The experiences and exploits of a college grad trying to make it in the "real world:" leaving school and friends in New England, moving south, and living with her boyfriend. Watch as I pretend to be an adult.
Couldn't resist the alliteration; sorry! Our adventure started Saturday with a race up I95 to get to Virginia on time, some frenzied last minute packing, and a mad dash to the airport. We got onto our plane and discovered an unexpected surprise: we'd been seated on an exit row and had miles of leg room! Not that I really need it, but it was nice. We sat down and discovered a second surprise- personal entertainment centers. Sweeeet! We setteled in to watch some movies. I watched The Incredibles, I Robot and a couple friends episodes and Elija watched some Japanese anime...Uhm, I try not to judge. 6 hours and 45 minutes later we arrived in Heathrow, waited through an intermitable line to get through immigration, and picked up our baggage. Leaving the baggage terminal, we met Mac, Nick's driver. He took us on a slightly harrowing drive to the flat in Chelsea where Elija and I crashed for about five hours. We got up around 1:30 Sunday London time and staggered outside. We walked down King Street to the Thames and then turned around and walked to the South Kens tube station to head over the Regent's park and the Sherlock Holmes museum. As we got out onto Baker Street it started to drizzle a bit, so we decided to give the park a miss and headed straight to the museum. It was rather small, and I don't think quite worth 6 pounds, but kind of cool. It was very obvious they'd put a lot of thought into the details- there were life size wax figures depicting scenes from the books, numerous "artifacts," and even a man dressed up as Dr. Watson. Elija and I signed the guest book, so if anyone ever heads over in that direction, look for us on Sunday March 7, 2005!! We made our way back to King Street and stopped for dinner along the way at a little place called the Stew Pot (or something), where Elija had the requisite fish and chips. After that is was back to the flat to sleep for around 10 hours. Monday we dragged ourselves out of bed around 10 and headed out towards Westminster. We went to Buckingham Palace where there were throngs of people and lasted about 10 minutes before we decided that the Change of the Guards wasn't worth the annoyance and left. We took off for Westminster Cathedral and stopped by that for a while (Elija took tons of pictures), and then walked to the Tate Briton. On the way we stopped at a nice sandwich shop off the main road. The Tate was really cool, and had some very nice exhibits. Unfortunately, one I would have liked to have seen was charging admission, but the rest was pretty cool anyway. I have to admit they did seem to have an excessive amount of Turner's work- I decided I'm really not much of a fan. After we finished going through the Tate we walked by the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, and then walked to Westminster Abbey. We took some pictures of the abbey while the light was still decent, stopped at an ATM, and went to a Starbucks for a cup of tea to kill some time. At quarter to 5 we headed back to Westminster Abbey for a choral service. The choral service was lovely. Westminster Abbey is beautiful, and the boys choir that performed was really talented. To top it all off, the President of Gana and his wife attended the service, and the President read part of the serman. I was really surprised, and slightly offended by the tourists who came to the service- at least a third of them came in jeans, and I was astounded by the number of them who came in late. I'm not religious, not even a little bit... but if you're going to attend a religious service, you should respect the institution. To quote Heinlein, if the Naitives rub blue mud into their navals, then better start rubbing! Oh well. After the service we headed back to the flat, and then ran out to the grocery store to get supplies for the rest of the week. My first impressions of London were much different this time around. I'd forgotten how dirty London is- There's so much smog, so many people smoke, and the traffic doesn't help either. Also, there are Starbucks EVERYWHERE. I'm serious- you can't go two blocks without running in to one. It's really kind of scarey. I'd also forgotten how annoying American tourists are. All tourists are bad, but Americans are in a league of their own. I'll share a few stories in the next stirring episode. Cheers!
After 22 posted at 3:41 PM
