London: Day Two

If day one in London was stressfull, day two was nearly the polar opposite. We began by taking a nice comfortable ride through the Brittish countryside on the National Express bus. The driver spoke perfect english, even though his accent was a bit heavy. Imagine that.

The countryside in England was really pretty with bright yellow fields everywhere!

The bust took us about 45 minutes to get to Stratford, which is a little piece of London that people don't really talk about. It's actually quite nice, but there's really not much there. We got off and went to ask the train operators about the prices of the metro tickets. They explained that if we bought tickets after 9:30 AM we got a Zone 1-2-3 ticket for 5.20P instead of 8P. Excellent. We killed some time.

We were really excited to arrive in London!

London is pumped about the olympic bid!!! I love exclamation marks!!!!!!!

Walking a short way from the Stratford Terminal we found a mall. Hardly anything was open inside but we did get some food from the grocer at the front. We also bought some potatoes and sausage from a vendor at the train terminal. It was glorious.

Behind the mall there was a large park. There was a playground in it. Sheer joy. We found swings, very silly Brittish swings. Jim and I went nuts. Dave watched and allowed his wounds to throb. The park was seriously quite nice, we came to find that the Brittish really know how to do public space, honestly they do it better than any other place I've seen in the world including America. We had a great time there.

WOW this thing was fun t o climb

The freakinest cool swing ever!

One of these things is not like the other ones...

Lots of flowers

From Stratford we took the Tube (that's what they call the Subway, if they say Subway they mean Underpass...) to Hendon where our Hostel was. We checked in. The man at the check-in was rather cheeky. It was perfect. We chilled at the hostel, resting for about two hours. Then we embarked to explore the city.

First we went to Embankment Center, which is a really cool part of downtown London, essentially in the center of town. From there we walked along the Thames to Big Ben and Westminster Abbey.

Embankment center!

Embankment bridge, yes!

The view of the River Thames

The London Eye

No, Jim, your other right

Cool critical regional government buildings in Westminster

C-C-C-Crikey!

Big Ben

Part of the "state halls"

After that we decided to go to Westminster Cathedral. Turns out there's a reason the Abbey is famous and the Cathedral is not.

We went to McDonald's and got Cadbury Creme Egg McFlurries. They didn't taste like their name, it was Vanilla Ice Cream with a bit of chocolate in it. Woo hoo. We went to a pharmacy to get some more bandages for Dave (whose wounds were seeping disgustingly). We saw the gayest dude ever in that pharmacy.

Westminster Abbey, very cool and famous

An interesting street with old and new buildings

Westminster Cathedral. Less cool and not famous.

The view looking out from the front of Westminster Cathedral

Cadbury Creme McFlurry?

We went to some bookstores. I considered buying the new Michael Crichton book, "State of Fear." It was overpriced in London. I'm glad I waited, turns out my parents had purchased it and shipped it to Italy, I got the package when I got back on Monday (Thanks Mom and Dad!). Close call.


The streets of London

Overall on the first day we just had a great time walking around, eavesdropping on people speaking English (there were a lot of them) and marvelling at how many ITALIANS were in England. Jeez they were everywhere! A lot of the interactive kiosks or pamphlets you find in exhibits would be printed in English and Italian. I was really surprised.

I realized while we were in England how badly I miss America. Things in England basically worked like they should. They were efficient and hard working people who actually believed in customer service. What a novel idea! Jim later summarized very well the Italian people, and how they are not like the Brittish or Americans.

As Jim put it the Italians are childlike. They are sweet, loving people, and they are cute in their odd little ways so everyone loves them. But they get upset over nothing, fight about trivial stuff, poke eachother and get all touchy and annoying, they are lazy, they don't share, they don't form lines, they don't wait their turn, and they make a mess and don't clean up after themselves (litter!!!!).

After exploring a bit we went to Holland Park (Dave's namesake). It was amazing, seriously one of the most beautiful places I've been in Europe. We went to this field that said "No Ball Games" and watched the soccer game some Italians were playing. See, they ignore the rules. Children.

It's like the century maple.

Holland Park

Italians follow directions brilliantly

Notting hill houses

Hyde Park

Hyde Park Pond

A goose, and GOOSE LITTER!!!

We went to the more famous Hyde Park next and went to Notting Hill and Lancaster Gate, then decided we'd had about enough of our illustrious all nighter and went home. We met two Canadian girls at the hostel and learned a lot about Canada. Turns out they don't see themselves as the USA's insignificant little brother... how odd. They also told us how cold it gets in Canada. I couldn't believe my ears, they were talking about average winter days being 40-60 below. That's centigrade, but in Farenheit it would still be like -20 to -40. INSANE.

We all slept alright, but I got the crappy bunk that was in the window which had a bunch of light pouring in through it and was quite loud. I hung a sheet in the window and opened my umbrella and placed it over my head like a canopy. Then I slept alright.

Our second day in London was excellent. It was long but it was great. At this point London was already pushing for rank in my list of best cities. It would get better. Tally ho!