I was lucky enough to go to London last week. Let me tell you: it was amazing! I would love to study there. From the sights, to the food and the lifestyle, everything was astonishing!

I saw a lot of sights and tourist attractions during my stay and I will tell you about my favorite ones!

The best thing was definitely the Greenwich Royal Observatory. It played a major role in the history of astronomy and navigation, and because the Prime Meridian passes through it, it gave its name to Greenwich Mean Time, the precursor to today’s Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). The observatory was huge and had lots of interesting artifacts like telescopes, globes and maps. Stepping on the Prime Meridian felt amazing. I had one foot in the Eastern Hemisphere and the other in the Western Hemisphere.

My second favorite thing was definitely SKYGARDEN. Sky Garden is London’s highest public garden located on the 36th and 38th floors at 20 Fenchurch Street, a commercial skyscraper in the City of London. The views from up there are breathtaking, I might say that they’re better than the ones from the London Eye (speaking from experience). From the terrace of the garden you can see: the Shard, Tower Bridge, Tower of London, the London Eye, Tate Modern and even the top of Big Ben! The best part of it is definitely the luxurious garden, the cafés and bars and it’s completely free! The only thing that you should do is to make a reservation on their website to avoid long lines.

Another thing that I loved was the Harry Potter Photographical Exhibition at Covent Garden. This was right up my alley, because I love both the books and the movies very much. There you could see set items like the Dursley’s house chimney, the Flying Ford Anglia or even Hagrid bike. You could also see Hermione’s Hogwarts uniform and costumes from the brand new Fantastic Beast 2. I really enjoyed the experience, especially the butterbeer bar at the end. The butterbeer tasted just like I imagined watching the films. At the exit there was also a gift shop but it didn’t have such a wide variety of products like the Kings Cross platform 9¾ shop.

If you are a Potterhead I really recommend this experience especially because it’s located in the heart of London, and I urge you to go to platform 9¾ at Kings Cross for the shop and for a fun trolley photo op.

I’ll be back next month with more fun things to do in London!

So, stay tuned!

Erick Ionescu, 9 E