...a rather naive American's view of London

After what seemed like two days of weary traveling, we arrived in London Gatwick Airport. First impression: "Ew, people are allowed to SMOKE in the aiport?" Then, in the restroom, I discovered a fly-- yes, a fly-- pressed in between the two plies of my toilet paper. The other semi-interesting thing that happened was that a girl asked me to watch her bags as she went in the bathroom... I must look trustworthy or something.

We took the half hour train ride from LGW to Victoria Station, where the most intriguing sights were green grass in January and a surprising profusion of hatchbacked cars. When we got to Victoria, we briefly considered taking the tube (that's British for subway), but it was really crowded (~9 am) and we were tired (our bodies thought it was ~3 am), so we stood in line for a taxi. Oh, we stood in a queueue for a taxi. We wasted the rest of the day sleeping after checking in to our bed and breakfast. Description of the room: very dinky and small. I have never seen a bathroom so tiny (to give them credit, this place was built before indoor plumbing, so it was an add-on). The toilet takes about four or five flushes to handle one wad of tp. It's at least semi-clean, and not so bad that we'll check out ahead of time.

Free breakfast the next day included eggs and bacon, which looks suspiciously like ham. We took the Big Bus tour (after the Original Bus Tour shafted us) all around. We got out at St. Paul's Cathedral (amazing gold inlay- wow) and the Tower of London. At Mark's insistence, we ate at McDonald's ("but I've eaten at McDonald's in Rome AND Paris!"). I didn't mind after I got a Smurf in my Happy Meal. I thought Smurfs were dead! Also of note was the 'McBacon Roll' with 'special brown sauce'. The Tower was really cool-- it's actually about eight towers real close to each other. England has executed a lot of people (the Beefeater told me). We saw the crown jewels of England, which were marginally better than the copies we saw at the House on the Rock, but a lot better guarded. We took a boat tour to Big Ben, where Mark was happy to get some really fly pictures. After dinner, we decided to go to an internet cafe, as the true nerds that we are. Lesson of the day: the little silver coin that looks like a dime is 5 pence, not 10.

above written 6 Jan 2000

As we were leaving the internet cafe, the owner, an Indian man, chatted with us. We spent the rest of the evening planning our sight seeing.

Eggs and bacon for breakfast again, this time with dire consequences. We*planned* to take a walking tour of 'Soho in the Morning', but Jen's intestines rebelled, so we spent the morning in the British Museum. We saw mummies, sarcophagi, and stolen pieces from the Parthenon. We also saw the prototype for the Joe Louis fist in red granite from a big, nay, colossal statue. Additionally, we saw a replica of the Rosetta Stone ( the real one was a couple of rooms away, but it cost 4 pounds to get in). We thought maybe they had King Tut, but it turns out they don't. Where the heck is King Tut?

Jen was exhausted from her cold (damn international airplanes with their filth and disease), so we took a taxi back to the hotel where we both slept for an hour. Mark went out with his cameras to the Parliament area and saw, on the way: one Mini-Cooper, a bitchin' Antiques store, the Ritz, a paparazzi stakeout, and black swans in front of Buckingham Palace (must mean that she's in). Jen slept. Then we went to the mall, where we ate at some Louisiana-style restaurant. Mark bought socks for him and Markus, passing up the ones that said 'whiffy bum'.

above written on 7 January 2000

Slept in until 10 on Saturday. Oops. We quickly got ready and took the underground to Kensington Palace, where Queen Victoria was born and Princess Di used to live. They had these cool audio things that were sort of like cell phones on steroids. We saw some of HRH's and Di's dresses, as well as some kickass receiving rooms. Finishing the tour, we walked on through the park to get to some museums. One the way, there was this massive monument to Prince Albert. Then it was time for some V & A action-- Victoria and Albert Museum, that is. While there, we saw gargantuan plaster reproductions of things the British weren't able to outright steal, such as David (both Michaelangelo and Donatello varieties) and Trajan's Column. Additionally, we viewed some Rodin sculptures (real), the office Frank Lloyd Wright built for Kaufmann of Kaufmann's Department Stores, swingin' photos from the 1960's, and a display of clothing from the 1700's to the present. Next we walked up the street to Harrod's, the big store owned by that Fayed dude. There's actually a little memorial in there to Dodi and Di. Otherwise, the store was a zoo, filled with people. They give out maps in there, for crying out loud. After briefly looking for a cardigan for Mark's dad, we left. We took the Underground to Piccadilly Circus and then walked all the way up Regent Street to the Regent's Park Underground station. It's quite a walk. We meant to find some place to eat along Regent, but couldn't, so we ate at a pizza place a block from our hotel. Exhausted from all that walking, we went to bed ~9 (on a Saturday night!). But Jen's cold woke her up in the middle of the night, for the second night in a row. Must find something to knock me out for the entire night...

A few words on London/British culture as experienced thus far: I must commend Londoners on their smashing style of dressing. I've seen so many women wearing black leather calf-length boots that I vow to wear mine all the time when we get back. We haven't seen very many people in tennis shoes. Also very stylish are the long black wool coats. It's too bad Americans don't dress so nicely.

One things that has surprised me are the number of foreign people here. I guess it's not so surprising to see French, Spanish, and German guides in the museums since those countries are so dang close. There are also quite a few Indians and people speaking languages I can't identify. I'm not saying this is bad; I guess I just expected London would be full of men wearing tweed suits saying "I say, old chap."

Other little weirdnesses of note: Every store here has a sale advertised in the window. Our tour guide on the bus, who is British, said something that Londoners love a sale. Even *McDonald's* advertised a sale. Now that's scary. Also, there are a bunch of signs on buildings saying 'TO LET.' Every time I see one of those, I think that it says 'TOILET' and the 'I' fell off.

Sunday: After a second late start, we tubed down to the National Portrait Gallery. Unfortunately, they did not have the Vivien Leigh portrait on display, but I was able to buy two postcards of it, so that was OK. We did some rounds in the National Gallery. I think we got up to the 1600's paintings. We'll have to finish it tomorrow. We left to go meet our London Walking tour of Westminster. Of note was that Parliament is really Westminster Palace and that the queen can move in there if she feels like it. We also learned that Henry VIII's stomach exploded after he died (supposedly from gases from anthrax-- will have to look this up when I get back). We shivered through the rest of the tour, then ate at a real English pub, where Mark had fish and chips and a hard cider. We decided to skip out on the Jack the Ripper evening tour because it was too darn cold, opting for laundry and internet instead.

above written on 9 January 2000

Monday: We slept in late yet again, getting to Madame Tussaud's at noon. The wax figures were really cool and very realistic (so much we almost felt rude standing close to them). It was surprising just how close they let you get to some of them. Some of our favorites were: Mr. T, Yassir Arafat, Saddam Hussein, Einstein, and Napolean. We then caught the tube to the Courtauld Institute, a smallish museum that holds some really kickass paintings such as "Bar at the Folies-Bergere". Next, we finished off the National Gallery just before they closed. We topped the evening off with Hard Rock Cafe. British food sucks so much we've decided to stick to American as much as we can. (Jen yacked her pub food up the other night.)

Tuesday: We actually got up early! We had our butts out at the bus at 8 am for the Stonehenge/Bath tour. Fortunately, we got to sleep on the bus, which was aided by our extremely boring tour guide, Gerhard Marx. We drove through some beautiful countryside and some of Bath itself before taking an hour-long tour of the Roman baths. The spring there was 116 degrees Fahrenheit and smelled pretty bad. We ate at a Baskin-Robbins, but didn't get to do much else in Bath besides popping into their Gothic cathedral. Back on the bus to Stonehenge, where we saw this white stone horse thing carved into the side of a hill, the Wilshire Horse. We were surprised at how close Stonehenge is to the highway. We took some pictures, but as it was fricking freezing, we shoved our way past some annoying American high school students into the warm and toasty gift shop. There Jen was delighted to find the most cheesy Stonehenge souvenir: a small plastic garbage can pencil sharpener, complete with glitter green and gold Stonehenge logo. We almost bought the frisbee. We slept on the way back to London. Did we mention that our tour guide was boring?

Back in London, we ate dinner at Roi du Burger (Burger King) and then hopped over to the Internet cafe for an update and e-mail fix.

Next update will probably not be until we arrive back in the US.

above written on 11 January 2000

We wussed out and just had to check our e-mail again before leaving. Today we got up at a semi-decent time and went straight to the post office, where we hope we got the postage right on our postcards. Then we ate at this really cool place called Luscious, whose motto is 'low fat, high caffeine.' This is exactly what Jen needs. We hopped on the tube to the Tate gallery, which was kinda EH compared to the other museums. The highlight was seeing them move a big JMW Turner painting on this rolly thing to foam bricks in the next room. They then told us to get outta there, but in a more polite British way. Right.

We walked up to the Westminster Cathedral (NOT Abbey), which most noticeably had a black brick ceiling except for a few rooms which were brilliantly mosaiced in gold. I don't think they're done with it yet. The outside is magnificent, with a Byzantine style of red brick and white stripes. We walked on to Buckingham Palace, of which we were most underwhelmed. Westminster Abbey was next on the list. It was like an indoor cemetary and Who's Who of British history. There are a ton of rich people who paid large sums of money on these massive memorials several hundred years ago, and now nobody cares about who they are. Next we tubed up to Regent and Oxford Streets for some shopping. We found some Doc Marten's for Mark's sister Mary as well as a black beany hat for Mark. Jen is still tweed skirt-less, but oh, well. Dinner at McDonald's because that's all we could afford (though Jen got another Smurf). We pre-checked out of the hotel so we can leave at the asscrack of dawn tomorrow. If all goes well, we should be back in the States around 3-4 and back in Madison around 9 pm on Thursday. I hope they don't feed us crappy British food on the airplane.

above was written on 13 January 2000