London Calling: A Spectacular Class Excursion to the UK's Iconic City
Monday, May 22nd 2023
We met at 5:30a.m. at the train station in Lustenau and took the train to St. Margrethen. There we boarded the train to Zurich Airport. After our arrival we checked in and went through security. During that Ms. Sonner forgot to take her coffee out of her backpack, so she drank the whole cup in one go. Arrived at our gate we waited for about an hour to board our plane. We, the students, checked the shops and bought ourselves something to eat and drink. We were really excited and couldn’t wait any longer! The flight took about an hour and 55 minutes, and it was a relaxed, cool and thrilling experience, especially for those who flew for the very first time. Arrived in London, we were shocked how cold the weather was and some of us were scared that the whole week was going to be like that but fortunately it got warmer. While waiting for our bus that should take us to our hotel, we found out that our teachers didn’t know the name of our bus… ☹
Sooner than later we finally arrived at our hotel. After storing our luggage, we had time to explore the neighborhood until 3p.m. In the afternoon we got our rooms and went out again. We were commissioned to get ourselves a “Oyster Card” for the subway. There, a lot of us met Jonathan who was very nice and helped us to get our tickets. Aside from that we had to be in our rooms at 9p.m.
Tuesday, May 23rd 2023
Our day started with a nice tiny breakfast in our hostel. After that, we went to the Tower of London with our whole class. Next, the teacher split our class in four different groups, and we got a worksheet to fill out. The worksheet included questions that we were supposed answer. The best part of the tower were the Crown Jewels of the kings and queens. Furthermore, we ate something and got on a boat tour on the Thames. There we had a funny tour guide on the boat, were we had a great view of the buildings.
Sights that we saw were for example:
- The London Bridge
- The Tower Bridge
- The London Eye
- The Big Ben
- The Tower of London
- The Shard
All in all, it was a really great day!
Wednesday, May 24th 2023
We started the day at our hostel with a nice breakfast. After breakfast, we took the Underground to Shoreditch where we started our “street art” tour. At the underground station we met our tour guide named Rob. First, he talked about the development of street art and its way to become “legal”. He showed us the most famous works of art by different artists from London, for example Banksy. He is the most famous street art artist of the world and most of his paintings are protected by a glass wall so nobody can damage them. The huge paintings on house walls were very fascinating because we don’t have this in Austria. The tour guide also showed us a building where a telecommunication company has its offices. There were a lot of different paintings on the wall which were painted by artists in groups. The whole painting is there to tell a story. The first should tell how humans communicate, the second tells us what we use to communicate, then there was a painting of a girl and a robot and they were connected to each other. On the next wall there was a painting of how the earth is communicating.
Later that day, after a good lunch break, we continued with a ride on the London Eye. We waited for like 20 minutes because there was a big queue. After all the waiting, we finally got into our cabin with the whole class. The ride took about half an hour, and we saw the impressive city of London. When we reached the highest point, we could see every famous building in London and realized how big the city really is. We liked it a lot!
Thursday, May 25th, 2023
We started our day with a regular British breakfast at 8:40 and headed out of our dorm at 11 o’clock to visit the famous train station from the Harry Potter movies, called “King’s Cross”. The huge queue at the platform 9 ¾ was very annoying because it also blocked the entry to the fan shop where we bought a time turner necklace. Due to our limited free time, we were not able to take a picture at the platform, so we moved on to our next stop, The British Library. As we entered the library, we were shocked by how concentrated the students in there were. Unfortunately, we weren’t informed enough to get a proper tour of the library. At noon, we went over to our first museum of the day. The Sir John Soane’s Museum. We had to wait couple minutes to enter the museum and it was forbidden to take videos but strangely taking pictures was fine –?? The small museum used to be John’s home. Each room had different art pieces and different vibes. To be honest, we had no idea who the guy was, but the museum’s atmosphere lured us there. The second museum was the Natural History Museum where we met up with the others. Each group held a short presentation about what interested them the most. Then we split up again. Our group took the nearest underground to go to the stadium of the Chelsea FC, the Stamford Bridge. Our actual plan was to be there at 12 – just like Chelsea placed 12th in the league – but we had to go to the museum first in order to meet up with our classmates on time. After some shopping at the Chelsea store, we went back to our dorm to get dressed and charge our phones. In the evening we went to Camden Town for a little snack and surprisingly made some friends there and returned to our dorm on time – just like our teacher wanted.
Friday, May 26th 2023
On this day we were going back home. Some of us woke up at 8:15a.m. to grab breakfast and some slept in until 10a.m. because that was when we had to meet up at the reception downstairs. After putting away our luggage we had time until 2p.m to get ourselves something to eat and drink. In the early afternoon we drove back to the airport and there we checked in and went through security all over again. While we were queuing for security, a student suddenly noticed that her ticket was gone. After looking for the ticket for a little bit, it turned out that the ticket had fallen to the floor and thankfully another student found it. After going through security, we waited for our gate to be announced but it turned out that our flight has been delayed for about one hour. We waited and waited, hoping that our flight would not be delayed any further. Soon enough, we got our gate number and boarded the plane. The flight was a little bit uneasy with small turbulences, but we got to see a beautiful sunset. The time was rather short to catch the train home and unfortunately the train was cancelled so we took the next one. After all that hassle, we finally arrived at St. Margrethen where all our parents picked us up.
