London Calling...

London was one of the best trips I have taken since I have been here. Although I guess I start every blog with that. We left way too early on Friday morning, but it was good because it got us to London by 9, so we could start our day. The first day we were there we took a walking tour of the downtown area, which might as well be called Times Square. It’s all modern architecture with a giant bright screen that flash advertisements just like New York City. But, after we walked around downtown, we went to Covent Garden Market, a really cool market with very expensive stores. Well, everything is very expensive there because the dollar to pound ratio is a bit ridiculous! But, this was a great market because there are street performers everywhere. Some were really good – doing amazing magic tricks like making melons appear out of no where. But some were quite awful cross dressing comedians who didn’t happen to be funny, but happened to have hairy stomachs shown off by their belly shirts. So, it was great for people watching and absorbing some of the funky culture of the area. That evening, we went and had dinner at a great pub, The Coal Hole, (recommended by my friend Damien!) in down town London. I had a fabulous wild mushroom and asparagus pie. London’s famous for their pies. Afterwards, we headed down to the “hip” area, where all the night life is. We got to see some half naked transvestites pole dancing. Highlight of my night. Haha. We hung out with a friend of mine’s cousin, who was studying abroad in London this semester, so she was able to show us around some. But we were too tired to really stay out that late.
Saturday was my favorite day of the trip. We started off (too early…) at the National Gallery. This was possibly one of the best painting collections in the world. Every room you went into had famous names splashed over every wall. There were whole rooms dedicated to some of the best painters in the world: Botticelli, da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rapheal, Titian, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Caravaggio, Monet, Seurat, Cezanne, Van Gogh…the list goes on and on and there were about 70 rooms of these paintings. I probably could have spent a good week and half just in the museum. We also got to see The British Museum, which was great and full of everything England has stolen in the past thousands of years. Including one of the crystal skulls that the new Indiana Jones was written about. (Who knew that didn’t just jump out of George Lucas’s head??) After the museums, we took a stroll through St. James’s park. This was such a beautiful area! However, there were nasty geese/pigeons/ducks everywhere! (And, no, I don’t mean that they were mutant animals, just that there were all of those birds everywhere.) St. James’s park is one of the only areas in London where it’s legal to feed the birds, so they sort of flock there. There was even an old man feeding squirrels out of his hand. But, St. James’s ends at Buckingham Palace (with the flag raised which meant the queen was actually there…) where we got to watch the changing of the guards. This was a cool experience, but a little over the top if you ask me. I mean, twice a day there’s a huge parade all because the soldiers were going off duty. I hope there’s a parade every day for me when I get off work. Anyways, it was a cool experience. After the changing of the guards, we headed to the Tower of London. We got to go inside and do the full tour of the whole tower and castle. Got to see the crown jewels, the ancient weapons, crowns, and armory of the past kings and queens, as well as great views of The London Bridge (which, oddly enough, was NOT falling down…sad day.) and the modern architecture of London. After the tower tour, we went back to the main square to figure out what we were going to do for the evening. We wanted to get Mamma Mia! tickets, but they were all sold out, I’m assuming because the movie made it a bit more popular. But, it ended up working out for the best, because we got tickets to see Wicked instead. This was definitely my favorite part of the trip! We had a hell of a time actually getting to the theatre, because our bus stopped half way there and we were told it was only going to take 20 minutes to walk there when in reality it took 45 minutes to jog there. However, we made it, a little late, but we still got to see the show! This is seriously one of the best musicals I have ever seen! The costumes are incredible, the set is even more impressive, and the two female leads have voices that give you goose bumps every time they opened their mouths!! It was “London’s number 1 musical,” so our little gay ticket seller told us, and I can totally see why! I unfortunately asked the stupid question of “do you think when you see it in the states, the actors all have British accents?” Apparently the answer to that was no. I guess I was just thinking of Spamalot…
Sunday was a short day because we had to get to the nightmare that was the London airport in the afternoon. However, we were still able to cram in so much! We got to see Westminster Abby, Big Ben, and the London Eye, because they are all like a block from each other, who knew, right? And then we got to go up to Camden Road Market, which was an incredible open air market that had everything from things for hippies, goth, and punk rockers, as well as antiques. There was a huge area with foods from every country. (Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese, Argentinean, Brazilian, Jamaican, Turkish, etc. etc.) It was a really cool place to go people watch, but it was also a great place to shop because the prices were really reasonable (even for the pound!) Plus it was cool because most of the stuff was hand made and all the artists and artisans just sat around making their products all day long.
So, the trip was amazing. The weather held off quite well. It was very cold (yes, I’m from Texas…) the whole time, but it only rained a little bit on Sunday, and we were basically in the airport by that time. I think the best thing about the trip was the people. Everyone in London was so happy, helpful, and just plain kind. Even the people who in America are total jerks, like security guards, policemen, and airport workers, were insanely nice and wanting to be as helpful as possible. It’s a nice change from Italy where people are a bit more hostile and definitely an amazing change from America! I think we should take a note from the Brits and start going out of our way to be friendly!