Londontown

Last weekend was a Bank Holiday so class was canceled on Monday.  In celebration of the holiday, I went with my friends Caroline and Kate to London for the three day weekend.  Maintaining the theme of absurdly early flights, we left Trinity at 4:30 am Saturday morning and touched down in London a little after 8.  The thing I didn't realize was how distant Gatwick airport is from London.  We did not get into the city until around ten, which worked out fine for our arrival since we couldn't drop our bags off at the hostel before ten, but it killed us on the way back Tuesday morning when we had to wake up at 3 am.

On our first day, we did a self-guided walking tour of London which was pretty easy since our hostel was right in the middle of the city.  We saw the London Eye, the Parliament Building and Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, No. 10 Downing Street, St. James Park, Trafalgar Square, Covent Garden and Jubliee Markets, and Buckingham Palace.  It was pretty cool just walking around and seeing everything you always see on TV and in movies. The park was really fun.  It had a lot of strange birds and a beautiful Duck House that used to be for the park keeper. At any rate, here are the pictures.

Noon at Big Ben.  It sounds just like Mom-Mom's clock, except louder and tempered by the bells of Westminster Abbey.

From St. James Park.

Trafalgar Square

Buckingham Palace

In front of the statue at Buckingham Palace.  The plump marble figure on the left of the statue is good old Queen Vic.

The weather was surprisingly great, albeit unexpectedly cold.  It was much colder than Dublin, ie. I should have had gloves, but only rained for all of 45 seconds and half a block on the second day. Otherwise it was very sunny and the media has done a terrible job of perpetuating lies.  London is not rainy all the time, but in fact much too sunny. What I'm saying is that I should have had sunglasses and everything would have been fine.

That night, not wanting to be completely lame and go back early to the hostel, we went out to the movies in Leicester Square.  One) Helen Mirren was giving some sort of a talk one of the theatres we walked by as part of a film festival and we were offered two free tickets, which was unfortunate because there were three of us. Two) The square seems to have some sort of carnival at night and was hopping. It was a little silly. Three) At carnivals and the like, instead of having funnel cake stands they had doughnut stands.  Weird. Four) The movie we saw was Mr. Nice was not suited toward our exhausted mood but did feature the actor who plays Lupin as an Irish IRA leader.  Speaking of Harry Potter, we also stopped by King's Cross that night.  Sadly, the imagined barrier between platforms 9 and 10 doesn't actually exist as depicted in the movies, but we did find Platform 9 3/4! 

Leicester Square.  See the carnival rides in the back?

Harry Potter!! Heading to the Hogwarts Express.

The following day we went to the Tower of London and saw the crown jewels and different towers and armor.  It was nice, but I think I prefer Edinburgh Castle which was very similar except it had more military museums inside and the one at the Tower of London was closed.

At the throne

Caroline (left) and I in front of the (closed, boo) regimental museum.

In front of another fancy cannon.  I seem to have taken a lot of these pictures.

The Tower Bridge

In the afternoon, we split up as Kate went shopping with a friend from school and Caroline and I trotted over to London Bridge, the Globe Theatre, Millennium Bridge and St. Paul's Cathedral.  All very nice structures.  We went into the Tate Modern which was supposed to have a comparable view to the London Eye without the 17 pound fee, but alas it was not so. 

Monument to the Great Fire of 1666

London Bridge! The bridge itself isn't much to look at.  In fact, it's rather ugly but still cool as the source of a lovely improvised medley we worked on between Fergie's London Bridge and the nursery rhyme.

The Globe Theatre

St. Paul's Cathedral

The London Eye at night!

Afterward, we regrouped for dinner back in Leicester Square and called it an early night at about 9:30 so we could get our things together.  That brings me to the hostel experience.  For whatever reason, I neglected to take a picture of our hostel.  It was my first time staying in a hostel, and going cheap (as cheap as you can in London) we were in the large 16-bed dorm.  It had 8 bunk beds and everything was nicer than I expected given all the hostel horror stories I'd heard in the past.  Lights were out at midnight or before and it was rather quiet the whole time.  Even when no one was asleep, it felt awkward to speak above a whisper.  Everyone was very respectful of one another and kept pretty quiet.  The strange thing was that there was an old man there with his son (my age).  He was friendly, but really when you think hostels you think college kids, backpackers and youths in general.  Seriously, spring for a hotel if your older than 25.  Even if you are 25.  Anyway, he snored like a symphony which was my only complaint.  But everything worked out fine.  The staff was really nice and the one guy woke up with us at 3 on Tuesday to make sure we got our taxi and left alright.

On our final day, we woke up fairly early but unfortunately the rest of London didn't.  It's kind of like Ireland where absolutely nothing is open before 9.  So at 9:15 the only thing we managed to do was stop at Piccadilly Circus and then go to H&M.  The cool store we wanted to go to wasn't open yet, but I got a nice shirt at H&M.  In fact, I'm wearing it right now.  Then we headed over to Baker Street and fell subject to a wrong sense of direction.  Eventually, we worked our way over to the Sherlock Holmes Museum and spent a delightful hour or so exploring the house and taking pictures in costume.

Piccadilly

In the afternoon, we went to the British Museum and somehow covered the majority of the museum in an hour or two.  We were quite speedy.  I saw the Rosetta Stone, a bunch of hieroglyphics, Greek and Roman statues, Kenyan camera and eagle coffins, Buddhist statues, Chinese ceramics, mummies, and fancy old clocks. Right after that, we headed over to the Imperial War Museum and had a blast in the children's interactive submarine exhibit, saw the British spy exhibit, which truthfully does not hold a candle to the DC Spy Museum, and really cool exhibits on the World Wars. The really cool thing about British Museums is that you can take pictures in most parts of them.

Inside the British Museum

The only picture of all three of us in London in a random park called Russell Square nearby the British Museum.  The funny thing is that a woman passing by just offered to take it for us.  Then we returned the offer since she was taking pictures of her grandson by the fountain, which she quickly and adamantly declined.

The Imperial War Museum

Kate and I playing in the Sub exhibit

We grabbed dinner near the hostel and I had the blandest Cuban food I think has ever existed.  I had a chicken empenada, but I swear it had absolutely no flavor.  You couldn't even taste the chicken.  Moreover, when I dipped it in the salsa, it added nothing.  The salsa didn't even taste like tomatoes.  I don't know what magic spices they added to the salsa to take away every ounce of flavor, but they managed it quite handily.  So then we went to Waterloo Station and ordered ice cream at a bar.  Thus concludes my English adventure.