Big Ben never took a bad photo

By LAYLA WEST

Updated: November 2, 2011, 8:32 PM

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Students studying abroad through the Padnos International Center blog about their experiences for the Grand Valley Lanthorn.

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Courtesy photo / Layla West

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We have seen London in the movies, read about it in the books, and know that all the cute sexy men with accents come from there, but seeing it in person is completely different. The smells, the atmosphere, the tastes… it’s not something that can be easily explained. One thing I know for sure: Everything is NOT within walking distance!

We had a bunch of stuff on our list of classic London things to see and while we knew we would not be able to accomplish all the museums and sights in five short hours, we thought we could make a dent. And we were wrong. Contrary to the movies, all the famous sights – Parliament, The Monument, Tower Bridge, Buckingham Palace – are not just out of camera shot from each other. They are miles and miles across London!

We were told to get off at Piccadilly Circus. Why, I’m not sure. We were in the middle of the normal shopping area, nowhere near any typical tourist spots! We fast-walked through Central London as much as possible. It was only so doable with the crowds, construction, and all the traffic circles. Out of the nine of us, seven of us were girls, our purses clutched tightly to our chests. We had heard the stories from orientation!

Everything looked like it was historical. One of the girls with me kept saying, “Oh that looks important,” and would whip out her camera and take five pictures of it. We randomly came across Trafalgar Square. I, of course, just googled that because no one had known the name before; just sometimes seen the pictures of the lions. We snapped all these pictures by the fountains, lions, and clock countdown to the 2012 Olympics. Then we turned around.

There was the icon of London. Framed perfectly between the buildings and high above the trees stood Big Ben. One girl with us, one who had been dreaming of London since the age of 10, almost started to cry and I had to give her a hug while she composed herself. We hadn’t known where we were going and somehow, we had found ourselves at exactly where we had wanted to be.

We basically made a beeline for it. We stopped along the way to take pictures with other things we saw, like the red coats on horses outside the Imperial War Museum, but otherwise, we walked. And walked. And walked some more. By the time we made it to Big Ben, we were all quite tired but had smiles on our faces. Then our touristy side came out.

Now granted, we hadn’t been un-touristy before, but now, all the cards were on the table and the goofiness began. We took all sorts of pictures, at all different angles, doing all different poses. If Big Ben was in the picture, we posed. We posed on the sidewalk with traffic lights, by the courtyard, on the bridge, while in The London Eye… Big Ben just never took a bad picture.

Published November 2, 2011 in Notes from Abroad