LONDON.

Every time I get back from Europe, I always have to ask myself "WHY is America so much infinitely lamer than the rest of the world?" Except Madison. I'm Madison's biggest fan.

I returned from London, Eng-a-land yesterday [August 30th] after being there for 8 days. 8 fantastically British days. Ashley, my mother, and I visited basically every tourist attraction imaginable. What's that? You'd love nothing more than to hear about them? Well, if you insist.

1.) Twinings Tea Shop. It's crazy famous all over Britain and their tea is wonderful.
2.) British Museum. It has a gi-mungo collection of all kinds of old artifacts like stuff from ancient Egypt and pieces of the Parthenon. Ashley made me take pictures of almost every single thing in the Egypt wing.
3.) St. Paul's Cathedral. It's really just a cathedral.
4.) Tower of London and the Crown Jewels. They're unbelievably sparkly.
5.) Gringotts! Well, where the shot the entrance in the first HP movie. It's the Australian Embassy in the Muggle world.
6.) Boat Tour of the River Thames. There could not have been more bridges.
7.) Westminster Abbey. The cool thing about it is that there are all these famous authors and poets buried there. Jane Eyre, Charles Dickens, etc.
8.) National Gallery. There are OODLES of paintings dating back to 1250 B.C. and up to the early 20th-century. They have some great pieces by Monet, Picasso, Da Vinci, and all the big names in art history.
9.) London Eye. The hugest ferris wheel on Earth. Also the slowest. One rotation takes 30 minutes. BUT! You can see all of London from up there and the views are phenomenal.
10.) Legoland! Yeah, we went to Legoland. We must have been the oldest people there. The best part was that they had built a whole mini-London out of Legos. Out of LEGOS, for Pete's sake. Best thing I've ever seen.
11.) Double-Decker Bus. GAH, they're way too fun.
12.) Millenium Bridge. You know in HP6, the bridge that the Death Eaters attack? That's this one. And I walked acr0ss it. We were sure the Death Eaters would come at any moment.
13.) Tate Modern. Basically the only museum in London with contemporary art. It has work by my favorite artists Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jeff Koons. Look 'em up.
14.) Victoria and Albert Museum. Antique jewelry, crazy awesome furniture, a history of fashion, Roman sculptures, Chinese and Japanese cultural whatnots, and basically anything else in the art world you could think of.
15.) Kensington Palace. We had High Tea there. You know, with cute little finger sandwiches and a 3-tiered silver platter with scones and tarts. I felt so fancy.
16.) Harrods. London's department store the size of a freakin planet. The cheapest thing there was $100, I kid you not.
17.) Conveyer Belt Sushi! The little plates of sushi would come around on a conveyer belt and you could take whatever you wanted when it came around. I felt like I was in Star Trek.
18.) Stonehenge. Rock formations never seemed so magnificent. I got a pin that says "Stonehenge ROCKS!" Get it? Clever, huh?
19.) National Portrait Gallery. It only has portraits of people in it. There was one of the HP trio which made me really happy. There were also a couple of the Beatles. Yay!
20.) King's Cross! There's actually a Platform 9 and 3/4 that has a luggage cart halfway in the wall that you can take pictures by. It blew my mind.
21.) Phantom of the Opera. We saw it. Nuff said.

Go to London. It's great.

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-Ali.