On Tuesday I finally got on the London Eye.  I say finally because I expected everyone who visited me to want to go on it, but they were weenies.  Alex didn’t even want to go but I forced him, and it was totally worth it because he’s consistently said that it’s one of his favorite things he’s done here.

EDIT FOR CHRIS ATTAWAY: Once we picked up our tickets, we were forced into the London Eye 4D Experience.  It was included and we were all like “this is going to be terrible, can we opt out?” but we went in anyway.  And it ended up being awesome.  It was a reasonably cool 3D presentation of birds-eye-views of London (made slightly more obvious by a seagull in the starring role).  But this is the 4D Experience!  What, you ask, must be the 4th dimension!?  Oh, well, they spray you with water, blow bubbles at you, and also blow air on your feet.  The 4th dimension is TOUCH!  Amazing.  Once we saw this, we were super stoked to get our London Eye on.

We went with my friend Chris, and we had a lot of fun.  The views are amazing.  That’s about all there is to say about it, but it’s so worth the admission price to see London that way.  Do that and climb to the top of St Paul’s and you’ve got a perfect picture of London from above.

After that we walked along the Victoria Embankment, got more pictures of Parliament/Big Ben and Westminster Abbey, and then went to Covent Garden and Leicester Square to complete Alex’s tour of Central London.

That night we went to see Bruno Mars at the Hammersmith Apollo.  What a great show! He’s so gorgeous and such an amazing singer and performer.

The next day I had a spray tanning appointment in Kensington so Alex took the tube with me and went to the Natural History Museum in South Kensington while I did my thing.  Then we walked to Kensington Gardens and had a sandwich before the pigeons got too close and I had to throw the last bit of my baguette at them.  I will not miss pigeons.

We walked through Kensington Gardens to Notting Hill and walked around Portobello Road, stopping for a cupcake of course at Hummingbird Bakery.  After that we took a bus to Knightsbridge and I showed him the gaudiness of Harrods (hate it) and the classiness of Harvey Nichols (love it).  We also picked up some baklava from the baklava bar at Harvey Nichols, which was amazing once again.

That night we went to the oldest wine bar in London, Gordon’s Wine Bar.  It was incredible.  So affordable too!  We split a bottle and got a cheese platter.  I could have stayed all night but we were sitting outside and of course London started raining on us.

On Thursday it was supposed to rain, plus I had shown Alex everything of what I consider to be essential London.  And I had successfully worn him out.  There was a time where he actually asked to sit down for a minute on our West London day.  So Thursday I took him to the British Museum and I left him there while I went to the gym.

I’ve been to the British Museum a few times, and I’m not a museum person at all.  Alex is, so I would have definitely ruined it for him.  He thought it was the coolest place he’d ever been, so it’s a good thing he went!

Then we went back to my place, I needed a nap and it was pouring outside.  Alex decided to go to the British Library after I explained that it’s more of a museum than a library.  I think he liked that a lot too, and I got a nap so that’s good :)

Thursday night we had a dinner with some of my closest friends from my program and their families that were visiting.  We went to a place in Covent Garden called Sophie’s Steakhouse, and it was incredible.  I got a steak and Alex got the steak and Guinness pie, which were both great.  It was so much food, and so much fun.  Then we went to get drinks with just the “kids,” and called it a relatively early night so we could all be as fresh as possible for graduation the next day!

Yesterday I graduated.  That’s another post and I’ll try to write it today.  It’s super bittersweet!