May 18th

On day three we started our activities at the the 2012 Olympic Park. We took the Underground to Stratford and got off at the Westfield Mall station. To get to the park we walked through the mall, but didn't stop. The entrance to the park was lined with a gravel road surrounded by trees and open space on either side. (Hi hi-us being bored on the Eurostar) Our first stop was the London Aquatics Centre. To the left there was a warm up pool and to the right was the main pool and diving pool. We walked up into the seats and got to taken in the lovely smell of chlorine and intense heat. 

After the Olympic park we got to take about an hour and walk around the Westfield Mall. A few of us stopped at had lunch at a restaurant called Bumpkin. We ordered wraps, but the service was so slow that we had to take them to go. We ate them on the tube on the way back to central London, which was an interesting experience. 

In the afternoon, we went to the Tower of London. We took the underground there as well. We got to see the Crown Jewels of the monarchy. There were mostly "jewels" from past kings and queens, such as crowns and decorative coronation items. We also got to see a mini changing of the guards ceremony. Of course it started to rain as we were walking around. We got a chance to take a picture in front the Tower Bridge but we did not walk on it. 

After the Tower of London, we went back to the hotel to freshen up and hang out in the lobby, which was suppose to be blog writing time but that did not work out so well. We got very distracted and got annoyed at the people at the front desk. Once we gave up on trying to connect to wifi and do work, we got dressed and went out to dinner. We had planned on going to a pub we found but it was too small to accommodate ten of us. We eventually found a pub, coincidentally owned by the same people as the original pub, which was excellent. After dinner we went out to a bar to hang out as a group.