Seven hours, three thousand miles and one Ambien after leaving Philadelphia, I was greeted with London Heathrow and the Picadilly Line to Gloucester Road. I dropped some stuff off at Jonah's apartment and checked my email, and then went for a solo adventure around town. I walked from his place in South Kensington to the Thames, through Hyde Park and by Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey. Exhausted, I took the tube back and slept for an hour on his couch.
Jonah and I went to the West End for the evening, where we lucked out with ten pound tickets for orchestra seating to Boeing, Boeing. It was a fairly stupid comedy about a Parisian man with three fiancees--all international flight attendants--who, unsurprisingly, come into conflict once in a while. The cast included the headmistress from the all-girls wizard school that participates in the tri-wizard tournament of HP4, who really stole the show.
By Thursday, Mallory had arrived, and she and I met up with Laurence and Chelsea (both from Stanford) at the Victoria & Albert Museum to see the new surrealist exhibit. We also had noodles together for lunch.
Mallory, incidentally, also brought with her the horrible weather, so we ended up doing a fair amount of walking in the rain. London is both big and small...small in that distances between tube stops that look really far on the map aren't all that far to walk, but big in that there are a lot of tube stops.
Other touristy attractions seen were the Tate Modern, the Cabinet War Rooms (a bit steep at 9 pounds, but interesting), and the British Museum. Plus lots of walking around: Trafalgar Square, Picadilly Circus and Leicester Square. I love the spellings of the areas...Gloucester and Leicester especially (pronounced Glouster and Lester).
We met up with Jenny and her roommate from Michigan on Thursday night for a few pints of cider, from which many pictures will emerge. Also, pubs in London are super lame in that they close at 1130pm. Go figure, I thought Europe was supposed to be a late place. Both nights in the hostel, I was the last person in the room (12 people, mind you) to go to bed at around 1am.
The crazy coincidence of today was running in to my tennis-lesson-mate from elementary school, Andrew, who is on the same program as Jonah. We got a pint of this strawberry smoothie beer (Fruli, it's good), just in time before I had to head to Gatwick.
So now I'm in florence, having just been ripped off by my cab driver and realizing the hostel is on the 4th floor without an elevator, but other than that things are looking good.
Also, sorry this was such an objective report, I'll try to be wittier in future posts.
1 comment:
A pub, you see, is not a bar. It's more comparable to a coffeehouse. Hence the early closings. Americans get confused by this, because we think it must be a nightlife place based on the fact that it serves alcohol. This is wrong.
Pub culture is one of the biggest things England has on us. But you have to understand it for what it is before you can appreciate it.
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