Two Americans, One HUGE British City: LONDON

Hey again. So, I’m sitting on the train from Norwich to Colchester, where I will then take a bus to London. In London, I have to catch the Tube to Uxbridge (in far west London) where Lucy will be picking me up so that we can go to her house, where I will then get to spend Christmas. It’s the weirdest thing. The flat has been empty for over a week now. Thank God Linette came to visit, otherwise I think I might have died of boredom and homesickness! But the strangest part about it is that it only 2 days til Christmas and it doesn’t even sort of feel like it to me. I think the only things that remind me that its Christmas is the tiny fake Christmas tree that’s been sitting in our kitchen for the past 3 weeks, and the fact that I’m steadily running out of money! But, I’m really excited that I get to spend Christmas in a real house with a real family instead of staying at the flat all by myself. So thank God for that (and Lucy’s family!)

Anyway, this week, despite the fact that there’s hardly anyone on campus, has been fun because Linette was here! It was nice to see someone from home, and I didn’t feel quite so foreign having another American here. It was good to see Linette, especially, because I hadn’t seen her in forever. She was able to come out because she was on her way to Kenya (where her husband is from) to spend Christmas there, so she stayed in England with me for a week-long layover on the way.

So the first couple days that she was here we went and explored Norwich. It was cool because we were able to see the Cathedral and the Castle, two places I hadn’t visited yet. The Cathedral was really pretty, and the castle was just cool. However, it’s been absolutely freezing here. The temperature is steadily dropping, and it’s not even that bad in Norwich. It’s considerably worse in London, where we spent the next couple days.

Norwich really isn’t that big, and if you don’t want to shop for days, on end and spend massive amounts of money, and go to nightclubs then there isn’t really a ton to do. So we decided we’d spend 2 days in London. We got the train mid-morning on Thursday, and made it into London at about 12:30pm, arriving at Liverpool St. Station (the street, not the city where the Beatles are from… that’s further north). So we get there, and we don’t really have any idea what we’re doing. Armed with only a map, we got in the queue to buy tickets for the Underground (which neither of us had ever ridden before). Fortunately, the guy at the ticket counter was quite helpful and we got two all day tickets for that day and the next.

So we find our platform and get on the tube and head off to Madame Tussaud’s, London’s wax museum, taking a slight detour to stop at King’s Cross Station and see Platform 9 3/4, the entrance to Hogwarts! Hehe, that was fun, but we only stayed long enough to take a picture, then we continued on to Madame Tussaud’s. We spent an hour or two in there taking pictures of us next to loads of wax figures of famous people. Lenny thought I was crazy because I knew who the majority of these people were supposed to be, and I thought she was crazy because she only recognized some of them! Apparently I read too much celebrity crap, oh well. So seeing these wax figures was way cool, and taking pictures with them was just plain funny, and it’s really quite bizarre how real some of them look! It looks like I’m kissing the *actual* Orlando Bloom! Haha…. Yay!

So Madame Tussaud’s done, we headed off to Piccadilly Circus, which is really just a big roundabout, but there’s loads of theatres around there, and we were hoping to see a show. So we found half price tickets for pretty good seats to go see We Will Rock You, a musical based on Queen songs. Sounds slightly cheesy, right? And it was! But it was actually really cleverly done, despite its incredibly goofy storyline. (Think the Matrix meets Equilibrium, but with music…. Yeah, try to figure that one out!)

Well the show didn’t start for another couple hours, so we went to kill time and check in at our hostel which was further south, across the Thames River. For those of you who don’t know, a hostel is quite possibly the cheapest way to spend the night in Europe. Basically, you rent a bed, not a room. So you pay for a bed in a room that has anywhere from 4 to 16 beds, so you’re sleeping in a room with other people who you’ve never met. BUT, the upside is that its maybe 1/3 the price of even a cheap hotel for the night, and seeing as how we were only staying one night, it was the easiest way to do it.

So we checked into the hostel, and left our bags there and headed off to the show, but we were early so we just walked around and got some food while we were waiting. The show was really really fun, and both Lenny and I enjoyed it a ton. And now I’m a newfound Queen fan. How sad is that?

Well, after a pretty bad night’s sleep at the hostel, we were up and about the next morning by about 8am, and we headed off to see the rest of London, starting with the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, Westminster Cathedral, and the London Eye. We rode the London Eye, and it was really cool to see the whole of London from about 130 ft in the air! We then went to this Star Wars Exhibit where they had a bunch of the original props, costumes, concept drawings, and models from the 6 Star Wars movies. Seeing Darth Vader’s actual costume was pretty darn cool.

The rest of the day we spent walking up the Thames River, and the sun actually decided to shine that day so it was gorgeous, albeit HORRIBLY cold. Further east along the Thames is Shakespeare’s Globe theatre, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and The London Tower Bridge (the one that opens up to let ships through). So we saw all of those. I won’t bore you with mundane details, but I have pictures of all of it. We took a tour of the Globe, and got to actually see and walk around the theatre. Unfortunately, the original Globe was burned down in the early 1600’s (I think), so this is an exact replica that’s only been around for the past 10 years. But the tour was really interesting. On the other hand, we didn’t actually get to go inside St. Paul’s, but we did get to go up to the top of Tower Bridge, and see it open up too. I’ve got pictures of all of that! In fact, here's all the pictures: PICTURES.

So overall the trip was really fun, and we only had a couple complaints. One, it was way too darn cold, and Lenny and I learned that the insides of your bones can freeze. Two, Linette did something to her foot the day before, so doing all that walking probably wasn’t the best for her, but she made it through. And three, apparently we allowed way too much time, and not enough money for our trip! We ended up sitting at the Burger King at the Liverpool St. Station for about 2 hours waiting for our train because we just needed to sit somewhere that wasn’t cold! But like I said, we were both quite glad that we went, and we had a really good time.

Well yesterday we just did laundry and got some much needed sleep. Lenny had to catch her bus to take her to Heathrow really late last night so that she’d make it to the airport in the morning. And now here I am, after another good night’s sleep, sitting on the train on my way to London again. Oh well, now I’ve got the Underground figured out a bit more, so it shouldn’t be too big of a deal getting across London.

Alright, well I think that’s all for now. Hope you all have a tremendous Christmas, and a Happy New Year, and all that other fun holiday stuff. Eat some red chile for me… I’m not exactly sure what to expect from a proper British Christmas, but I have a funny feeling there will be no chile involved!

Anyway, as they say out here: Happy Christmas!