Day 6: Not actually a repeat of day 2

Finally got a proper night's sleep last night, and it was wonderful. I woke up refreshed and ready to start the day.

I visited the British Museum again today, walking to it with a more southerly route (through the Temple district) than I had on Friday. I'm very glad I did, for I got to see the front of the Royal Courts of Justice and also walked past a little shop right across the street from it. Twinings, the tea company that has been in operation in that location (and owned by the same family) since 1706. It is the oldest company to still be operating in the same premesis, and it has been selling tea there (though it started with coffee because tea used to be insanely expensive, we're talking one pound of the stuff for more than the yearly salary of a lawyer) since before the United States was even a dream in the mind of a young colonial. It's this long, narrow shop with shelves full of different teas at the front and a little bar with free sampling at the back. I took full advantage and tried a host of delicious teas. My favorite was a green tea blend called Butterflies in Love. It smells like an English garden and tastes like no tea I have ever had. The staff were incredibly friendly, giving me suggestions for what else in London to visit (I unfortunately was not able to follow those) and for things to do with tea, like bake and cook with the leaves (I definitely plan to try this). The woman doing the sampling thought I was English for some reason--I guess because I don't have a really broad Southern or East Coast accent. I should have asked where she was from, but I feel like she was possibly Italian.

The Twinings shopfront

I finally extricated myself from the deliciousness and went to the British museum to catch all of the things I had missed. There were some gorgeous Chinese paintings and another great room (because it was almost empty) containing classical columns (mostly the tops of classical columns, actually), many of which were rescued from the rubble of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. They were astonishingly large; I had always imagined them to be about two or three feet wide but they were more than twice that.

Column topper, with obliging but unwitting tourists for scale

I learned from this adventure that I really like giant scuptures that are at least three millenia old; the rest I could take or leave. Although there were some amusing carved wooden tiles from a church in East England that I actually learned about on a free tour on Friday but forgot to mention then; they're called the Tring Tiles and they describe the previously unrecorded stories of Jesus growing up.

The Tring tiles

The Church of England (or the Pope, I can't remember how old these are) frowned upon this severely, but local churches would have stories that diverged a bit from the canon, describing the life of Jesus in the big blank space between his birth and his adulthood. They were a bit cheeky, so I'm not surprised that those higher up were less enthused. For example, in one of them Jesus can be seen making little puddles in the ground. Another boy comes up and messes with one of them, for which transgression Jesus kills him. Then the parents all speak and Jesus is properly chastized and he returns the boy to life. There are many similar tiles, so the other stories are mostly about how all the parents in the village don't want Jesus to play with their children; they take actions such as hiding their kids in an oven, but no attempt to protect their children from the son of God is particularly successful. I wonder if Christopher Moore knew about these tiles when he was writing Lamb.

I had a bit less stamina today than yesterday, so I left after about two or three hours and went off in search of Covent Garden, which sounded interesting enough for something to do while I waited to see Once  (at the box office I got  surprisingly cheap front-row seats, although I later found out that front row means that your eyes are at the level of the stage floor and it's a bit difficult to see over). After quite a long time of increasingly frantic searching, I finally gave up and decided to go sit for a bit at Leicester Square instead. Ten seconds later I saw a sign for the Covent Garden Market. It was a very nice place and I had some more lovely shopping experiences (I would say that Londoners are wonderful but all of the good retailers I've met so far have been from Europe).

I finally had Indian food tonight! I got a biryani which a friend of mine from work back at ASU had reccommended. It was delicious. Then I hurried over to the Phoenix Theatre to see Once, a sweet and charming musical about music and Czech people and Dublin.

The Phoenix interior; it was quite a pretty theater 

During intermission (and before the show) guests could walk up on stage and get a drink. An odd but space-efficient place for a bar. Before the show, the cast played a bunch of songs on stage while everyone got their drinks. It was surreal but awesome.

I didn't like the ending so much, because I was expecting a bit more wrap-up and suddenly the lights came up and everyone was bowing and everyone else was clapping, but it was a masterful performance with great comedy and great music. On the whole, I very much enjoyed both stage productions I saw this week, but if I were to see one of them again it would be The Book of Mormon because I am an uncultured swine.

Day 5: If you bring a rain jacket, it won't rain. If you don't...

Visited Brighton today! Took the train out of London Bridge Station and in an hour I was on the seaside! It was a nice little town, typically English-looking and remarkably similar to Newport, Oregon (but British). The ocean was this interesting pale jade green color, not the dark grey-blue that I'm so used to seeing in the Pacific. The beach was covered in these pretty orange pebbles. It was actually quite nice...except for the weather.

I had checked with the Weather Channel and supposedly it was going to stop raining before I arrived. This did not happen. After a rather wet walk along the beachside looking for a certain street that was supposed to have interesting shops and restaurants, I slipped into a coffee shop and tried to dry out. I couldn't see a window from where I was sitting, so I checked the Weather Channel again to see if it was still raining (incredibly lazy, I know, but I was cold and my spirits were low). They said it had stopped raining. It hadn't. I stopped trusting the Weather Channel for the UK and went out into the drizzle because there was really nothing else to do. My fleece was still damp and in fact still hasn't dried out.

Brighton is actually a pretty little city. There's this one place called the Lanes which is full of cute little shops, most of which sell very expensive jewelry. There's also this Pavilion that was apparently a royal residence in the 1800s but honestly looks a bit ridiculous now, it's got all of these turrets and whatnot that don't fit with any other British architecture I've ever seen.

The Lanes. There were some cool little pubs and shops in these narrow walkways.

The Royal Pavillion

The Pavillion actually had pretty neat grounds; they had been restored to their original condition and are kept in the Regency style (hence the longer grass)

I wandered for a bit more, at this point killing time until I could go back to London and get out of the rain, and got lost trying to find a yarn shop. I ended up sitting in a mall for a bit just to get out of the rain and find some wifi (I'm sorry, it won't happen again), got kicked out of that because they were closing, and had dinner in this awesome little tapas place. I had just about the least Mexican chorizo that it's possible to make, and an absolutely gorgeous mojito. 

My meal was shaped like a smiley face!

Beautiful and tasty mojito

10/10 would go back there if I'm ever in Brighton again.

Day 4: Don't visit a famous museum on a Sunday

So I've been making a grevious mistake. I kept on planning to visit the London Bridge for its famous shape and history. Well, I walked across it this morning accidentally, and realized I've been thinking of the Tower Bridge all this time when I said London Bridge. The London Bridge is actually this flat concrete thing, arguably the least interesting bridge over the Thames.

The Tower Bridge, from the London Bridge

The London Bridge and the Shard

Then I went to the Natural History Museum, which was not the best idea I've had, but I had to see it at some point. There was a ten-minute line to get in, and another line to see the dinosaur room (I elected to avoid that one), but the crowds were't too bad, and like all of the museums I've visited here, the building itself was almost as fascinating as the pieces it contained. The grand entrance hall was gorgeous.

That little white figure down at the far end is a statue of Darwin. There were little sculptures of monkeys climbing the columns and all sorts of natural science touches.

In keeping with the grand Shear tradition, my favorite room was the emptiest one: in this case, the Hall of Minerals. I'm not sure if that's the actual name, but it definitely deserves the title "Hall."

The most epic rock collection in the entire world

Since it wasn't quite as exciting as dinosaur bones or human origins, it was pretty empty. I pored over the cases for close to an hour, looking for interesting minerals. I found the Oxides section and looked for ZnO, the metal I worked with at ASU. I had to look through all of the oxides to find it because I'd accidentally missed the very first case. But I'm glad of that, I got to see some fascinating stones. 

This is Goethite. I hope it was named after Goethe.

Heh heh...sorry Dad...

FINALLY found ZnO, which I now know is called Zincite. I've never seen it on the macro scale before.

After that, I ate lunch at Trafalgar Square and visited the National Gallery, which is again as beautiful as its exhibits. I couldn't take any pictures inside, but there were some very nice Dutch paintings; I also liked the Impressionists and this one called The Fighting Temeraire by Turner. I'm not sure if it was the later hour or the fact that an art museum is decidedly not interesting to children, but it was pleasantly uncrowded and young-family free. I'm definitely appreciating art more as I grow older, but I'm still not great with the modern stuff (although admittedly my only experience with Tate Modern is this one surrealist section that did not resonate with me at all). 

I ate dinner as I walked back to my hostel, this time along the north bank of the Thames. Although the north side of the river is generally more interesting, the south bank is definitely the better place to walk. I kept having to detour around construction and other blockages, and the walk just wasn't nearly as picturesque. I did get to stroll around the Tower of London, though, which was fascinating. It was dwarfed by the skyscrapers just west of it, but that's unsurprising considering that almost a millenium of technological change has developed in the interim.

New and very old London are right next to each other

I crossed the Tower Bridge, taking upwards of an hour because the view was so nice I kept stopping to look around. I watched the river from the exact center, where the thing splits if a tall boat comes by. It was kind of exciting to be straddling the two halves. I strolled slowly home and almost got to sleep nice and early to get a full night's rest, until I found out that my room was full tonight. A couple of recent Berkeley graduates stayed the night; they were pretty cool, they're celebrating graduation in the same way that I am except that they're doing Europe instead of the UK. 

Sunset over the Thames. I'm glad I did the north bank today, because yesterday had a much more exciting sunset that I got to watch from the south bank

The Tower Bridge at dusk. 

Tomorrow: Brighton! I get to see a British beach! It won't be quite as excitingly coastal as I'd like, though, because it's barely going to reach 60. I should have brought gloves, my hands have been cold since I landed. Maybe there's a yarn shop there and I can whip something up...

Day 3: Notting Hill diversions

Today was not as productive as I would have liked. I started slowly, rising late because I could not sleep last night (a combination of excitement over the play, the two very argumentative dogs that held a debate around one in the morning, and my hostel roommate's snoring). I finnally got our of bed around 8:30 and Tubed over to Notting Hill for the Portobello Market. I got a few things there, a neat little print of pulleys from 1789 and a copy of Three Men in a Boat because I'm already almost halfway through Playing the Moldovans at Tennis.

I had lunch at the Churchill Arms, this semi-famous pub that's wedded to the Churchill Thai Kitchen. It's very strange, you walk into a fairly traditional pub that's covered in Churchill memorabilia and down some steps and suddenly you're in a butterfly-themed Thai place covered in potted plants. I sat in the Thai place and had a duck dish that was a bit sweet for my tastes. I have not had good luck with food so far on this trip. On the other hand, I'm doing all right with beverages, if you call starting to enjoy Starbucks black coffee without any sweeteners good. Hopefully American Starbucks has the same coffee.

After lunch I found a little stationery shop that luckily enough sold a camera. It seemed pretty decent (a Canon IXUS 132, don't know if that's something sold in the US but it's about as good as my old A1200 before it started malfunctioning, and it's got twice the optical zoom) so I got it for 60 pounds, which included a free 8Gb SD card. It's working out pretty well so far! I went to a Starbucks to charge the battery (good thing I have an adapter now, I'll need it back in the States because this thing does not take AAs) and met this very friendly, very chatty woman named Stephanie. I ended up spending three hours in her company because I was too passive to say that I wanted to be alone, so we wandered around Hyde Park and saw Kensington Palace and the outside of the Natural History Museum because it was closed.

Statue of Queen Victoria by Kensington Palace (where Prince William currently lives with his wife and son)

Queen Victoria's memorial to Prince Albert

I finally escaped (she was actually very nice and I'm glad I met her, I just wish it wasn't for so long) and went to Leicester Square to see if I could get a good deal on the musical Once (I'm hooked now) and wandered home from there. I got a bit lost and popped out into Trafalgar Square, which has some impressively tall statues.

I don't remember which king this is (I think it's a king), but he seems to be looking up at Lord Nelson who is apparently looking in the direction of the battle where he died

I wandered into St. James's Park, which is quite pretty and has a nice little Birdkeeper's house we could look at but not enter. I tested my camera's macro capability (it seems pretty good) and got a firsthand experience of how fearless the squirrels are in this part of the world.

This guy introduced himself by jumping onto my shoulder. Nearly gave me a heart attack.

I walked home via Westminster and finally got a good view of Big Ben, heard it ring the :45 bell but not the hour. I was mostly really hungry at this point, so I was more interested in finding a place to eat.

Big Ben looking majestic as usual. I was lucky enough to come by around magic hour, when the light is just so pretty.

I had been told to eat all the Indian food I could, so I decided to try to find an Indian restaurant while I walked back along the river. No dice. I was practically doubled over in hunger and I really needed a restroom by the time I gave up and went into the next decent-looking pub I saw. Aaaand their kitchen wait was about an hour because of some snafu, so I got some fries and a cider and that was my dinner. Again, terrible luck with food so far, although my grocery experience has been quite pleasant for the most part.

This was about the time that it started to get really dark. The sun finished setting while I ate (it was quite a nice sunset) and the lights were coming on in some of the buildings. I strolled home enjoying the evening atmosphere (but not the temperature, it was a bit cold for the little cardigan I had brought for the day). There were street musicians providing a nice ambience and really interesting water reflections from the lights on Millenium Bridge (the one that the Death Eaters broke in the beginning of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince if anyone needs some possibly helpful context). 

I don't know what this place is called but it had the coolest lighting

St. Paul's Cathedral

I tried photographing the reflections under the Millenium Bridge but had little hope that I could catch the swiftly shifting patterns with any success. I got some really interesting shots, though, completely surpassing my expectations. Go little camera go!

One thing I forgot to mention was the interesting street performers I saw on the way back from Leicester Square. There were some really cool breakdancers and also a magician who had some great patter, he was pretty funny. 

I was too slow to catch the bit where one of the guys (there were three together) was spinning on his head like an upside down figure skater; these guys were impressive

He's shuffling a deck of cards behind his back

All in all, a pretty good day despite not going quite as planned.

Day 2: The West End of South Park

I had a small scare this morning because my phone wasn't charging and I started to worry that I had an insufficient adapter or converter. I also didn't know how to get wifi in my hostel so I left quite early to go find a coffee shop to charge and use my devices. I can't tell you how much of a relief it was when my phone began to charge (okay, I can: it was an 8.2 on a scale from 1 to 10). I also discovered how nice it is to sit in a coffee shop, drink a coffee, and work while you listen to the general noise (and accents: oh, the accents!!).

After an hour or so of that, I meandered my way to the British Musem, finding interesting shops to visit and churches to see along the way. I finally arrived (didn't get too lost on the way) , entered, and had to just stop and stare. The place is enormous. There are whole floors I wasn't able to visit, and I spent six hours there. SIX HOURS AND I BARELY MANAGED TO KNOCK OUT A THIRD OF IT. I saw some amazing things, though, like the Rosetta Stone (almost got a little emotional about that for some reason) and some Anglo-Saxon relics from the Sutton Hoo Burial Site and some gorgeous Chinese pots and "The Royal Gold Cup" which is apparently priceless and will never leave the British Museum because no one is willing to insure something so valuable.

But my favorite part was probably the Assyrian reliefs, possibly because I knew so little about them going in. They were quite impressive. It started with the Gate Guardians, these ten-foot tall winged lions with human heads that were placed in entryways to ward off evil. Then I saw the Gates of Balawat, which were close to thirty feet tall, these great big wooden things with copper bands detailing the greatness of an Assyrian king whose name escapes me. I joined a free tour of the reliefs of Ashurnasirpal's throne room, and then wandered through Ashurbanipal's lion hunt reliefs, which were actually pretty haunting--the artist put some real emotion into the dying lions.

The Gates of Balawat

A Gate Guardian: these things had cuneiform writing all around them describing the exploits of the king who comissioned them (in this case Ashurnasirpal)

A victim of Ashurbanipal's lion hunt

Then I saw the Parthenon, which was surprisingly funny. Most of the frieze work was about a procession for Athena, but this one set of reliefs called the metopes were about the wedding of the King of Lapith. The Lapith people were long-time enemies of the centaurs, but they invited them to the royal wedding: the centaurs, being centaurs, got too drunk, became belligerent, and tried to carry off the Lapith women. Most the the metopes were about the drunken brawl that followed. They were all given little descriptions like "The centaur is trying to hug the Lapith, who is pushing away with his arm. The Lapith's head is in Athens." The whole gallery was peppered with "This body part is in Greece" statements because some idiot tried to store explosives in the Parthenon and they blew up in 1678. That was only after it became a church in 500 CE and was severely defaced by religious nuts who didn't give a fig for history. It is only a bedraggled remnant of its former glory.

The Parthenon gallery, from the south side

A metope showing a centaur in the "I love you, man!" stage of drunkenness and a Lapith who does not want the affection he's being offered

After an exhausting afternoon of learning bits and pieces of world history, I strolled over to Leicester Square, where I saw my first professional stage musical production. Since I was in London, I wanted to see something classy and culturally relevant: but I watched The Book of Mormon instead. It was brilliant. The only problem is that now I have all of these lovely tunes stuck in my head which I can't sing in public because, having been written by the creators of South Park, they're profane in several languages.

I should note, I'm sorry that I haven't been posting as many photographs of the trip as I would like. This is partly because I'm not much of a photographer and would rather drink in the sights than take poor photographs that do them no justice. It also has a lot to do with the fact that my camera broke some time between the Eagle Creek trip and taking off in Vancouver. It still works on some level but the autoexposure doesn't function anymore and skies come out all purple:

My first view of the Thames! Just imagine that it's not pink everywhere.

I can still take pictures inside where the light isn't so strong, but that won't work so well when I'm hiking around Wales and whatnot. I'm going to try to get a camera while I'm in Notting Hill today. 

Day 1: Sodden Shakespeare

After at least half a day of sitting in various cars, buses, airports, and planes, I'm finally in London! I'm sitting in a lovely Starbucks by St. Pauls Cathedral right now (I never knew but I've always wanted to say that) enjoying the atmosphere and breathing in the aromas.

So I somewhat foolishly bought at ticket for a showing Antony and Cleopatra at the Globe Theater that started less than three hours after landing; after a snafu at Customs where I didn't know I was supposed to have printed evidence that I had a place to stay and a ticket out of here, I sat on the Tube for forty five minutes (where I had to suppress a twelve-year-old boy's giggle every time the intercom said Cockfosters) and finally got out in the Borough, checked in, and practically ran to the Globe.

I came in somewhere in the second act, and settled down to enjoy the show from the back. Then it started to rain. People slowly decided to run for cover and I actually ended up with front-row space, though I was drenched and spent the rest of the day shivering. I eventually broke down and bought a poncho, but it was at the end of the rainstorm (thunderstorm, actually, it even hailed at one point) so by the time I took it off at intermission it was wetter on the inside than the outside. I spent the rest of the day shivering until I finally got back to the hostel and changed before going out to a pub to eat dinner. I got myself a lovely little watch at Tesco's (which seems to be equivalent to a Freddy's or a Fry's but without furniture) and promptly crashed. It was an excellent introduction to Britain.

Gear Test: Eagle Creek

Yesterday I tested my hiking gear out on a lovely hike in the Columbia River Gorge. I wore pants, shoes, socks, and a shirt that I will be taking with me to the UK. And it all passed the test! I'll have to be careful descending because the shoes can pinch my heels, but I'm going to a relatively flat country where this shouldn't be a huge problem. The only other issue was my camera, which began to flash the low battery sign shortly after I started off. But at least it takes AAs, so that won't be an issue even if I'm stupid about keeping it charged.

The final test is this post: how difficult is it to (a) type on a seven-inch keyboard, and (b) upload images to the tablet, Dropbox, and this site? The former has proven relatively doable, and hopefully I'll get used to it over the next forty days. The latter, I'll test right now.