Anyway, I'm home, safe and sound, and will do as I previously intended and post several blogs relating to my European adventure and follow it with the final post about returning back to california and settling in.
Well, as promised, here is London:
I arrived in London early in the day on the thirtieth as planned. I had with me one huge backpack weighing in at about 10k, a stuffed animal, a barely functioning computer, and a camera, ready to see everything in London that I hadn't gotten to see before. I'd love to direct you at this point to my flickr page filled with photos of my whole trip, but unfortunately, Flickr has decided to suck, and I therefore can no longer access it.
Anyway, I stayed at Astor's Victoria Hostel just a few blocks down from the Victoria Coach Station. It was a lovely hostel, or as lovely as one can expect from a hostel. The beds were made of a very squeaky red metal and the luggage storage consisted of wire mesh cages under the bed upon which we could place a lock to secure our belongings. I was only able to access the internet in the lobby, but that wasn't too bad. I did try to skype once or twice in the kitchen area, but it was no good, mostly because of noise from the rest of the guests watching tele and talking or, on one night, getting quite drunk together.
My first day I went first to Kings Cross to take a photo with the iconic trolly, only to then learn that they charge somewhere in the realm of ten pounds for the photo, so I decided that I was happy getting a photo outside of the platform and spending a considerable amount less on a silly souvenir.
Here I am, looking like an exhausted dork:
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| Backpackers never wear makeup, didn't you know that? |
So I left the station and found a Pret A Manger where I could have lunch with a view of St. Pancras. From there I went to the British Museum, where I saw the Rosetta Stone:
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| Not my view from the cafe, this is much pretier. |
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| British Museum! |
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| Rosetta Stone |
After that I went back and tracked down some dinner before heading to a ghost walk.
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| Old school gaslight. Probably the best part of the tour. There are around two hundred of them scattered around the regions near Trafalgar square. |
Now, I would like very much to tell you that, like the Jack the Ripper walk I took at Christmas time, the Ghost Walk was a little spooky and a lot of fun, but unfortunately, this guide really didn't hold a candle to the last guide. He didn't seem interested in giving the spooky tour advertised on their website, but made it quite silly. Maybe because there was a seven year old in the group (okay, who brings a child on a tour that is advertised to cause nightmares for weeks? I mean seriously, check your parenting handbook, I'm pretty sure that's in the "don't" section), but here I was expecting a slightly spooky, sort of eerie tour, and what I got was a few uncomfortable giggles, mostly silence, and a slightly judgmental guide. Lame. I was looking forward to being spooked for weeks! I'm a masochist like that.
The tour wasn't that bad, just a bit disappointing. I did get to snap this lovely photo while we were wandering through St. James Park, however:
Well, after that I went back to my hostel but decided to stop on the way for a glass of wine at the pub round the corner. It was an incredible wine, and the bartender flirted with me for a bit and I wrote a beautiful letter to Molly which is still in it's envelope on my desk, and damn, I really need to send that.
Am I rambling yet?
Well, I think I was then, because I hadn't considered that, since I'd been up at five to catch my bus and barely slept during the ride, I was exhausted and probably a bit dehydrated because that wine went straight to my head. So I stumbled back to my hostel on my first night a little bit drunk and feeling very nostalgic and pretentious. As J.K. Rowling would say, "not very rock'n'roll."
Day two I awoke bright and early for a hosteler's meager aproximation of breakfast and went out into the world for my second walking tour. The day's main attraction? Westminster Abbey.
I am faced again with the challenge of explaining why I did not hate my tour, but why it pretty much sucked. These are the memories that stay, of course, no matter how badly I try to replace them with the good memories, picking out souvenirs and snapping secret photos of various people's tombs (That's not weird, is it?) Well, the walking tour got us in with group rates and between that and the cost of the tour itself I was saving about five quid, and that seemed a reasonable goal, so I went for it. The tour was fine in itself, although they led us through quite quickly and there wasn't a lot of stopping and wandering to be done. We followed the woman with the umbrella who told us the moment we were receiving our id badges (which were actually just little white stickers we put on our shoulders), that photography inside was strictly forbidden once we were inside the actual church. So naturally I got in trouble while still outside for taking a photo. Color me confused.
Westminster is lovley, though I won't go into too much detail, mostly because my memory is fading, but also because you can read that in any travel magazine. I want to tell you what I remember: it was crowded.
Not with people, though there were TONS of people. It was beginning to feel much more like a tourist attraction that an actual working church. No, I mean it was crowded because there were tombs and relics and just things everywhere. Everything was so busy. And it was small. I know you're probably confused when I say that. You're probably thinking "Westminster Abbey is HUGE!" but alas, it is not. If you've ever been to a cathedral at all you've probably been in something roughly the same size as Westminster, at least when it comes to the central cross. That might have to do with it being so busy, but it really didn't have that cavernous awesome feeling that I expected. It also lacked the hallowed feeling of Tintern Abbey. That, again, goes back to the tourist attraction. It was just... empty.
There's the main cross of the church, then a small back room area that I can't entirely remember the purpose of except that there were chairs with names on them, and there was an area off to the side where all of the tombs and memorials were. I almost forget now who all was there, because I wasn't allowed the to take photos, but also because this was the section that were ushered through the fastest, and where we wanted to linger the longest. After that we were taken back into the hallway outside and the guide explained that the tour was over, the bookshop that way, and have a lovely day. A few of us wanted to go back and finish looking, but we were informed that was all there was to it. Great, we pay for the tour and then learn that that is literally all we get, the tour, and that's it. Oh well. Such is life.
At this point it was about two in the afternoon. I was exhausted and my feet were killing me. A quick lunch and I was back at my dorm for a nap before going out again. This was one of my lazier days, as my feet adjusted to near constant walking. So I stayed at the dorm until around five when I dragged myself up to find dinner and then went in search of my final walking tour, this time with low expectations. The only thing is, walking tours could be set aside during the day when I could wander around and explore myself. In fact, I set aside a Sherlock Holmes tour knowing that it would probably disappoint, my feet were killing me, and I was starving. But the thing about traveling alone as a woman is that I don't feel comfortable wandering alone at night. So, either I was to resign myself to a glass of the same wine at the same pub every night of my stay, or I was to do walking tours. So I did walking tours.
This was a pub walk, and as it happened, it was held by a woman who was the daughter of the man who runs London Walks. So naturally it was about eighty million times better than the previous two tours. Plus, alcohol.
We started in London proper, then crossed into Southwalk (say "Suth-uck"), where we learned about the Blackfriars and many other things forgotten in beer fog later on. I had a fun moment where I explained why a man had exited the Globe theatre in full regalia, blew on a trumpet six times, and then ran back in. I got a round of applause, it's cool, I'm kind of a big deal. Then we stopped at a pub on the Thames where I had a reverse hobbit moment and got extremely excited that "it comes in half-pints", and then promptly realized that I needed to pee. After we'd left the pub. Oh to be me.
We stopped at two more pubs. I spoke to several other walkers, made friends with four of them and enemies of one woman who, upon hearing that I was studying in Swansea furrowed her brow and said, in the way of one trying to ask a difficult question without appearing to be a racist old hag, "There are a lot of foreigners around there, aren't there?" When I looked seriously back at her and gave a thinly veiled, "Obviously" (What I actually said was, "well, it would be hard for me to tell, since I basically only hang out with the international crowd"), she clarified that I wasn't to worry, she was referring specifically to Syrians. "There are quite a few Syrians in Swansea, aren't there?" I, who hadn't met a single Syrian in Swansea, and even if I had wouldn't have informed her, announced that I'd seen a friend heading downstairs and hurried off only to learn that downstairs was the men's restroom.
Day three I spent mostly at the Tower of London. I went first thing in the morning, collected my ticket and my audio tour, and then made a bee line for the crown jewels, which I'd heard was the way to do it. I got in fairly quickly, and they were fascinating, but I think it's one of those things that I'll never be interested in. I don't really care what Kate Middleton wore or when, and I don't care what jewels belong to whom. I'm not a diamond person, I never will be.
Anyway, after I was back outside and allowed to take photos again, I found a good spot for my audio tour to begin and gave it a go. I had thought of doing a tour with a yeoman of the guard, which is what most people do, but I'd read online that it was more trouble than it was worth, and this was pretty much true.
Then I parked it outside, listened to my audio tour, and began the day. There's quite a bit to see, and I won't pretend that I saw it all. The bloody tower was by far the most interesting and heart wrenching, where two young boys went in but never came out. I had an ice cream on the same square where Anne Boleyn met her grisly fate, and watched as the line for the crown jewels stretched to Disneyland proportions.
After the Tower I spent quite a bit of money on souvenirs and lunch and ate outside watching a man play the bagpipes. He was quite good, actually. The rest of the day was really just wandering around and getting my things together and searching for a Paddington Bear that I would't have to sell my firstborn child to buy (turns out this doesn't exist). I did go to the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery, but by then I had had it to there with museums and spent the majority of my time downstairs in the cafe journaling, and I haven't much to say about them. National Gallery: "They had amazing artwork that I saw and then I left." And the Portrait Gallery, "they had portraits that I stared at confusedly and then left." That's all there's to say there.
Day two I awoke bright and early for a hosteler's meager aproximation of breakfast and went out into the world for my second walking tour. The day's main attraction? Westminster Abbey.
I am faced again with the challenge of explaining why I did not hate my tour, but why it pretty much sucked. These are the memories that stay, of course, no matter how badly I try to replace them with the good memories, picking out souvenirs and snapping secret photos of various people's tombs (That's not weird, is it?) Well, the walking tour got us in with group rates and between that and the cost of the tour itself I was saving about five quid, and that seemed a reasonable goal, so I went for it. The tour was fine in itself, although they led us through quite quickly and there wasn't a lot of stopping and wandering to be done. We followed the woman with the umbrella who told us the moment we were receiving our id badges (which were actually just little white stickers we put on our shoulders), that photography inside was strictly forbidden once we were inside the actual church. So naturally I got in trouble while still outside for taking a photo. Color me confused.
Westminster is lovley, though I won't go into too much detail, mostly because my memory is fading, but also because you can read that in any travel magazine. I want to tell you what I remember: it was crowded.
Not with people, though there were TONS of people. It was beginning to feel much more like a tourist attraction that an actual working church. No, I mean it was crowded because there were tombs and relics and just things everywhere. Everything was so busy. And it was small. I know you're probably confused when I say that. You're probably thinking "Westminster Abbey is HUGE!" but alas, it is not. If you've ever been to a cathedral at all you've probably been in something roughly the same size as Westminster, at least when it comes to the central cross. That might have to do with it being so busy, but it really didn't have that cavernous awesome feeling that I expected. It also lacked the hallowed feeling of Tintern Abbey. That, again, goes back to the tourist attraction. It was just... empty.
There's the main cross of the church, then a small back room area that I can't entirely remember the purpose of except that there were chairs with names on them, and there was an area off to the side where all of the tombs and memorials were. I almost forget now who all was there, because I wasn't allowed the to take photos, but also because this was the section that were ushered through the fastest, and where we wanted to linger the longest. After that we were taken back into the hallway outside and the guide explained that the tour was over, the bookshop that way, and have a lovely day. A few of us wanted to go back and finish looking, but we were informed that was all there was to it. Great, we pay for the tour and then learn that that is literally all we get, the tour, and that's it. Oh well. Such is life.
At this point it was about two in the afternoon. I was exhausted and my feet were killing me. A quick lunch and I was back at my dorm for a nap before going out again. This was one of my lazier days, as my feet adjusted to near constant walking. So I stayed at the dorm until around five when I dragged myself up to find dinner and then went in search of my final walking tour, this time with low expectations. The only thing is, walking tours could be set aside during the day when I could wander around and explore myself. In fact, I set aside a Sherlock Holmes tour knowing that it would probably disappoint, my feet were killing me, and I was starving. But the thing about traveling alone as a woman is that I don't feel comfortable wandering alone at night. So, either I was to resign myself to a glass of the same wine at the same pub every night of my stay, or I was to do walking tours. So I did walking tours.
This was a pub walk, and as it happened, it was held by a woman who was the daughter of the man who runs London Walks. So naturally it was about eighty million times better than the previous two tours. Plus, alcohol.
We started in London proper, then crossed into Southwalk (say "Suth-uck"), where we learned about the Blackfriars and many other things forgotten in beer fog later on. I had a fun moment where I explained why a man had exited the Globe theatre in full regalia, blew on a trumpet six times, and then ran back in. I got a round of applause, it's cool, I'm kind of a big deal. Then we stopped at a pub on the Thames where I had a reverse hobbit moment and got extremely excited that "it comes in half-pints", and then promptly realized that I needed to pee. After we'd left the pub. Oh to be me.
We stopped at two more pubs. I spoke to several other walkers, made friends with four of them and enemies of one woman who, upon hearing that I was studying in Swansea furrowed her brow and said, in the way of one trying to ask a difficult question without appearing to be a racist old hag, "There are a lot of foreigners around there, aren't there?" When I looked seriously back at her and gave a thinly veiled, "Obviously" (What I actually said was, "well, it would be hard for me to tell, since I basically only hang out with the international crowd"), she clarified that I wasn't to worry, she was referring specifically to Syrians. "There are quite a few Syrians in Swansea, aren't there?" I, who hadn't met a single Syrian in Swansea, and even if I had wouldn't have informed her, announced that I'd seen a friend heading downstairs and hurried off only to learn that downstairs was the men's restroom.
Day three I spent mostly at the Tower of London. I went first thing in the morning, collected my ticket and my audio tour, and then made a bee line for the crown jewels, which I'd heard was the way to do it. I got in fairly quickly, and they were fascinating, but I think it's one of those things that I'll never be interested in. I don't really care what Kate Middleton wore or when, and I don't care what jewels belong to whom. I'm not a diamond person, I never will be.
Anyway, after I was back outside and allowed to take photos again, I found a good spot for my audio tour to begin and gave it a go. I had thought of doing a tour with a yeoman of the guard, which is what most people do, but I'd read online that it was more trouble than it was worth, and this was pretty much true.
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| There were at least one hundred people clamouring to get in on this tour... thanks but no thanks. |
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| He looked pretty cool though... |
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| This was before the crowd, after, the line was forming beyond the metal bars... |
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| Tower bridge! |
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| This is the main castly bit in the middle. |
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| Guardsman station. |
Well, hopefully I can get Paris written before I die, but that's all there is for now! Hopefully it wasn't too spastic.
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