision was made.

When we walked up to the club on a Saturday night there was a massive line reminiscent of an amusement park line. Of course there was a separate VIP line that was empty, but of course we weren't on a list. I witnessed a woman trying to talk her way through but the staff were pretty strict about the list.

So we trekked to the back of the line with the rest of the crowd. The line was filled with a bunch of clubbers of all nationalities. The dress code fluctuated as much as the different languages spoken in the line. There were women in "my shoes are killing me heels" and others in "trainers." The dress code at the club was very loose, you could basically wear anything, although the club did not encourage "business suits."

The line moved quickly and the bouncers didn't tolerate any line jumping and sweet talking got you nowhere. Once we got to the front of the line, there was a pat down for suspicious looking guys, and a metal detector as well. The pat down was serious, not like the once over they give you in LA clubs. A cover of 15 GBP and we were in the club. A coat check was available for 2 GBP.

The club had 3 rooms that varied with the type of music and djs throughout the night. From house to trance to drum and bass. However, the dance floors were small and the layout was confusing. I know there must have been a way that the 3 rooms were connected, but I couldn't figure it out for the life of me. Therefore, I had to walk to the front entrance to exit one room, take a flight of stairs to get to the other room. Also the stairs, well there were stairs everywhere. We nicknamed the nightclub "stairs" due to the ridiculous amount of stairs taking you from one room to the next. Be forewarned there are a lot of "puddles" of people sitting on the stairs that you have to maneuver around as well.

Another aspect that we were not used to was the overwhelming amount of smoke. The rooms were small and crowded and everyone was smoking. Along with being out of dance from dancing, the smoke in the air didn't provide anyone with a breath of fresh air. To add to it, smoke machines were set up everywhere. They were definitely not needed!

However, the sound system was outrageous and we still had a great time.

Imperial War Museum is not on everyone’s top list of things to do while visiting London, however, it was my favorite museum. I am not a war mongrel of any sort, but the museum is actually very interesting. We ended up at the Imperial War Museum because there were too many kids running around at the Natural History Museum. We spent 3 hours there and it was not enough time at all.
The stop for the Imperial War Museum is kind of far from the rest of the "attractions." You have to take the brown line (Elephant & Castle) almost to the end to the Lambeth stop. Stepping out from the tube you definitely feel like you are in the suburbs. A five minute walk gets you to the museum.

At the main entrance of the museum are 2 huge missile launchers or something of the sort. Once entering the main entrance you go directly to the audio guide rental counter. There is no entrance fee, this museum is FREE. Furthermore, we didn’t rent audio guides or feel the need to rent them in retrospect. By the way coat check is also, you guessed it FREE.

The museum has exhibits for WWI, WWII, the Holocaust, and Crimes Against Humanity.

The entrance floor has various tanks, machine guns, missiles, "little boy," and an interactive submarine experience. The submarine experience is made for kids to learn about how a submarine works, but I actually found it very interesting. There were interactive displays such as a radar tuner where you could hear the different bleeps or blips sounds detected by a radar for different things in the ocean (i.e. whale or a missile). Displays on everyday life in a submarine from sleeping, to eating, even going to the toilet.

The displays for the war memorabilia were incredibly detailed, and ranged from the types of guns and uniforms worn in combat, to the notepads that soldiers used.

One of the highlights to illustrate trench warfare included a life-size trench that a visitor may walk through. Another walk through experience was a "blitzkrieg."

A whole floor is dedicated to the holocaust and another towards crimes to humanity (i.e. genocides darfur, Rwanda, Bosnia)

Don’t think that this museum is for guys into wars for when we visited we are 2 women in our twenties that walked away thinking that the war museum as one of the best museums. It was so enthralling that my friend said to me "let’s stay in here until someone kicks us out." Too bad we didn’t have more time to explore.

www.iwm.org.uk