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SMEx has finally gone International! Thirteen of us took a trip to London to watch Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time at the giant IMAX screen, listed as the biggest screen in the United Kingdom. It was big, and the cinema is designed to get you even closer to the screen. Watching a movie on this screen made Colosseum look like a postage stamp

Obviously the trip wasn’t just a flight in and out to see the movie (unless you were Dutch), but most people took the time to have an extended break. Most of us met up on Friday afternoon at the hotel and promptly all left for a walk thought Hyde Park since the weather was so nice. It was mid 20s and sunny. We ended up at the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain, in which luckily enough for the big kids (Jeremy and myself), you are allowed to walk, so we cooled off in the fountain itself. After some more walking and thinking we weren’t going to find anywhere we ended up at a nice restaurant for dinner and then moved onto a pub later.

Day 2 was the day of the movie. In the morning people we doing various things but we all met up at the London Eye at 12.30pm. Not all of us made it to this meet point due to transport delays though. From here we headed to The Borough Market near London Bridge station, on the advice of Andy, and this market didn’t disappoint. Many different types of food to try for lunch! From here we all took a walk along the Thames to the IMAX cinema. At this point we were only missing two people who were were hoping to meet at the cinema. Due to delays with the London underground Lissy and Tommy didn’t make it to the cinema, and thought they would be stuck with tickets to a movie they couldn’t see, but due to some quick talking, and luck we managed to scalp their two tickets to a nice couple who enjoyed the great seats at the discount group rate! After the movie we headed out to watch some soccer match a couple of people thought was important, but I don’t remember what that was, then on out to a couple more places… day 2 over

The next couple of days was a mixture of shopping, sightseeing and eating. Highlights were: Rodizio Rico, which is an all you can eat Brazilian BBQ restaurant, and wow that was a lot of good food. Maharani which is an Indian restaurant in Soho where the food was just amazing and plentiful. Madame Tussauds, Tower of London, Tower Bridge, London Eye, British Museum, Imperial War Museum, Science Museum, Natural History Museum, Oxford Street shopping, Buckingham Palace where a lucky few even got to see The Queen, and the list goes on and on! All in all it was a great trip with great friends with just fantastic weather. It could not have gone better if we had planned it! I’m looking forward to the next trip already!

Check out some of the pictures here