Amsterdam, Barcelona and the City

Since we have hit the halfway mark of our London stay, everyone in 270 ECR is buzzing with spring break plans. It is a mixture of excitement and anger over fairs and fees. People who say flying around Europe is cheap obviously never had to bring three seasons worth of luggage. Anyways, I have all of my flights booked. I'll be going to Amsterdam with Ben, Lee and Maggie, then flying to Barcelona by myself where I will meet up with Amanda and Emily who will be doing the Paris thing for the first few days. It will be perfect -not just one but two coastal cities.

Today began with a journey to the City. (City with a capitol 'C' refers to the one square mile of London that was once Londinium or the original London. - Now, very few people live there so it functions solely as the city's center for commerce. When you think London skyline, you are thinking of the City) Anyways. We arrived at the preset location to meet Sarah a little bit early so a soy vanilla latte was able to help me warm up to the idea of a three hour walk. I know I can't complain about the cold when my friends and family are trapped under many feet of snow, but the wind was pretty evil today. Everything was so noisy, too. Apparently, they call jack hammers pneumatic drills. We saw many churches that were constructed under the direction of Christopher Wren after the Great Fire and a building that was made by the same man who conceptualized the Centre Pompidou. The architect is Richard Rogers and the building is the Lloyd's of London building. It is the most obscenely modern piece of architecture in the city. There is no way I could work there. I would feel like a cog in a machine. There is such a variety of different types of architecture and new and old buildings are intermixed throughout the entire city. I really appreciate the different textures and rich history. -Tomorrow we're climbing to the top of St. Paul's, though. We'll see if I still appreciate it after all of those stairs.