London

Warning: This is long. I am sorry, that is the only way I could not leave anything out. I have inserted pretty pictures to make the reading less tedious, but do not say that you were not fairly warned!

We left for London Thursday morning, the 16th. (In case you didn't know, "we" was Jessi, Shauna, Joe and I... all piccs, going to visit Lynn, who was a picc but graduated and is avoiding real life by moving to London for 6 months). Our first bit of excitement came when we realized that our flight leaving Seattle had been delayed so that we had 11 minutes to transfer in Detroit. Not good. We got to the airport and they said that they couldn't do anything about it, we just had to take the flight and hope for the best. But as we were standing at the counter, they said that they just got word that we were going to be put on a different flight that flew from Seattle to Amsterdam, and then to London. The cool part about all of this is that we had a long enough layover in Amsterdam that we actually left the airport for 2 hours or so and got to see some of the city. And what a city it is. *cough cough* Sodom and Gomorrah *cough cough* Actually, it is very beautiful and picturesque, but I am afraid that it does seem to live up to its reputation. And that was at 10am on a Friday morning, no less. (They have "coffee shops" where there are no minors allowed because they are actually pot smoking coffee shops or some such nonsense... I can't say that I ever got it actually figured out). In the airport I ran across something interesting too in that they had all of these little magnets of cute little Dutch shops that said things like "wooden shoes" or "cheese"... but I also found one that said "sex shop." I shudder to think what the guy next to me on the plane did once he got to Amsterdam... he was part of a group of 20 guys going to Amsterdam for the weekend for a bachelor's party. (Can you imagine that?!?! Flying clear to Amsterdam just for a bachelor's party?) He was an odd one... kept popping valium on the plane to stay asleep, among other interesting things.

Anyways, we managed to get to Gatwick airport without much problem and then we rode the Thameslink into London, which was about 45 minutes away. Once in London, we took the tube (otherwise known as the London Underground, but never the subway!) to the station near Lynn's flat. Then we walked the 10 minutes or so that it took to get to her place. All of this with luggage in tow... for future reference, I would try to avoid this sort of situation. The British have never heard of the American's with Disabilities Act (rightly so, seeing as how they are not Americans) and inevitably, the tube station you need will not have an elevator or even an escalator, just a never ending stair case leading up into the abyss.

Seeing as how Lynn does have a real "fake" job in London, she had to get all of her good touristing in with us over the weekend. We went on what we came to lovingly call "forced tourism marches"... she walks rather fast and is like 6'1" or something, so it takes two of my steps to keep up with one of hers. We went to a cool food market Saturday morning, Borough Market... of sort of Harry Potter fame. Apparently the street outside the Leaky Cauldron in the 3rd movie is filmed in the market somewhere, although we never actually figured out where. And then we went to Greenwich that afternoon, where they "make time." It was lovely and although it is only like a 20 minute DLR ride from Lynn's flat, you feel like you are in the country. Sunday we went to Hampton Court, which is a palacy thing with beautiful gardens and is about 45 minutes out of London. When we got back to the city, we went on the Jack the Ripper walking tour, which basically consisted of taking us to street corners and houses where the victims' bodies were found. It was really interesting, actually, cause it was set up like a history lecture and you learned a lot... it just happened to be about some awful murders.

Monday Lynn went back to work and we had already decided that we were going to go to Bath for the day. Bath is where the ancient Romans built spas or "baths" using the hot spring found there, and it is about 90 minutes from London. Sunday we got our whole itinerary figured out and we purchased our tickets online, leave at 10:00 am, return at 5:42 pm. Monday morning we left the flat on time, and we caught the tube early, but something went terribly wrong. The line that we got on went incredibly slow (the Circle line, incase you ever have need to avoid it while in a rush). We are pretty sure that at one point the driver stopped the train in the middle of the tunnel and got out, although what he was doing, I am not sure exactly. The minutes ticked by as we got more and more worried that we weren't going to get to the station on time, because once we got there, we still had to print our tickets. We finally got there and I think it was like 9:52 or something. We ran to the ticket place and Jessi got her tickets, cause she had put hers on her credit card, and Joe started to print the rest of ours, cause they were on his credit card. Joe handed us what we thought were our tickets, and we ran for the train... Seriously, the porter had only one door open still. We barely managed to get on the train (my ticket says it was printed at 9:58 am) and we realized that Joe wasn't on the train. Come to find out, a ticket, when purchased online, consists of 5 pieces of paper. So Joe had to wait while 15 pieces of paper printed, therefore making him miss the train. As we were sitting on the train, I started looking at my ticket, which actually was a ticket, and I realized that it said we were coming back on March 21 at 0542. And then it hit me... Lynn, the expert on travel and everything European... had made the STUPIDEST mistake possible and forgot about military time, thus booking us a ticket for 542, unfortunately that meant 5:42 am the next morning. So 18 pounds later (which, as you all remember from our previous discussions equals roughly 36 dollars) we had changed our tickets to come back at 1742 on March 20. Joe did catch up with us in Bath, but he had to change his ticket to even get there, cause we were booked for the 10:00 train, so he ended up spending 36 pounds on the whole ordeal. Bath was worth it, but it was sort of grey and cloudy and cold... we definitely could have had a better day.

Tuesday was our first real day in London to be tourists and we spent it going to the British Museum, walking down White Hall and seeing Parliament/Big Ben/10 Downing Street, and capping it all off with Westminster Abbey. The British Museum was interesting, but after a while you began wondering why it was so cool to be looking at all of these things that Britain had stolen from other countries and brought here for their own evil purposes. At least it was free =). Parliament/Big Ben were magnificent, as was to be expected. And Wesminster Abbey was pretty awesome, although I wasn't allowed to take any pictures inside... boo =(. I saw Chaucer's grave and Handel's grave and Rudyard Kipling's grave and Dicken's grave and a bunch of old king's graves. You can tell that I am being very irreverent here, but after awhile, it was just a bunch of graves. Although the architecture was amazing, and the history is pretty daunting too... its just that after you have been in London for awhile, you become a little acclimated to it. Unfortunately, this day was rather grey and cloudy again, so my pictures aren't as cool as I would like them to be. Tuesday night we met Lynn and went to a show. We were going to go to The Producers, or something cool like that, but we ended up going to this spoofy, all male ballet where they do their best impression of female ballet dancers. It was mildly entertaining and even funny at times, not really my thing... but hey, compromise is good, right? (P.S. If anyone ever wants to go to The Producers, I will gladly go with you).

Wednesday we went to St. Paul's Cathedral and then did some shopping in Soho. St. Paul's was amazing, especially in contrast with Westminster. Westminster is definitely Gothic, whereas St. Paul's has an enlightened feel to it, with soaring roofs and lighter marble. Something interesting, there is an entire chapel devoted to America in honor of our involvement during WWII, I never saw that one coming. We climbed to the top of the dome, doesn't seem like much, I know, but if you look at a picture, you can tell that it is a feat. I think it is like 550 steps or something. I really enjoyed St. Paul's Cathedral... maybe it is just hearkening back to my obsession with Mary Poppins. After St. Paul's, we ate lunch at a pub called "Ye Old Cock." I'm sorry, but I have to say that I love pubs. They are really cool with great character and are usually very unique. They all have funny names, I could list but I am not going to, and they are usually decorated very nicely with homey sorts of things. They also have a lot of history and many of them are OLD... one we went to was rebuilt in 1667, after the great fire of 1666. The shopping was not my idea of the best use of our time, but hey, sometimes you have to just go with the flow. On the plus side, I got a really cool jacket at H&M for only 20 pounds. I don't remember what we did Wednesday night, but I'm thinking that it probably doesn't matter to you anyway at this point.

Thursday, we went to some more markets in the morning that were rather boring to me... but again, compromise, right? (It seems to me that I did a lot of compromising on this trip...) We walked along the Thames in the afternoon because it had turned into a lovely day. We went on the London Eye, which is a big Ferris wheel which offers great views of the city. We went to Tate Modern, which is a modern art museum. I have to say that I was rather unimpressed, except that I got to see a Monet in real life... and that was pretty awesome. By this point in time, I had caught my cold, but I was telling myself that I wasn't really sick. I mean, I was in London, after all, who wants to be sick? That night, I managed to convince people to go see the Tower of London, although the best I could do was take pictures of the outside of it. I also got some really cool pictures of Tower Bridge (which many people think is actually London Bridge) while the majority of my party went and entertained themselves by stuffing their own fists in their mouths at Dickens' Inn, yet another pub (and no, I am not kidding). And Friday I came home. We left Lynn's flat about 930 and I got to my house about 2300, although I had been up for about 23 hours by this point in time.

If you have made it this far, I am impressed. I really am. My trip was awesome and it was a once in a lifetime experience that I would love to repeat again if I ever had the opportunity. I am sad in that I have really just given you a blow by blow of what we did, and not what I *thought* about what we did or the funny things that happened. If I think of something pertinent, I may post it up here. But for now, this has already taken way too long... goodnight!