Wednesday, April 13, 2011

London!

Hello! Yes, we're still alive, and ready to share of our travels with you!

Day 1

We slept fitfully at best on our night flight over the ocean, what with turbulence, people kicking the backs of our seats, and the general uncomfortableness (totally a word. because I said so.) of airplane seats.

Rachel sailed through customs with relative ease, while the woman who checked me through grilled me on everything from how I was paying for the trip and how much money I had to how many countries I was visiting and what flight I would be taking back to the states.

We navigated the Underground easily enough (five quid from the airport to King's Cross!) and emerged from the station to see our first view of Europe:


Ahem.

At least when we looked to the right, we saw this:


which was impressive enough for first impressions.


We dropped our bags off at the hostel and headed for the British Library first thing. (Why yes, I am studying to be a librarian, how did you guess?)



You guys. My mind was BLOWN.

They had Shakespeare's First Folio, two copies of the Magna Carta, a full Bible from the third century, a first edition of the Canterbury Tales, handwritten notes by Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, Freud, Darwin... I could go on. It was incredible.

Speaking of Darwin, this is the back of the ten-pound bill:


which I found noteworthy (and kind of hilarious, in a sad sort of way) considering the number of states in the U.S. that won't even teach evolution and the percentage of adults who maintain that the world was created 6,000 years ago based on some priest's study of "begats".

Anyway.

We hit the British Museum next, where I'll admit the most exciting thing for me was the display of authentic pieces of eight.


Rachel liked the lion statue.

Being completely exhausted from both jetlag and getting very little sleep during the "night," we sat in a Starbucks (I know, I know, but we figured they'd be the cheapest and they'd let us sit there for as long as we liked) for a while, listening to music and doing crosswords to keep ourselves awake.

By the way, this is what a typical London intersection looks like:


We never did figure out what those zig-zaggy lines meant.

Day 2

We were in the girls' section of the hostel, which was pink. Very pink.


The showers were, well, frustrating. You know those faucets you get sometimes in public restrooms where you push down the button and the water runs for a little while, then stops on its own? The showers had nozzles like that. Eco-friendly and cost-efficient, I'm sure, but that isn't really what's on your mind when your hair is full of soap and your eyes are closed and the water stops.

After our (free! yay!) breakfast, we headed out into the gray London day. Being tourists, we did touristy things.

Piccadilly Square:



We went to Leicester Square (pronounced less-ter, who knew?) but it was completely blocked off, being set up for the 2012 Olympics. Sadpants.

But we did find this, which we thought was way cool:

Trafalgar Square:


The church in the square, St Martin in the Fields, was beautiful and, when we wandered in, had a free concert going on with people playing a piano, a cello, and two violins. It was wonderful to just sit and listen for a while.

Out in front, there was a big block of stone with the baby Jesus sculpted out of it:


The umbilical cord is what makes it especially creepy.

This little piggy got crucified...
(Is that in bad taste? Too soon?)

Day 3

As we were walking through the park, looking for Buckingham Palace, an old man asked us if we needed help getting anywhere. We told him we were trying to find the palace, and he told us to follow him. As we walked, he just talked and talked about the different types of Royal Guard, the process of changing the guard, how it's different when the Queen is in town, different things to do in London, etc etc. He also mentioned, a few times, that he was 81 years old. All in all, he was very kind and informative, and we were glad to have a bit of a free tour (though we were also glad to escape him later as he seemed inclined to talk forever).




We wanted to see St James's Palace because, well, because it's old and it was there, but we walked all the way around it before we realized what it was because to be honest, it wasn't terribly impressive:


After that, we went to the always-iconic Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey.




That night, we met up with a friend of Rachel's in the East End for a drink and some hookah:


and called it a day.

Day 4

We'd walked quite a bit on Day 3 so this was a day to take it easy. Our hostel had deals on most shows in London, so we picked up a couple of half-price tickets to STOMP and went to the show. If you know of STOMP, then I don't have to tell you how cool it was. If you don't, head over to YouTube right now and find some videos of them. The show rocked.


This one's for Joe.

Up next -- Paris!

(By the way, I feel obligated to mention the fact that I am typing this on a French keyboard, which is just different enough to make this difficult. The A and the Q are swapped, the M is where the ; should be, and the Z and the W are swapped, just to give a few examples.)

3 comments:

  1. Lovely posting and pictures! (We took Rachel and Benjamin to see stomp at a little theater in Boston long before it was an international sensation, and it was way cool then, too!) I'm a little troubled by the fact you don't mention a single pub visited in London! If not, you MUST correct this on your return.

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  2. Oh yeah, the 'baby jesus' sculpture - 'creepy' is the mildest possible descriptor! LOL, as you kids say...

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  3. i am sure you already know this, but... that train station (in the second pictures) is where the spice girls filmed the wannabe video. BAM! i bet you weren't expecting to hear that.

    hope paris was wonderful!

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