London: Day Six

Jim and I headed back to Italy on a 6AM flight out of Stanstead. This trip was a lot less eventful. We got some cool pictures of Rome as we flew over. We caught a bus to the Anagnina metro stop which would get us to Termini Station. While we were there I met a family from New Zealand who had never been to Rome before. I told them how the metro works and they told us about New Zealand. Jim and I are now determined to go. We caught the 1:15PM train from Rome to Castiglion. We arrived just in time for me to realize that I was late for class. We had been assigned a significant project. I'm pretty far behind on it. I don't really care.

St. Peter's Visable as we flew over Rome

The Colloseum

Termini Station (soon to be renamed John Paul II)


Palatine Hill as we flew over

London was amazing. Everything about that city was wonderful except the prices, and even those I can sort of understand given how fantastic the place is. It's no surprise to me that people will pay unreasonable sums of money to live there. Living in Italy is an excercize in patience and understanding, learning to cope with a culture that you only partly enjoy. There are a lot of drawbacks. Being in England on the other hand was a really inspiring experience. London was everything a Modern City can be, in my opinion. While the prices are not great and the weather is crappy compared to Texas, the city was beautiful, clean, and healthy. I think everyone ought to visit sometime in their lives, to understand why pedestrian orientation is better than automotive sprawl. The way we live in America is not the best way to live. Our culture may be better in a lot of ways, we work harder and are more inventive than most of the world, and we care more about the environment than Europeans do despite the media bias against us. But we need to learn about how cities work, how people interact with the place they live. We need to learn about parks and public spaces. We're not an agricultural society anymore, we don't all need a private fenced in yard to be real adults. The people in London live in AMAZING houses, I mean really amazingly beautiful places, in quiet neighborhoods with HUGE open green-spaces around them. And you know what? They collectively own that space, and the city mows it, puts in playground equipment, and keeps flowers freshly planted. A big house with a huge yard and the city does your landscaping. What could be better than that? All you have to do is share the space.

Taking the time we did to photograph London also reconfimed my previous desires to travel more within the state and the region and work on photographing places in Texas. I'd love to make a book about travelling around our great state taking pictures, and I intend to compile one from the photos I've taken of Europe.

Most of all, however, being in London confirmed for me how badly I'm ready to get back to America. I really like Europe and my time here has been time well spent. But I'm done. Europe is great, but I want to live in Texas. So the countdown has begun, we're now in the single digits. It's nine days until we're all free of this musty old building and back in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

This is one of the last posts I'm going to make on my website. I have a few other things I figure I'll write about as the time here comes to an end, but all my major travels are now concluded. I'll keep you posted of the events leading to our return. For the time being I believe I'll start getting organized and packed this weekend, then we will have a few days of class left and sometime Thursday we should be on a bus to Rome. Our total trip to Houston takes us about 24 hours and takes us from Castiglion to Rome to Paris, over New England and the midwest, into Texas and finally through customs in Houston. I think we arrive Friday afternoon, May 6th. I'll find out for sure the times and stuff in a couple days and let y'all know.

It's been real, now it's time for the back to America parties to begin and the european adventure to come to a close. Ciao!!!

London: Day Five

On April 24th it was no longer my birthday, but we were still determined to have a great day. Dave had to leave because he had booked seperate flights, but Jim and I were out to explore stuff. We headed out around 10:00 AM and went to the National Gallery. Before going there we took some busses around town and saw some of the city we hadn't before. We bought tickets to the special exhibit at the National Gallery, which featured the late works of the artist Caravaggio, who was an Italian painter from the early 1600's who produced probably some of the most amazing realistic works you've ever seen. Of course I didn't take pictures, but it was really incredible. Look his stuff up.

Vauxhall Station, pretty cool spot

Cool new stuff by Vauxhall Station

Say thanks to the Veterans campaign


Texas Embassy


Trafalgar Square

After this we headed to a place called Covenent Square Gardens, which had a cool market. We ate at PRET, which is a really great sandwich place that Jim and I are going to emulate when we open a restaurant in College Station. After this we went to the Brittish Musuem, which also ROCKED. We saw a bunch of ancient Sumerian stuff which was really cool, I had never seen cuneiform at its real scale before, it's really tiny! We then went to the Japanese Sword exhibit, which was really really neat.

The Brittish Museum


The center of the Brittish Museum

Egyptian artifacts in the Brittish Museum

Jim dejected that we didn't make it to the V&A Museum

After this we rushed to the Victoria and Albert Museum, which was supposed to be really cool. We didn't get there in time, it was closed. From here we took busses all over town and went to see Lloyd's of London (which is ugly, looks like a missile silo) and the "cucumber building" which is interesting, a significant London Landmark which happens to have been copied in Barcelona. Wierd how that works.

A monument at Hyde Park Corner

Liverpool Street with the Cucumber building visable


The entrance to Lloyds


Lloyd's of London (The Missile Silo)

We took busses all over town that evening and got to see all kinds of stuff from the top of the big double deckers. It was really neat. At about 9PM we went down to Matt's appartment to get our stuff and say goodbye. We visited for about an hour, then headed to the river to photograph stuff. We got some amazing pictures.

Big Ben and Embankment Bridge


The National Theater


St. Paul's across Millenium Bridge

We caught the last tube to Stratford and had to wait until 1AM to catch a bus out to the Airport. I made some phone calls during the wait. Getting on the bus at 1AM we fell sound asleep, concluding the main part of our trip and ending London: Day Five

London: Day Four

London: Day Four
April 23, 2005
Mission: Turn 21 in the planet's coolest town, while having a great time

Thus we awoke on April 23. We headed to Queen Anne's Park and then Buckingham palace to see the changing of the guard. Pretty hot. We went through Green park to get to Pickadilly Lane, which was an interesting place. Took the tube to Liecester Square (pronounced Lester Square... yeah.) hopped out and looked for some good fish and chips. We got some all you can eat Chinese Buffet instead. Went to a net cafe and checked my email, got some birthday messages (whoop!) and one particularly excellent note from the west coast. Grazie everybody!

Flowers in Queen Anne's Park


Buckingham Palace from Queen Anne's Park


Dave enjoying the gardens in front of Buckingham Palace


Buckingham Palace, looks kind of solemn and sad compared to the White House... could just be too gray.


A monument in front of Buckingham with the city office towers visable behind

From Liecester Square we headed to the National Gallery, which was AWESOME. We hung out there for about two hours, decided we would need to come back the next day, and then headed to Lancaster Gate for AGGIE MUSTER: LONDON CLUB!!! For a while we lost Jim on the way to Lancaster Gate, but we finally found him at our Tube switch (Tottenham Court Road).

Going tube-ing


Inside the National Gallery

For the next four hours or so we partied with the London A&M Club, sitting around talking and playing dominoes, eating nachos and stuff. It was glorious. Afterwards we were going to go to the Texas Embassy, but we weren't hungry. We hung out for a bit afterwards, decided to go to back to Liecester Square. We saw a movie, Be Cool. It was hilarious. The Brittish movie previews were awesome. The theater was awesome. When we headed out it was the party central district. We walked to Picadilly Circus, grabbed some grub from the chepest store we could find, partied in the circus (think Times Square of London). We met some girls that Dave was friends with, then headed out just in time to catch the last tube ride back to Waterloo so we could get back to the appartment to crash.

Nothing incriminating about these photos...


Liecester Square at night


More of Liecester Square


Pickadilly Circus


Pickadilly Circus on our way out

Overall my 21st birthday was very low-stress, but we still managed to see some of the coolest stuff I've ever seen in my life. The brittish royal gardens, the national gallery, the changing of the guard, the London A&M Club, an AWESOME Brittish movie theater, Liecester Square at night, Picadilly Circus and the London Night-Life. It rocked my world. This was definitely and without any doubt the best birthday I've ever had.

We got back to Matt's Apartment and crashed to get ready for London: Day Five.

London: Day Three

Friday, April 22 was our third day in London. After resting for a while we got out of Hendon and went to the Tate Modern Art Gallery. It took us a little while to get there, which frustrated Jim because he was REALLY excited about the gallery. We let him run ahead while Dave and I walked casually along. We stumbled across Shakespeare's Globe Theater. It was pretty cool. There were signs all over saying: April 23! Happy Birthday William Shakespeare!!! I think they meant to put me on the signs too but there was an error at the printing company or something. Oh well.

Cool SW Trains in Waterloo Station, this is what we'd take to Matt's appt later


The inside of Waterloo Station


View of the riverside from London Brige (not Tower Bridge)

A church on the way to Tate Modern


The entrance to the church

The globe theater


The Tate Modern Museum... a bit washed out in this picture... oops.

The Tate Modern was pretty neat, but of course it was Modern Art so it was more wierd than beautiful. The art of the prozac culture. Whatev.

Millenium Bridge crossing to St. Paul's Cathedral

Millenium Bridge to St. Paul's from the Tate Modern

Walking on Millenium Bridge

The front of St. Paul's


Typical lawns in London... beautiful.

They misspelled my name on these posters, but I appreciated the gesture

The world headquarters of the Salvation Army... pretty neat :)

Jim stayed in the Gallery most of the day. Dave and I (after checking our backpacks in downstairs) decided to go on a walking tour of the area. We went across the Millenium Brige (beautiful) to St. Paul's Cathedral (also amazing). St. Pauls cost 8P to get in. That's 16 bucks. We didn't do it. Westminster Abbey was the same thing, 7.5P, $15. Get real. Maybe when I'm a millionaire.

We explored the area for a while then went back across a different bridge (London Bridge) to get to the south riverbanks where there were a bunch of nice cafes. Dave and I ate at "The Real Greek Kabab" which was EXCELLENT. The waitress there was extraordinarily flirtatous, enjoying our silly American accents and the fact that we didn't know anything about Greek food. The meal was a bit expensive but VERY good, and Dave picked it up as a birthday present to me. Thanks Dave!!!

We went back to Tate Modern to meet Jim. He finally had enough of the art gallery, so we moved on. Jim wanted to see the front end of St. Pauls and stuff too, so we retraced our steps for a bit, then went to meet Matt Josephy. Matt was the Student Body President of A&M a couple years ago, and I knew him a bit because he is best friends with Jake Traylor, my freshman bible study leader. Dave knew him quite well. We met Matt at the Waterloo station and then caught a train to near his appartment. We chilled with them for a bit, then went to this cool Indian Restaurant for dinner. The price wasn't cool, 10P ($20) a person. Ouch. That was AFTER a 20 percent discount for us having a large party. Whatev.

After dinner we went to some people's appartment and hung out for a while. It was a lot of fun. We walked from there back to the nearby tube stop, took the tube one station, then walked to Waterloo, which was a really nice walk and allowed us to take a bunch of pictures of the river and stuff at night.

Tower Bridge!

Walking across Embankment Bridge

Us!!! (Dave, me, Matt, Jim)

The London Eye

Embankment Bridge

Big Ol' Ben

It was pretty cool. The clock struck midnight. It was officially my birthday! We went home and got some much needed sleep, taking us to London: Day Four!