New Thing #81 - L/S/I, Day 4 - London

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Today was a bit different than yesterday. In order to get showered and dressed before Melissa and Aaron needed to use the bathroom, I was up at 6:45 this time. We didn't want to mess with their routine any, so we ended up being at the train station during peak time. We opted to wait it out a half hour or so until the ticket was cheaper. Um yeah, we wanted to save money where we could. Damn London and their spendiness. Breakfast was a sausage roll and an apple danish again. My London staple.

This time, we ended up at the Charing Cross station to hit up Trafalgar Square. Um, so yeah...Trafalgar Square? Pretty damn boring. Just a big square. With some statues/monuments. And that's about it. There's lots of history about Trafalgar Square, don't get me wrong, but, to us, it was just an empty square. And seeing as how it was cool and rainy, being out randomly in a public square wasn't high on our list of "neat things to do today". I guess I just assumed it was much cooler, since I've heard the words "Trafalgar Square" so often in my life. Not the case.

Nelson's Column

National Gallery. We didn't end up going in due to time constraints.

Lions guarding Nelson's Column

Random boy on a rocking horse. Because what famous square isn't complete without a boy on a rocking horse.

Statue of someone. On a horse.

Fountain.

I'm not saying there's anything essentially wrong with the Square. It's a nice square. It offers a nice meeting place for people. It's next to a museum. It has historical significance. It's also a snooze fest. But, hey, at least now I can say I've been there. No judgement.

It was starting to get later in the morning, and we wanted to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace at 11, so we headed that direction. It wasn't far from where we were, so we walked along the mall to get there.

I can't remember what this was, but it was cool.

Royal guards just marching along.

Just doing their thing.

B. Palace up ahead.

Fancy royal gardens.

Less impressive looking than I anticipated. Did I expect it to be encrusted with diamonds and gold foil? Perhaps.

Okay, these are some pretty fancy gates. This is more like it.

Royal Guard!

I bet those hats keep them pretty toasty warm.

The blue feathers represent something. I can't remember what.

So, we arrived at Buckingham Palace a solid 45-50 minutes before the changing of the guard. We figured we would be there plenty early and get a spot right up next to the action. We figured wrong. There were already hundreds of people lined up at the gates and milling around the circle drive. It was impossible to stand anywhere close to see anything, so we found a statue/monument in the center where we could stand and sort of watch.

Too many people. :(

Our vantage point.

I had to zoom the turtle way in for this shot.

So, we waited. And waited. And the rain started to get heavier. And we waited. More people showed up and more umbrellas popped up. It's a good thing we didn't try to stand behind the people at the fence because we never would have seen anything with all those umbrellas.

And we waited some more.

Brenda had to get her "in the map" photo!

Group shot during a lull in the rain!

Lots of guards everywhere...marching, riding horses, playing instruments. All very fancy.

This guy was coming around and telling everyone about the highly likely event that someone would get pick-pocketed while standing around. He warned us to remove everything from back pockets, turn backpacks around and hold tight to purses.

Hmmm...tourist?!

We had little else to do but watch what the skyrats were doing. This little guy only had one leg. 

Are they starting? Um, I can't be sure.

Sorry for the snap in the middle. I took a photo while I was filming!

These guys were still coming around the corner with lots of pomp and circumstance.

But these guys were marching around up front.

Oh hey, here come these guys.

No flag girls? That's bush league.

See how crowded it was? And you can even hear the rain hitting our umbrellas too.

More guys coming on horseback.

So, at this point, it was raining pretty steadily. And it was cold. And wet. And cold. And very British. There were guards coming from every direction and we had no idea which way to look. The turtle was starting to get a bit water logged, we couldn't really see the changing of the guard, it was so crowded that people were infringing on our personal space, and just in general, we were tired of standing around. So, we left. I think if we had stayed, we would have just gotten crankier at the situation, so it was probably best that we left.

Our final view of the Royal Guards marching.

Piccadilly Circus didn't look that far away, so we opted to walk it, despite the weather out. Fortunately the rain stopped, for the most part, during our walk. Piccadilly Circus is basically just a famous circular intersection originally meant to connect Regent Street with the shopping district of Piccadilly. Now, it's just a giant tourist attraction to say you've been there. (btw: circus's Latin meaning is circle, so it's just a round open space at a street junction.)

Lots of billboards here. Hello tourist central.

Looking down one of the streets. There were lots of schmance shops down that way.

More people.

In Piccadilly!

Oh hey, there's a Ripley's....

Believe it or Not! Sadly, we didn't go in. :(

Phones boxes!

Double decker bus. We didn't get to ride one of these in London, but we would take one out to Whitstable.

Subway stop.

Coca Cola was giving out random free baby cokes to share with friends.

I absolutely needed a picture with this UK enthusiast.

So, our stomachs were pretty much telling us it was time to find a place to eat. And quickly. We weren't really close to the cheaper eating establishments, so it took a few minutes to find a menu within our budget. We ended up walking into TigerTiger, and it looked like a fairly nice place to enjoy some lunch. Or so we thought.

We should have ran when we saw the blinged out menus.

I figured this was as good a time as any to get my British staple of fish and chips. I'm sure most people know that "chips" in the UK/Ireland are actually fries. If you want actual chips, you have to ask for crisps. Very confusing. My fish and chips came with "mushy peas" which ended up tasting as terrible as they sounded.

My meal was wrapped inside a newspaper. Interesting.

It wasn't the best fried fish I've had in my life, but it also wasn't the worst. It was passable and I ate quite a bit of it. Maybe because I was hungry. The mushy peas, however, remained exactly where they were. It was the grossest thing possible. Now, I like peas, but I prefer them whole and not crushed into oblivion. I also like them with a bit of seasoning added. They were completely flavorless and no amount of salt that I added helped one iota.

At this point, we didn't think much about TigerTiger until Nikki returned from the restroom. She told us we each needed to head down because she was pretty sure this place was either a night club or a strip club after hours. The back of the "restaurant" had a stripper pole and the walls down the stairs to the bathrooms were covered in mirrors. The vestibule at the bottom of the stairs before the bathrooms included a disco ball and what appeared to be a coat check room. I guess that's so you still get the club vibe even if you have to tinkle. (We asked Melissa about it later, and she laughed. She said that yes, it's a nightclub, and she didn't even know they served lunch!) We also noticed a particular smell that seemed to emanate from the furniture, the walls, the floor.....it was the smell of sweat, sex and house music. We decided to call it "Creepstar", the new cologne by Heather Jones (remember the guy from yesterday?)

Nikki looking unsure of the vestibule, and Brenda getting her "Bernie" on. Nikki could also be showing her displeasure for "Creepstar" by Heather Jones

Dance party!

Mirrors. Everywhere.

I'm not really sure about these mirrors.

Now that lunch was over, and we had busted a move in the bathrooms, we figured it was time to move on and see the remaining things we had on our list. This was to be our final day in London, and we still had a ton of stuff left to see before we left. Unfortunately, the weather continued to hate us. It was just downright cold, windy and rainy, and incredibly unpleasant. Well played, London.

We hopped on the tube to head over to see the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, but the changing of trains at different stations proved to be tricky this afternoon. We ended up at a stop with random statues that wasn't where we were supposed to be. A few more tries, and we finally made it to where we needed to be. 

Duke of Wellington statue. Totally unplanned.

No idea what this is, but that group of people seemed intrigued.

Back to the tube. Did I mention how unbelievably long the escalators are to just get DOWN to the tube level?

There were theater posters all over the walls.

Enjoying public transportation.

Nikki had a tendency to always want to stand on the left hand side of the escalators. This was frowned upon. If you wanted to stand, you had to stay on the right so people who wanted to walk could walk up the left side. Nikki didn't want to follow the rules, and would end up getting in someone's way on more than one occasion. Londoners in a hurry tend not to be too friendly if you're in their way.

After a few mishaps, we finally made our way to the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. I can't even describe how beautiful this building was. It was seriously impressive, and I was more than a little bummed that tourists couldn't tour the inside. I'll let the pictures do the talking even though they don't really do it justice.

HoP just hanging out on the Thames.

Classic London shot there.

It was raining quite a bit now, so don't mind the water spots. I haven't had time to Photoshop them out.

Looking across the bridge at the London Eye and being bummed again that we didn't get to go up in it.

Silly gooses.

Trying to hold it up. Lame. This works better with the Leaning Tower of Pisa. This just looks ridiculous.

Big Ben...you can't go up in that either!

Perty.

The other side that faces the street.

Winston Churchill statue.

Have I mentioned yet that the weather is S.H.I.T.? Well, it is. In case I didn't make that clear yet. The rain was pretty steady, and it was a brisk wind biting into my rain jacket. At least the jacket did an excellent job of repelling the water. It did not, however, do a good job of keeping my body heat in and the cold out.

Westminster Abbey was right around the corner, but it was covered in construction scaffolds, so we couldn't get very good pictures of it. We had a decision to make about whether or not we went in. Since it cost money, and we still wanted to go into Harrod's later, we decided to skip going inside the abbey. Once again, time and money were deciding factors on what to do. It sucked, but there's only so much time in a day. We headed back underground to take the Tube to Harrod's to see what all the fuss is about.

Westminster Abbey

The Tube station. Surprisingly quite clean and pretty safe feeling.

They don't have Exit signs over there. They have "Way Out" signs.

Mind the Gap! God, we heard that All. The. Time. I guess it helps because some of the trains were a bit farther away from the platform than others.

This is a very iconic graphic associated with London public transportation. Very clean and simple. I dig it.

De train, de train!

We're quite the public transpo veterans now.

Adorbs.

We made it!

It's not that impressive from the outside.

Yeah, Harrod's? Bonkers. Straight up bonkers. As soon as we walked in the doors I was bombarded with so many things. First and foremost, we needed to find a bathroom because we were all about to have a serious problem on our hands. And Harrod's made it nearly impossible to find a damn bathroom. It was like a labyrinth meant to keep you close to the expensive stuff. I'm not sure I can describe to you how quickly my temperament changed from the time we walked in. It's comical now, but at the time, I was about to lose my shit.

First, it was about 92.4 degrees inside. After being bundled up to brave the London weather, I felt like I was back in Mexico as soon as I walked in. My coat seemed to add 20 degrees to my body temperature, and I just wanted it off. Like yesterday. But, because of how my camera and my purse were wrapped around my body, that was easier said than done. I had planned on just derobing as soon as I got into the bathroom, except, we couldn't find a bathroom anywhere. We walked around for nearly 20 minutes, through rooms with purses, clothes, wine, cheeses, watches, jewelry, perfume, you name it, but we couldn't find a damn toilet sign anywhere. I was beyond uncomfortable and all I wanted to do was sit down and take my clothes off. Good grief, is that so much to ask?

We finally found a girl to ask for directions, and wouldn't you know it, we were almost there. I was finally able to empty the bladder and shed my outer layers, and I was like a whole new person. It's amazing how the little things can change your whole persona. After we were all in much better spirits, we headed to the food market and spent about a year looking through all of the tins of jams, jellies, cookies, chocolates, candies, teas, coffees, you name it. The whole place was unbelievably overwhelming. I ended up buying some hot chocolate (which was actually just chocolate shavings that you mix into warm milk - it was called Death by Chocolate), some lemon cookies dipped in chocolate and I split a container of tiny jams with Brenda. I needed zero of what I bought. The allure of Harrod's just got to me, and I couldn't say no. Although Nikki ended up spending way more than I did. She'd come to regret her purchases later in the evening.

We all needed a snack so we decided to each get a pastry from one of the vendors. I opted for a cinnamon roll that turned out to be the worst cinnamon roll I've ever eaten. It was dry almost to the point of being inedible, mostly void of cinnamon and sugar, and the icing wasn't as good as I thought it might be. I was pretty damn disappointed. Someone needs to teach the Brits how to make a good cinnamon roll. Perhaps I should refer them back to one of my blogs.

Nikki purchased a piece of rainbow cake that was 5 or 6 layers of different colored cakes slathered in a rich icing. They even gave it to her in a super pretty box. They didn't, however, give her a fork to eat it with. She had to get back in line and wait another 5 minutes just to get her fork. And, at this point, there was no place to sit down and eat said cake. I was able to eat my cinnamon roll with my hands, and didn't care at all that you weren't supposed to eat your food while standing around. Screw you Harrod's, I'm hungry. Don't give people fresh food options and then not give them anywhere to sit to eat it. D*ck move.

Since she had nowhere to eat her cake, we took off walking around the rest of Harrod's and going up the escalators to see each one of the levels. It was a total of 5 stories, with everything from women's to men's to housewares and everything in between. And all of it was too rich for me. They had ridiculously expensive purses that cost more than my mortgage. No thanks, I'll take my $25 Kohl's bag, thankyouverymuch.

My hands were full of treats, so I didn't take any pictures of the food market. Nikki did manage to snap this one for me.

At the top of the Egyptian escalator.

The ceiling. This place was too much.

I was pretty much done with my Harrod's experience at this point. I couldn't buy anything of substance except for the tiny things I already had tucked away, so there was no point in sticking around. We wanted to pick up a few London souvenirs before we left the city for good, so we headed to one location we knew we'd find some. All those tourist shops sell basically the same stuff and it makes me laugh that they will have 3 or 4 of them lined up in a row. Really? Why do they have so many grouped together?

These guys made Nikki's day. They were playing Irish music on the Tube. :)

It was nearly time for dinner, and we were ready to stop walking for a bit. We had a Jack the Ripper tour scheduled for later in the evening, so we headed to the tube stop we would need for that and started looking around for a place to eat.

Bad idea.

We quickly realized we were not in Kansas anymore. The area we had walked into wasn't exactly the nicest area London had to offer. We didn't feel unsafe, but we also didn't trust any of the establishments we walked by. We tried to figure out what to do, and in the meantime, we stopped at the only place we recognized, a Starbucks, so we could regroup and Nikki could eat her damn cake. She had been carrying it around for over an hour now, and all she wanted to do was eat it. I think it ended up being just okay. Probably not worth carting all over London. Oh, and the Starbucks smelled terrible inside. Not at all like coffee or baked goods, but rather B.O. and grime. Blech.

Since we had time, we hopped back on the tube, and headed back to an area we were more familiar with to grab a bite to eat. We preferred to dine in a more savory neighborhood. When we got off the tube, we asked one guy who looked like he knew what was up where the best place to get food was, and he directed us to the London Stone. We figured it was worth a try.

Old timey font.

Not sure what this was meant to symbolize.

This place was a cross between a man's study and a house of horrors. Weird shit was everywhere on the walls, yet it was full of dark woods and furniture with a very manly feel.

Lots of men were here getting an after work drink.

Lots of weird stuff in cases.

Is that Elvis?

Random skulls.

Nikki ain't scurred.

Beer!!! Mine was in the middle, a Magner's Irish Cider

After perusing the menu, Nikki and I decided to be food twins, and both get lasagna with a salad and garlic bread. Brenda went with a "jacket" or as Americans say: a "baked potato". We should have went with the jacket. That was the absolute worst lasagna I've ever had in my entire life. The plane pasta was better than this was. The noodles were so far past al dente that it was like there weren't any noodles in there at all. It was just mush. The sauce was fairly bland as well, more like tomato water than sauce. It wasn't completely inedible, and since I was starving, I powered through. The "salad" was pretty much one or two leaves of lettuce, a slice of tomato and a slice of cucumber. Someone really needs to teach them what a side salad is over there. The only saving grace was the garlic bread that was surprisingly edible. But, I guess compared to the lasagna, it probably seemed like the best garlic bread on the planet.

I suppose we learned our lesson though. Don't ever order Italian food from an underground pub with skulls all over the walls.

Blech.

The place itself had a pretty cool vibe and was clearly a better pub than a restaurant. We did really enjoy the fact that the bathrooms were hidden behind a secret door. Nikki had gone in search of a toilet early in the night, but couldn't find it to save her life. All she could find was the men's. She finally asked, and they told her she had to push the wall that looked like a bookcase. Clever.

Looks like a simple bookcase, right?

Nope, it's actually the bathroom.

Flat Nate and creepy goblin man?

Leaving the London Stone and the beginning of a long, wet night carrying around Harrod's jams all night.

One final tube trip and we were off to the Whitechapel area for our Jack the Ripper tour. Everyone we talked to that had done it said it was totally worth it. We were pretty excited, but at this point, it had rained nearly all day, and I wasn't looking forward to a rainy night trudging around London. But, we had already paid, and we were determined to see it through. Note to self: next time I take a 2+ hour walking tour around anywhere, don't take a bag full of jams, hot chocolate and cookies. Those weren't fun to carry around all night. But, at least I didn't have as much in my bag as Nikki did.

We met up with our tour group of around 15-20 or so and met our guide, Greg, dressed in traditional bobby gear. As Melissa would day, the "weather was shit" at this point. Absolute shit. The rain wasn't letting up any...just a constant, neverending waterfall from the sky. But, we tried to make the best of it and enjoy hearing about the horrible acts of violence over a century ago.

Greg, our guide.

He was adorable. And he looked strikingly like one of my ex-boyfriends....who was also named Greg...

This is not just a photo of some random building. It has significance to Jack's story...I just can't remember what it was.

Loved his accent too.

Ripper-Vision! We picked this tour specifically because the guides use hand-held projectors to project images onto the walls. These can be old crime scene/mortuary photos of the victims, photos of what the buildings used to look like, or photoshopped images of what an old building looked like placed in a modern setting. It was pretty cool.

Another building of importance.

This street was used to film some scenes in Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter movies. Nerd alert!

This had nothing to do with the tour. I'm not sure what kind of party was going on in there, but these guys were really  enjoying those masks.

Overall, the tour was really cool, and Greg was a great guide. And had the weather been better, we would have made a much better audience. But, given the circumstances, we weren't the most attentive bunch. About 3/4 of the way through the tour, the temperature dropped, and my pant legs were soaked halfway up my calves. In turn, my pants legs had transferred about a pound of water to my socks which migrated from the ankle to the toes, successfully soaking the inside of my shoe. I never thought I'd have that problem with waterproof shoes, but I guess I wasn't thinking about them getting wet from the bloody inside. Wet feet turned into cold feet. Cold feet turned into cranky Heather. I'm not sure if you're getting this, but we were miserable at this point. Finally, two hours after we started, Greg wrapped up the tour (he really was a great guide), and sent us on our merry way. However, he didn't drop us back off at our initial meeting zone (which we knew was very close to a tube station). Nope, we had zero idea where we were, it was dark and rainy, and we weren't exactly in the nicest part of town. He just kind of pointed us in the right direction back to a tube station.

Luckily, I'm fairly handy with directions, and we made it back to the tube station in one piece and without getting accosted on the side of the street. (I'm exaggerating here. It wasn't that bad of a neighborhood. Just wanted to make that clear so my mom and dad don't panic.) We didn't have long to wait for the next train, and we eagerly hopped on to head to our exchange station for the other train to take us back to Blackheath.

Except, it skipped the station we needed.

WTF

We panicked and hopped off at the next station to turn around, thinking we had missed something. We headed back in the direction we had just come from, and again, we passed the station we needed.

FML

This is not good. All we wanted was to get home, get some dry clothes and go to sleep. We stopped to ask an attendant and he told us that the station we needed was closed for the night. It closed at 8pm. Well, that's just lovely. Fortunately, there was a different station that would take us out of town, but it would take a bit of finagling to get through the tube system. Between Brenda and the not-super-helpful attendant, we were finally on our way to Charing Cross station. (I should mention that at this point it would have been nice to have a cell phone handy to call Melissa and Aaron. I should also mention that they had given us an extra cell phone to use in just such emergencies, but Brenda had opted to leave it at home that morning...)

After ANOTHER delay, this one having to either do with a person or a purse on the tracks, we were finally on our way. I'm hoping it was just a purse on the tracks, and that there wasn't actually a person holding up traffic on the tube lines. I can't imagine that would go very well. While we were waiting, Brenda offered us some of her fancy chocolates from Harrod's. Until she opened the package and realized there were less than half the amount she thought. She then rescinded her offer and proceeded to eat a shiny sparkly chocolate right in front of us. Sheesh. How rude.

Eventually we made it back to Blackheath in one piece albeit a soggy one. Because of our long day, none of us wanted to trudge the 15 or so minutes from the train station back to the house, so we paid a few pounds for a cab to take us back up there. Fortunately I was able to direct the cab back to their house, and it was the best money we spent the entire trip. We rolled in a little before midnight, and Melissa had started to worry about where we could possibly be.

Long day.

Even Flat Nate was tired.

The day started out well, but London wasn't nice to us at the end. I guess it knew this was our last day in the city, and it wanted to be memorable for us. Mission accomplished, London.