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Sweet, Short, & Stylish

fashion and lifestyle blog

Travel With Me: London Day 1

Hey ladies! I’m so excited to be sharing with you photos and highlights from the London and Paris trip. I went on the tour with EF College Break which you can read all about here. They made traveling super easy and I got to share the experience with so many wonderful people from all over the US! Note: EF recently changed the age limit to 28 so even if you’re no longer in college you can still go on a tour with them 🙂 

This was my first time traveling with EF and I admit I was a little nervous to see how it would all turn out and if I would be good friends with the people I met. I went with my best friend so even if I didn’t make any friends, at least I got to share the experience with someone. Little did I know, I had nothing to worry about! Traveling is something that brings people closer together and once you have that connection, friendships form so quickly! Anyways, let’s get on with the post…
Right when we arrived to London, we got picked up by a car service that’s similar to Uber along with 2 other people that are on the same tour as us. As we were driving to the hostel, I was immediately hit with culture shock when I noticed the steering wheel was on the right and everyone was driving on the left side of the road! haha. 
We stayed at the Astor Hyde hostel in the Kensington neighborhood (ya know, Kensington palace? Where Kate Middleton stays at? Talk about classy!). I fell in love with the white houses, close-by museums, and the overall energy of the neighborhood right away. One of the things that I loved about London is how easy it is to walk around and find things. The tube system (subway! for us non-brits lol) is ridiculously easy to learn and it’s totally safe to walk around at night. Sure, we got lost a couple times but hey it’s part of the fun of traveling right?
Royal Albert Hall and the Royal College of Music was right behind our hostel and made walking at night so much more fun…
Of course, traveling isn’t always perfect. The hostel that we stayed at wasn’t the most glamorous one (gross showers and terrible breakfast food!) but who cares when you’re in London?! My roomies and I made the best of it. 
After exploring the neighborhood and grabbing some lunch with new friends, the walking tour of London began. Note: we did this the same day that we all arrived from our flights that morning! Sure it was exhausting but the excitement of being in a new city gave us the energy we needed. We took the tube and went to Trafalgar Square and Regent Street aka tourist central! 
After that, we all headed to dinner courtesy of EF and expected tons of food to be there but instead there was appetizers. After a long exhausting day that’s all we get?! That’s why afterwards we went to an actual dinner at Nando’s which is a popular chain restaurant in London, famous for it’s chicken. We had a bit of trouble ordering since we didn’t know that you paid first and then ate but the locals was quite friendly about it and didn’t mind explaining it to us. I can still remember how tired I felt that day but it was all worth it! If you would like to see a video of Trafalgar Square, check out my instagram: @ruyakiraccc
Hope you enjoyed reading this post! To be continued…

-Ruya

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