Tuesday, February 2, 2010

weekend in the big city



The journey to London was a long one, taking about 2 hours from our first train until we arrived at our hostel. As you can see from the picture, this is made decent considering how nice the trains are here. Many of the seats have tables between them! Overall the trains are faster, quieter, and far cleaner than anything I have experienced in America. It was a very enjoyable ride watching the countryside fly by.


The hostel we stayed in was very nice, nothing like the one I stayed in last year in Montreal. This place resembled a hotel, was incredibly clean, and has dorms of 4 beds as opposed to a room of about 40 beds as I experienced in Montreal. Jesse, Zach and I had our own room, which was really sweet. Each room was equipped with a locker and sink as well. The only thing bad about it was that it wasn't located in the central part of London, but it was only a 10 min or so trainride away so this wasn't a problem. For $20 a night it was great.



Our first course of action was heading to an area of London known as Piccadilly Circus, which as you can see from the picture below, is basically the London equivalent of Times Square. This area was really cool, with thousands of people moping around at the shops, restaurants, theaters, and pubs located all around. We spent most of the evening trying out different pubs, also grabbing an awesome chinese buffet in chintown.



The next day I was forced to wake up at 10 to begin our long, epic second day in London. We started by heading to Camden Market, a massive collection of shops and food. We were there for a few hours and easily could have spent more time had we not had other plans.


After the market we headed to the Thames River waterfront, where there were many touristy landmarks to see. It was a cold but beautifully sunny day, which made this a highly enjoyable walk. We got to see Parliament, Big Ben, a huge ass ferris wheel I don't know the name of, St. Paul's Cathedral, and more. Here are some pics of those landmarks:








Along this walk there was a wide variety of street performers, from break dancing, to human statues, to the worst rendition I've ever heard of Hey Jude. I have some video of the break dancing.




This walk culminated at the Tate Modern Art museum, which was not only awesome, but free. A spliff and a pint had me in perfect form to explore an art museum for a few hours. I have a few pics from in there:




As you can see, we did a shit ton of sightseeing and touristy stuff, which is to be expected since it was my first time in London. It seems like a great city and I can't wait to explore it further.

I have had to type this message on a shitty wireless keyboard, since my normal laptop keyboard was feeling very thirsty so I spilled beer all over it. I bought the keyboard in the craziest store in Brighton, called Argos. Basically, you walk into this store that has no products on display, just booths with a catalogue. The catalogue has thousands upon thousands of random products, each with an assigned number. You write down what you want to buy on a slip of paper, bring it to the register, and pay for it. Then you get receipt with a number on it, and you sit in another part of the store and wait for your number to be called, at which point you pick up your product at desk. This my friends, is the future.

Overall I feel like I'm getting more comfortable here, although I still really really miss everyone back in the states and have some moments of extreme homesickness. I have a shit ton of reading to do tonight...it will be a challenge to make my 9am class, which I've only made once so far. We shall see how that turns out. Newest language phenomenon to tell you all about: As a way of saying "What's up" or "How's it going?,"many brits say "you alright?" This confused the shit out of me the first few times I was asked. I would be thinking. "yeah I'm fine, does it look like something is wrong? do I look sad or hurt or something?" I'm slowly getting use to that. I'm going to cook myself some tacos, so peace out. Next trip? Amsterdam.

3 comments:

ZCS said...

worst hey jude of all time

Ashley said...

call me when you are going to amsterdam it's twenty mintues from me

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JamieLongIsDead said...

looks like you are having a killer time!