One day in London

One of the many great things about Europe is the fact that everything is so much more compact than the States. For example, if one were to get the whim to gather some friends, hop on a plane and fly from France to England for a day, one would be able to do this. And with the benefit of the ridiculously low rates offered by some cheap airlines, this is exactly what I did this past weekend with four of my friends from the Nantes program.

We flew out of the Nantes Atlantique airport on Thursday evening and landed at London Stansted. After some slight hassle and a 2 hour bus ride, we were at Victoria station in London, which was a short walk from our hostel. We stayed at the Astor Victoria hostel, which was recommended by a friend who had just been to London and stayed there, and it was a good recommendation. I thought the hostel had a nice atmosphere, and had we been there for longer, I feel like we would've made friends with all the people who were staying there. As it was though, we were only really in London for a day so we didn't hang around the hostel much. The only problem we had was that the door was beyond difficult to lock... and we were caught off guard by a surprise roommate who came clambering in at 1 in the morning, and it turns out that he left the door unlocked so we woke up to find it swinging open...

Changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace.

So, our only full day in London, we tried to get out of the hostel pretty early, we ended up making it out a little before 10, on account of having to wait for the slow internet in an attempt to firm up plans for the evening. While the rest of the group was waiting for me to try to get a hold of the Ice Bar, they stumbled upon a brochure for a free walking tour around London, and we decided to do it. I personally think it was the best decision we made because the tour ended up being very interesting and it helped us cram as much as we could into our short time there. We met up with our tour-guide outside of Green Park at 11am, after having gone to Marks & Spencers to get some food. His name was Gregg and he was Australian. It turns out that he was also very funny and nice, and I've decided that he has basically the coolest job ever. He just hangs out with a bunch of kids and walks around London for 2 and a half hours, and at the end, they all give him massive tips because he's, well, hilarious and awesome for lack of a better description. He showed us sneaky ways to get into some places for free, and he pointed out all the cheap food, theater tickets and beer. (Of course, the latter is a must for any college-age student traveling in Europe.)

Our tour started out in Green Park, and went to Buckingham Palace, just in time to see the Changing of the Guards ceremony. Since Gregg sees this ceremony just about every day, he pointed out all the best places to get pictures, even for vertically challenged people such as myself. So we ended up pretty much right in front as the guard marched into the palace gates. After the changing of the guard, we went to St. James Palace and took the obligatory photo with a very perturbed-looking palace guard. Since it's winter, they were wearing coats over their familiar bright-red frocks, but it was still a legitimate guard, and he was still terrifying. Not wanting to be stabbed with a bayonette, we scampered on down towards Picadilly Circus and saw all the fancy shops and arcades along the way. Gregg explained to us how some of the shops had royal seals above their doors, which means that the royal family has been 'served faithfully' by that particular establishment for more than 5 years. There were little pharmacies and hat shops with huge golden seals above the door that apparently is the highest honor you can achieve as a shop-owner in England. Gregg then proceeded to make a joke about how the Prince's drug dealers should put little royal seals on their wares... hmmm.

The gals and I with the Palace Guard who could have easily killed any of us with his bayonette.

Continuing on from Picadilly Circus and all those fancy stores, Gregg led us through the West End and told us about all the good plays and good restaurants around there, and then we went through Trafalgar Square. He told us that after the Battle of Trafalgar, Admiral Nelson's body was brought back in a cask of brandy and that supposedly when the ship returned to England, some of the brandy was gone and there were little holes at the bottom of the cask where some of the sailors had stolen sips of the brandy to 'toast to the admiral'... Also, it is supposedly said of Trafalgar Square that if you stand there for a half an hour, you are bound to see someone you know. I'm not sure whether or not he was exaggerating, but tour-guide Gregg said that the first time he went to Trafalgar Square, within ten minutes he ran into two people from his home town in Australia. Go figure.

Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square - the lions are made of French cannons that were taken and melted down after the Battle of Trafalgar.

After Trafalgar Square, we wandered a little further, saw some park that I don't remember the name of, and we saw the Winston Churchill Museum. We didn't go inside because apparently it's expensive, and there are a ton of other museums in London that are free. Then we went and took a bunch of pictures of Big Ben, which apparently isn't really the name of the tower, just the bell inside. However, tour-guide Gregg told us that it was called St. Steven's Tower, but according to Wikipedia (which I revere above all opinions/definitions) says that this is also incorrect. However, since I was too lazy to research and find the actual name of the tower, I can't fully correct this. Suffice it to say that the tower isn't actually named Big Ben, nor St. Steven's Tower. But everyone calls it Big Ben anyway, so I suppose this is a moot point.

Of course, no matter how many times I go to London, I will always take a picture of Big Ben.

The last stop on our tour was Westminster Abbey, which I didn't actually see last time I was in London, despite the fact that it's literally a block away from Big Ben. We all gathered around across the street from the Abbey and listened while Gregg not only told us how to get into the Abbey for free, but he also recounted the story of Guy Fawkes and the whole treason plot. It was interesting because I had never actually heard the whole story and how ridiculous it was in real life - apparently there were only like 20 something conspirators and they were planning to take down Parliament but they left a note telling one guy to get out, and then they accidentally blew themselves up while trying to 'dry out' their wet gunpowder using fire... so basically they were idiots. Anyway, after that whole lovely story, he finished by taking our friend Kevin as an unwilling volunteer to describe the process with which they executed Guy Fawkes - namely, drawing and quartering. Not a pleasant process. Luckily for Kevin, it was merely pantomimed. After he was done, everyone hung around to talk to Gregg a little bit and give him his tips, and he was actually kind enough to walk with us in the direction of the restaurant we were looking for. (A place he highly recommended to us called Mr. Wu's, which is basically 5 pounds for all-you-can-eat Chinese food. It was delicious and very pleasing to a traveling college kid's wallet.)

Westminster Abbey - our walking tour ended here and our guide concluded by telling us the story of Guy Fawkes and demonstrating how to draw and quarter someone.

Having stuffed our faces with cheap and delicious Chinese food, we backtracked a little bit to the store called Fortnum & Mason that Gregg had shown us earlier. Ariel wanted to buy some tea for her mum and the rest of us were intrigued to look around inside since it seemed so fancy from the outside. Turns out, it was pretty fancy on the inside, too. Since they don't have Thanksgiving in Europe, all of the stores are already completely decorated for Christmas. As confusing as it is, the early Christmas is very charming because it makes me feel like I'm in the movie "Love, Actually" and that just made the stay in London all the more magical. The inside of Fortnum & Mason was covered in lights and there were Christmas trees everywhere. They have a grand staircase in the middle of the store and as I looked at it, I kept thinking that the whole store was about to break into a musical number - something about the joy of Christmas and Santa Clause coming and all that jazz. Unfortunately, I ended up choreographing in my head for no reason as no such dance number occurred. That didn't lessen my excitement, however, as I ran around the store like a little kid looking at all the different assortments of Christmas candies, cookies, cakes, teas, coffees, etc. Downstairs, there was a section that was basically like a grocery store, and I even found a ridiculous table of food and drinks made of various insects including crickets, ants and scorpions.

Inside Fortnum & Mason - basically like Christmas in heaven.

I took this picture mostly for my mom because she was stung by a scorpion once. I'm pretty sure I would never, ever drink this.

I left the group at Fortnum & Masons for a bit while I went to fetch my dad who had flown into London earlier that day. We met up at Picadilly Circus and went back to the store to have tea with my friends. The tea was great - a nice stereotypical thing to do in England. I'm not sure exactly what qualifies as high tea, but I like to tell myself that we had high tea in the proper English fashion. I can't remember exactly what kind of tea I got, but it was something to do with a lot of fruits, including grapefruit and lime. It was delicious. Plus, I shared a piece of orange cake with my dad which is making my mouth water just remembering it.

Once all our tea was gone, I went and tried on the boots that my dad had brought for me. This is a minor detail in our London trip, but when my dad showed up, he brought with him my mom's iPod Shuffle which she's letting me borrow, and a pair of boots that she had bought for me. Incredibly enough, they fit like a dream. I never expect anything accrued in such a roundabout fashion to fit so well, but what can I say? My mom knows my sizes way better than I ever will. So I now officially own a pair of black leather-ish boots with heels. Hooray, I'm on my way to being all fashionable and whatnot, right? This may not be exciting for anyone else, but experimenting with the notion of actually caring about what to wear is something fairly new to me.

Dad and I having a 'spot of tea' at Fortnum & Mason's.

Upon leaving Fortnum & Mason, boots in hand, our group hadn't quite decided what to do. We all wanted to see the British Museum and go to Platform 9 3/4 in King's Cross Station, but we were under the mistaken impression that those two were basically right next to each other. So we took the tube to King's Cross and wandered around in the street for a bit before realizing that we were wrong. So we made a stop by the Hogwart's platform and I took a picture with an advertisement for The Mighty Boosh before finding the real way to the British Museum. The problem there was that we had told tour-guide Gregg that we were going to go with him on the Pub Crawl hosted by his tour company because it sounded really fun. But the Crawl started at 7 across town, and we would've only had 15 minutes to run into the Museum and then somehow magically get across town. (Despite London supposedly being full of wizards, none of us know how to apparate, so this would've been pretty impossible.) In the end, we decided to skip the Pub Crawl and just soak up all the time we could at the Museum.

The whole on our way to Hogwarts to chill with Harry Potter.

Once we decided to go to the Museum, we got back on the tube and headed in the right direction. Unfortunately, my dad was jet-lagged from his flight and he had to leave early the next morning so we parted with him mid-tube on the way to the museum and he stayed on to go to his hotel. By the way, I think the notion of meeting up with my dad for a few hours in London is ridiculously awesome. I'm really glad that he could fly halfway across the world to drop by and hang out with my friends and I for just a few hours. How many kids are lucky enough to be able to say that their dads did that? (Especially when he's nice enough to drag boots across the globe for me and buy tea for my friends and I. Thanks, dad!)

I WILL find a way to get to The Mighty Boosh Live, if it's the last thing I do.

The British Museum was actually pretty amazing. Despite the fact that we only had an hour and a half there, I was really glad that we decided to go. Most of the exhibits there are free, so we spent a lot of time roaming around looking at statues from ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt. I took what felt like thousands of pictures in the museum because everything was so fascinating and, as nerdy as this sounds, the lighting inside was amazing. Taking so many pictures at all these different places is bringing out the inner photographer in me, despite the fact that I only really have a few months worth as a photographer under my belt... for a highschool newspaper. Hmm, I'm not sure that really counts, but I definitely have a photography bug hiding somewhere in me. This, of course, doesn't necessarily mean that my photographs are ever any good, but I still enjoy taking them.

Besides, it would be pointless for me to try to describe the museum. I really like museums and I enjoy walking around in them and taking pictures, but in essence, all museums are pretty similar. This one was just full of ancient sculptures and pieces of the Parthenon and what not. It was amazing and I loved it, but I mean, if you basically just imagine a museum, you've probably got a pretty good feel for it. If you want to look through the zillion pictures I took, click here.

I took way too many pictures at the British Museum to post on here, but this is one of my favorites.

We finally got kicked out of the museum (not literally, of course) at 8:30 when it closed. Since it was now dark and cold, we decided that we wanted to be somewhere warm with food, and we had a little over two hours to kill before we had to go for our reservation at the Ice Bar. We wandered back to the bar that tour-guide Gregg pointed out to us, but it was basically bursting at the seams with people so we decided to go get food first and then return. We settled on an Indian restaurant which was another great choice. I got chicken korma and rice and devoured it all. I forgot how much I like Indian food... I'm so used to having any sort of crazy foreign food available for me back in Seattle, so it's a treat to go to London and see an Indian restaurant and freak out.

With delicious Indian food settled nicely in our stomachs, the group ambled over to The Chandos, the pub that Gregg told us had good beer for cheap. So we grabbed a pint and waited a while to set out to the Ice Bar. The thing about the Ice Bar in London is that I tried to go to it with my friend Jenny when we traveled to London together last summer. We made a reservation and everything, but we ended up not knowing where it was at and so we just gave up. Keeping this in mind, I double checked with a bunch of different people in an attempt to figure out how to get there, and as it turns out - it was still pretty difficult to find. We basically walked down Regent Street, which is huge, until we saw a tiny alleyway labeled "Heddon Street" which was supposedly the street that we were looking for according to the address, but none of the people I talked to told me about any Heddon Street. So we walked down and you had to go down the street and turn a corner to a dead end where the Ice Bar was inconveniently located. In the end, we found it and that's what matters.

The Ice Bar in London - it's a little bit harder to find than everyone told me...

The Ice Bar is exactly what it sounds like. It is a bar made of ice. We had a reservation at 11:45, so we showed up, gave my name to the hostess and she ushered us inside. We had to "queue up" for a bit while we waited for the previous occupants to vacate, since the Ice Bar only runs in 45 minute shifts. I think they have to re-freeze it or something like that, but either way, when you get there, two guys at the front door throw an insulated cape over your head and you go inside to a big room full of ice. Ice and techno music. It's actually really cool. The bar is run by Absolut so they have only Absolut cocktails there, and the first one is included with your entrance fee, but after that they're 6 pounds each. So we all stood around our ice table and drank our cocktails and danced to keep our body temperature up, and we also took a lot of quirky pictures. That's basically all you can do in an ice bar, I suppose.

Yep, the bar is true to it's name. Everything is made of ice!

The planning of the whole place is very well thought-out, seeing as you stay in a freezing cold Ice Bar for 45 minutes consuming your cocktails, and then immediately upon exiting, you find yourself in a very warm bar called "The Wolf Bar", and of course, you are tempted to stay there to warm up. And warm up we did. We each ordered an additional cocktail at the wolf bar and sat around talking for a while before deciding it was time to take the night bus home. There were some problems with this when we discovered that we had to pay for the tickets with exact change, so we missed two buses when people went to get change, and then two of the group were accidentally left behind when the rest of us got on the third bus. I honestly thought they were right behind me, when I looked behind me through the closed bus doors to see them still fumbling with the ticket machine. When we reached our stop, we sat outside and waited for the next bus to see if our friends were on it, but they weren't so we decided to meet them at the hostel. It turns out that they had to wait for about 45 extra minutes for the next bus and I felt really terrible about it. In the end, there were no hard feelings and we all got a good night's sleep, probably thanks to the cocktails.

A group shot of all of us at The Wolf Bar, which is conjoined to The Ice Bar.

The next morning, we had to check out of our hostel by ten, so we went and checked out, scarfed down a quick bowl of complimentary cereal and headed out into the crisp November sunlight. We had to be at Victoria Station at 11 to catch a bus back to Stansted airport, but since it was only a few blocks away, we had a little bit of time to kill. We went to Sainsbury's because Ciara was on the hunt for Eggnog and Doritos, and I ended up buying a big bag of Polos, which are basically peppermint lifesavers. I know that it's lame, but the only reason I'm semi-obsessed with Polos is because they are used a lot as a prop in The Mighty Boosh. (Side note: in case you don't know, The Mighty Boosh is an English TV show that I'm obsessed with. They are now putting on a live show which I intend to see over Christmas break. See picture above, right after Harry Potter picture.) After shopping, we went and hung out in Starbucks for a while, and then headed to the bus.

The bus ride was a little shorter on the way back to Stansted, though I'm not exactly sure why. We got to the airport and had a lot of time to kill there so we went into a bookstore and I ended up buying The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama and My Booky Wook, the autobiography of Russell Brand, an English comedian - you may remember him as the hilarious rockstar in the movie "Forgetting Sarah Marshall". I started reading his book on the flight home and it is quite funny. I figure that buying that ridiculous book was balanced out by buying Obama's book, which I've been meaning to read for a long time but haven't gotten around to yet, using the excuse that I didn't have it.

Anyway, after the hour long flight, we took a taxi back to our dorms and it was refreshing to be back, to tell the truth. Mostly because the exhaustion that traveling inevitably brings. Also because I was wearing those new boots the whole night previous and the trek home, so my feet were killing me. My brief stint in London, however, reminded me of exactly how much I really loved that city last time I was there - though I don't know how I could possibly have forgotten. It really has such a friendly atmosphere and I feel like it's easy to just drift around there. (Possibly because of the lack of language barrier, but who knows?) So, in response to my gush of admiration for ol' London Town, I am already planning my return, probably towards the end of next month during Christmas break. I might even be taking a quick hop over to Ireland in order to see the Boosh show, but I've still got to work those details out with Ciara and Ariel, who are going to be my travel partners.

So now you see just how much you actually can pack into a short trip to another country. I hope to be as successful in all my future traveling endeavors. In the meantime, thanks for stopping by and reading - I appreciate the support and hope that this stuff is interesting enough for someone other than myself to read. Until next time!