London vying for 2012 Olympics & the 7/7 bombings

Every once and a while I have a memory of my time in London pop back into my head. I didn't keep a travel blog when I was doing study abroad, so I have to record those memories as they come to me.

In 2005 several countries were competing to become the 2012 Olympic city. At the time, 2012 seemed like a far away preposterous year, I was still getting used to not writing 1999. I don't know who else was vying to host the Olympics but I do remember London and Paris were.

Several of my friends decided to make a weekend trip to Paris and see the sights. There are many choices for traveling between London and Paris, I took a plane, my friends took an overnight ferry. DO NOT take an overnight ferry. But that's another story for another day.

 Seeing the Eiffel Tower was on on my list of "Must Sees". At first I was disappointed that the Eiffel Tower had "PARIS 2012" in bright Olympic colors, with the S and the 2 making a heart in the middle "S2".  This ruined the perfect Eiffel Tower picture I had in my head. Now I'm glad I was there to see it. It represented a unique time I got to be in Europe.

Plus I had no idea I'd be back in 5 years to get much better pictures. 

July 7th, 2005 I had just returned to the States after doing study abroad in London. I woke up to a phone call from a friend who had also just returned. "Can you believe they did that to London?" I had no idea what she was talking about, I thought maybe she was upset that they had just announced that London was going to host the Olympics, but that didn't make sense. "They bombed the tube stations."

The tubes we used everyday, to get everywhere. I quickly got on my computer searching for information. (This was before facebook had newsfeed, primitive, I know.) One of the bombings happened at the tube station right before our stop. It made me feel sick to my stomach. 52 people were killed and over 700 were injured. It was also pointed out to me that we very well could have ridden these trains with the bombers while they scoped out their locations.

I didn't commute to school, I lived in the dorms, but I had other friends that lived further away. They could have been on the trains at 9 in the morning. Thankfully no one I knew was.

I had friends who were still trying to leave London and return to the States. All the tube stations were closed, you could only travel using the major train stations. All the taxis were already taken out of fear. And the buses were either too full or just plain missing. This meant that everyone I knew who had to catch a flight that day, had to drag a semester's worth of luggage to the closest train station on foot. Which for us, our tube stop was Baker Street and they now had to get to Paddington Station.

A=Our School   B= Baker Street Tube Station   C=Paddington Train Station

 For the next two weeks I fielded tons of emails and phone calls double checking that I had in fact returned to the States and I was not still in London. (Again, before facebook had status updates.)

Photo I found on Google of damage:

My beloved Harry Potter train station, King's Cross was one of the bombing sites.

Thank you, London! I would love to go back one day. I have so many good memories. I once saw my teacher get in an argument one time, but they were being so polite, I almost didn't recognize that they were fighting.

I love that everyone in London is polite, everyone has a British accent, everyone loves the queen, and that there are rose gardens everywhere!