It is 4 days away from my birthday!
WOO!!
Anyway, last weekend was my first time in LONDON!
Thursday night, I packed. I decided to use my small suitcase (which is actually pretty big) because I stuck my sleeping bag in there and it took up a lot of room. Friday morning, the plan was to meet at the train station at 9 and take the first train to London. My host family wakes me at 7 to tell me that there’s a lot of snow so there are “limited” busses today.
I’m thinking.. limited busses means less of each bus? So a carry my ginormous, heavy suitcase to the bus stop, at 8:15. Waiting… waiting.. no busses going either way. Apparently, limited busses means none at all of my bus. I call a taxi.. the first one tells me they don’t go up to where I live at all. The second tells me that they don’t have anything available until 10:15 ..
I call the group .. its 8:45 by now. Most of them are already at the train station. This is when I came to the realization that I have to walk. I haven’t walked before. I have only taken the bus into town before this time. I also knew it would be impossible to walk through snow and sludge with a rolling suitcase. So, knowing that most people are already waiting for me at the destination, I walked back home.. repacked into a backpack, (holding my sleeping bag in my hands this time) and started walking.
I walked 2.5 miles through sludge with a full-to-the-brim backpack, my purse in one hand, and sleeping bag in the other. I was also in my Adidas running shoes, which are GREAT running shoes, but are terrible for snow because their breathable toes, very soon became wet and cold toes.
The only good thing to made me smile on my hour long walk was this guy, (click on the pic to see it bigger)
So at 10 am, I finally arrived at the train station, last one to arrive.
The 9 of us waited for our train for a bit, and got on, ready for LONDON!
We arrived in London at around noon.
This is the first pic I took of myself, right outside the tube station:
We saw a McDonalds and stopped in there to look at our maps and figure things out. Have you ever seen a Chandelier in a McDonalds?
Or a grand piano?
We went to unload into our hostel. It was a really nice place! It was a room of 4 triple bunkbeds. We had the whole room, and our own bathroom to ourselves.
After dropping off our stuff, it was time to see London.
We went to the Kensington Gardens. It was a nice park.
We walked through where all the embassies were. And important buildings.
Of course, I HAD to take a phone booth picture
Everyone was hungry, so we walked around deciding what to eat. Most were impatient, so they went to McDonalds. Henry and I decided we wanted something else. Chris, another in our group who had just eaten an hour or so before, suggested we go to this Lebanese place he just went to. I had no idea what to expect and went to check it out. I got a chicken “sandwich” that wasn’t really a sandwich, but a bunch of roasted chicken, pickles, tomatoes, and a delicious yogurt sauce in a Pita bread. Oh man. It was SOOO GOOOD, messy, but GOOOD. I ate there probably 3 times during the weekend.
We then continued walking. We walked somewhat close by the Eye and Big Ben. Got some good pics of Big Ben.
Then I parted ways with the group. Most of them were off to see a Mozart Concert, and I had plans to meet my cousin, Ales. All I knew about him was that he is somehow related to me from my mom’s side. His family: his brother, parents and he, came to visit us in the US maybe 5 years ago? I did not remember him at all. I also knew that while his family lives in the Czech Republic, he now lives with his wife and almost 1-year-old son in London.
I met Ales (pronounced ah-lesh) at the Barbican tube station, and we walked to his apartment. It was a cute little family. Ales and I decided to figure out how we are related, so he called his grandma, and I guess our great grandparents were brother and sister. So we are actually (distantly) related by blood, not just marriage. Christina and Ales were both very talkative. They told me about how it’s like for them to live there, and about their son Maxim. Maxim is to be 1 at the end of February. I took some pictures with the guy
Man, Ales speaks English, Czech and Russian, and Christina speaks English, Hungarian and Slovakian(?). The kid hears all those languages spoken to him everyday!! Then they had to put him to bed, and Ales and I went to join Megan and Lindsey, the other two who did not go to the Mozart thing.
We walked the whole way instead of taking the tube. Ales walks fast, and I kept up with him. It was really fun to walk, because he explained a bunch of the city to me as he pointed stuff out, for example this tower,
Ales said that no one knows whether its myth or true, but the story goes that this tower is where the tradition came from of making wedding cakes with smaller and smaller layers going up. I think that’s pretty cool. It’s an OLD building.
Walking though China town was fun because it was just Chinese New Year recently, and it was still decorated from it.
Ales and I got to the pub where Megan and Lindsey were after a 45 min walk or so. The four of us hung out and talked for probably about an hour. Ales bought me 2 ciders. The hospitality of people outside the US is really funny,
“No, I really, honestly, don’t want a second one, I’m not done with this one yet and I’m full”
“OK, I’ll get you another one.”
“Oh.. um.. ok..thanks..”
At 10, Ales left and we met up with everyone else. This was when we had to split into the people who decided to end their night, and those of us who wanted to go out.
Megan, Lindsey, Sarah C, Angela, and I decided to go to Koko’s, a club Megan found out about ahead of time. The club was off of Camden Street. This is a place I’ve heard about that in the daytime, it great shopping and a really good time. At night, though, it did not feel so safe!! We were all walking, thinking, “Megan, where are you taking us!”
When we got there, we knew she found the perfect place. This club was sooo fun! There were many stories, with balconies so you can see the stage from any floor. We went to the ground floor and danced while a DJ played music and there was a giant screen on with random images flashing really fast. After some time of this, that screen went up, and a band that was behind it started playing. It was a band called MILKE and they were SOO GOOD LIVE! I loved them so much, I found their site on myspace and added their song, “Maybe I’m Crazy” to my profile. Go to my page to listen to it!
Myspace.com/stupidrussian
Then when they were done, the screen went back up and it was a DJ again while the next band was setting up. The cool thing about that was that when its DJ music, everyone is in circles dancing with their friends, then when the bands play, everyone faces forward and rocks out to the live show. So it was like being at a club, then at a concert, then club, then concert. I got my fill of 2 of the best kinds of nights in one night!!
Here’s some pics of us in Koko’s
That’s Milke
In the natural progression, after Friday, came Saturday.
In the morning I got up at 8, and had a typical English breakfast at the hostel. Most of that included what we have, eggs, sausage, but also a normal thing to have with your eggs here is fried tomato. When I saw that, a lyric from “The Streets” (a British rap group) came into mind and it made sense,
“Girl brings 2 plates of full English over with plenty of scrambled eggs and plenty of fried tomato”
(A in tomato being, not like A in “age” but like A in “mama”)
Anyway, after breakfast, we went shopping in London. On my way, I had to take this picture:
Apparently, one dog had use it..
Anyway, for some reason I was not in a shopping mood at all, so I had no interest in looking at clothes. I went into Urban Outfitters (a store I know dearly from home :) and read their books. (They have the best books!)
There was also a Whole Foods in this part of London. The place was amazing! It was 3 stories. The first floor was produce and had a room dedicated to Cheese! Cheese is the only thing to get its own special room.
Then we hopped in the tube,
(Henry on the tube):
And went to the British National Museum
Unlike the US, it is believed that everyone should have access to culture and history, so the major museums are free here.
High Five!
This is a chair made out of guns
And THE Rosetta Stone
If you don’t know the history of the Rosetta Stone, it was a stone from 196 BC that was found in 1799. A British scientist used it to translate Hieroglyphics for the first time in 1822. Its very famous and I’ve learned about it before but never thought it is so big! I assumed for some reason that it is the size of a notebook or so, but you can see in that pic, its quite large, although not as large as it looks comparing to Henry because he is a few feet behind it. It’s 3.75 feet in height.
When we got sick of being in a museum for hours, we went to find a place to eat. We finally chose a place in china town that was a mixed Asian restaurant. It had Chinese, Japanese, and Thai food. Angela and I decided to share, so we got 3 orders of different plates of Dim Sum and 2 orders of Sushi. And I got a Pearl drink. LOVE THOSE!! (I miss Café Tapioca in Dublin!!). My dinner was Delicious. If I have to say what my favorite food is, its nothing in particular.. any Asian food, Chinese, Japanese, any Asian, I love it. So a Dim Sum and Sushi dinner was perfect for me!!
Then, we walked around downtown all night. We didn’t go anywhere in particular, but just walked around. The city is ON all night. Things don’t slow down. We went into a Sex Shop, just for fun (It was interesting.. never been in one before..) Then kept walking and looking around for a while. We then got on the tube and went back to where our hostel was. We just hung out in a pub called Churchill Arms close to the hostel until we decided to go to bed. I was getting sick and didn’t feel good, so I just kinda napped in the pub. I just found a little note Angela wrote in my mini notebook while I was sleeping.
Sunday morning, there were only 5 of us. (4 had gone back home to Bath on Sat)
We went to another museum. I really did not want to go to another museum from being sick of yesterday’s long museum time, but when I got there, I was actually really bummed we only had an hour there. This time we went to the Natural History Museum, as it says on this sign:
I find natural history very interesting. I loved the dinosaur bones put together to show the massiveness of those dinosaurs, I liked the beginning of the earth exhibit, and the figures of different animals. With only an hour, we didn’t get to see too much.
This is me doing handstands in front of the big Darwin statue:
This is me going into the giant earth orb
I make a good ape
And lastly, of course, a pic of me doing handstands outside, in front of the museum.
Aren’t all the buildings overwhelming here? They are so big and historic.
After a nice lunch of the Lebanese sandwich again J we got on the tube, then the train, and were home in Bath.
The weekend was a great success. After London, Bath seems slow and quiet now. I am so happy to be going to London again tomorrow! The weather was even great for us there. When we got there on Friday, it was freezing, and a little rainy, but Saturday and Sunday were great. It never rained, and it was much warmer. (Still cold by my standards, but fine.)
That is all for today. Hope you had fun reading about my weekend; I had fun being in it!
-Aleks
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