London, Part 1

This is going to take a while, and multiple posts, so brace yourselves!

My bus left Preston at 6:50AM GMT, Thursday morning. I had no trouble getting there, and the ride was fairly uneventful, but loooong. I slept through Derbyshire, but we stopped in Birmingham and Coventry, and finally arrived (7 hours later) at Victoria Coach Station at 1:50PM. I knew that Victoria coach, train, and tube stations were all in the same general vicinity (how convenient!), so I went to the train station first, to get Mom and Mary's tickets for their visit in a few weeks. It took me about half an hour to get all that straight, but I think I got everything right.

Then I headed down to the tube station. I love the tube. Several friends recommended that I get a tube pass rather than an Oyster Card (it's pay-as-you-go). I used the pass enough that it was totally worth it. Everyone knows that I am not so great with directions and maps, etc, but the underground system in London is easy enough for me to understand, and I'm a pro now. It also helps if you map out exactly where you need to go, what stops, and how to get to your hostel from the stop. Glad I did that. I got to my hostel fine, which was really easy to find. I stayed at Palmer's Lodge, and will definitely stay there again, if/when I go back to London. By the time I got checked in and found my bed, it was 3:30, and not really enough time left to do significant sightseeing. So I decided to go to the British Museum for the rest of afternoon. AMAZING. And--the best part-- ITS FREE.

Rear entrance to the British Museum.

Famous lions outside the British Museum.

There is a ton (literally, I'm sure) of stuff to see there, stuff you see on National Geographic, the History Channel, and in documentaries. Indiana Jones stuff. Mummies, Easter Island statues, statues from the Parthenon (in Greece, NOT Nashville, haha), Roman currency, and the Rosetta Stone. Yes, the actual Rosetta Stone, not the one in Memphis, either. This is one of the best museums in the world, no exaggeration. I could have quite easily spent all day in there.

Easter Island guy.

Room of Enlightenment.

Famous ceiling of the British Museum.

Whoa.

The real deal.

They used to be on the Parthenon in Greece.

The front entrance.

So I went back to the hostel because it was getting dark. More people showed up in my room (14 beds), and I met a few of them. There was one crazy girl from Zimbabwe, who is really into American politics (she watched the inauguration in Zimbabwe!). There were two American girls who were studying in France for the semester, one from Texas and the other from Wisconsin. Another girl I met was from San Francisco, and she'd been in Paris the whole week. She went for UC Santa Barbara for her undergrad. Neither of us had eaten, so we both wandered down the street next to the hostel and found a really neat Italian pizza place. She gave me some great recommendations for Paris and we had some really good pizza. She highly recommends that I go to UC Davis for grad school (as do several family members, lol) and we found each other on Facebook, so now I have proof that I can be sociable when necessary!

The next morning (Friday), I got up and ate the free breakfast in the hostel. Palmer's Lodge is geared toward families and school groups, it seems, so I plunked down smack in the middle of about 20 German thirteen year olds. Grrrrrrrrrreat. For all I know they could have been making fun of the strange American, I had NO CLUE what they were saying. Whatever.

I got an early start, getting on the tube about 8:45AM. My first planned stop were the obvious sightseeing things, which were all in walking distance of the Westminster tube station. I got off the tube, and headed toward the "House of Parliament" exit. They weren't kidding. The exit was smack dab by the House of Parliament. I emerged in the sunlight (I know, right? Sun? In England?) and bam! There was Big Ben! My jaw dropped and remained that way for pretty much the whole day.

View from Westminster Bridge.

Big Ben.

The whole thing from across the Thames.

Queen's Walk along the River Thames.

I walked across the Westminster Bridge and got some more spectacular views of the House of Parliament. The Queen's Walk is a nice path that runs along either side of the Thames. It's been in a bunch of movies (*cough* Love Actually *cough*) and there were lots of runners that morning. I could almost be convinced to take up running if it meant I could run by the River Thames. So I strolled around for a while and saw these bureaucratic-looking buildings a little way from the House of Parliament. I was fairly certain it was Thames House, so I crossed back over and had a look. Indeed! It was the Thames House! Okay. Nobody knows who works in the Thames House do they? Its the headquarters of MI5 and MI6! Like James Bond and...all the spies-turned-Austen-leading-men (Mathew McFadyen, Rupert Penry-Jones, and Richard Armitage. *drools*) from the BBC series Spooks. So I geeked out a little right there, sorry.

Thames House from Westminster Bridge.

Wooo! Thames House!

Visitor's entrance. I was tempted to see if there were tours. But I didn't. Please note all the guys in dark suits. SPIES!!

From the Thames House, I walked back toward the House of Parliament. There was a big, colorful monument commemorating the abolition of slavery in England. And NO mention of William Wilberforce. Humph. Go rent the movie Amazing Grace to understand.

The Buxton Memorial.

I continued along Millbank Street and I saw a short line of people into the House of Parliament. I went to see what it was, and it turns out the House of Commons was in session that day and were holding debates! And the public could watch! In the House of Commons! You know the rest. I went. Big rigamarole of security checks and bag searches and metal detectors, but it was SO COOL. I even got a somewhat official-looking badge. They weren't debating anything earth shattering, but it was an actual debate, support on one side, and opposition on the other. They were very polite, but you could tell each member was passionate about what they were talking about. Of course, there was no photography inside. But the green leather seats really are that ugly color.

Next, I headed towards Westminster Abbey. Jaw-dropping doesn't even cover it. My hobby of cathedral stalking has been taken to new heights. There were free audio guides, which was really helpful because there is SO MUCH to take in in Westminster Abbey. So many famous people buried there. So much symbolism and history. And guess who my narrator was? Jeremy Irons. Yep. He lended a very creepy aura to the Abbey. As if it weren't imposing enough. Anyway, I stopped by all the big effigies and stuff you're supposed to see: Queen Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots' grave (they're buried together; does everyone else see the irony in that?), Poet's Corner (Tennyson, Dickens, Lawerence Olivier, Byron, etc. And a memorial to Shakespeare, who is still at Stratford), the Cloisters, the Chapter House, and of course, Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin's graves (I also find this highly ironic). And for the record, they're both roped off, so there is no way that Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu could have gotten that close. Just saying.

Whoa. The outside.

I'm a rebel and took pictures in the Cloisters.

Outside again.

Once again, I could have spent all day there, and still not done it justice.

After tearing myself away from Westminster Abbey, I went toward Buckingham Palace. I knew the changing of the gaurd took place at 11:30 PM, so I tried to make it in time for that. In fact, I was 10 minutes early. But, lordy, there were at least 500 people there already! So I didn't really see anything. I heard some of it, but there was too many people to understand what was going on. But I have the pictures to prove I was there. :o]

Buckingham Palace + PEOPLE.

A little closer.

Get a load of those gates. Wow.

I had someone take my picture to prove that I was there!

I next walked in the direction of the Cabinet War Rooms and Downing Street.

I think these are the Cabinet War Rooms. Pretty sure.

And that's as close as you can get to the PM.

I then got back on the tube and went to St. Paul's Cathedral. It is vastly different architecturally from Westminster, which is mainly Gothic. St. Paul's is more English Baroque (yes, I just looked that up. Sorry. I really did notice the differences, though!). I went inside a little, but didn't pay admission.

St. Paul's Cathedral.

More St. Paul's.

I might have snuck a picture in the cathedral. Maybe.

St. Paul's was in walking distance of the other stuff I wanted to see that day, so I walked across the Millenium Bridge to Shakespeare's Globe Theater. Although it is a reproduction, it is still quite cool. They weren't having tours in the actual theater, as there was a performance going on (Romeo and Juliet. Go figure.). But I got some souvenirs and pictures.

The Millenium Bridge with the Tate Modern Gallery in the background. The Millenium is a pedestrian only bridge.

The Globe!

I then walked along the Queen's Walk towards the Tower Bridge. Not to be confused with London Bridge or Big Ben. Common mistake.

Tower Bridge!

I think Italian tourists might have taken this one.

The Tower of London came highly recommended from my friends that had already been to London, so that was my final destination for the day. It was great, totally worth the steep admission! They had free tours done by the Yeoman Guard (Beefeaters!), who actually live with their families IN the Tower of London. We learned the sordid, bloody, treacherous history of the Tower of London and got to see the Crown Jewels. The. Crown. Jewels. All of them. Spectacular. And, of course, there was no photography allowed in the rooms with the Jewels. Bummer.

Western Gate to the Tower of London.

More Tower of London. Clearly, not just a tower.

Our own personal Yeoman Guard, Chris. He was hilarious. My favorite quote of the day:

Beefeater: Any Americans in the crowd?

*several cheers*

Beefeater: This all could have been yours if you'd paid your taxes!

Cathedral of St. Peter ad Vincula, where most of the executed people were buried, including St. Thomas More and most of Henry VIII's wives.

Ravens on the Tower Green.

Residences of some of the Yeoman Guard.

View from the Tower Hill tube stop.

As you can tell by the length of this post, I had a loooooooooong day, and my feet were killing me, so I promptly crashed in the hostel. Whew.

I'm baaaaaaaack!

...In Preston, that is.  I had an awesome 4 days in London, I already miss it.  I saw so much, and I definitely want to go back (don't know when, but it's going to happen).  Anyway, I have two large papers that require extensive editing and revision, so the London post is going to be a little slow in coming.  Because I know so many of you are waiting with baited breath at your keyboards for my next post.  At least that's what I tell myself.  I will, however upload the pictures (all 450 of them!) so you can get a preview.  Man, I'm beat!

EDIT: I hate photosharing websites.  Picasa has a storage limit (which I've alreadry reached, big surprise) and Photobucket gets everything out of order.  I'm in the market for a streamlined, free, photosharing website with unlimited upload capacity, so let me know if you know of one!  Also, Flat Stanley arrived while I was gone!  And he's life size, not the little guy I remember!  Whoa!

Upcoming Travels!

Okay, I am way to excited about this weekend's travels.  A CERES sister from home, Jen, is going to be visiting her sister (who is studying in Wales) this weekend in London.  And I'm leaving TOMORROW to meet her.  FOUR days in London.  I am jumping out of my skin I'm so excited.  I'm taking the coach down there (cheaper than the train, but a longer trip. whatever.), at 6:50AM from the bus station here in Preston.  I'll be getting in late-ish on Sunday, so expect a rather lengthy post sometime after that.  I have this master list of everything I want to see in London, and I'm pretty certain there is NO WAY I can get it all done, but I'm going to try my hardest, dang it.  Wish me luck! :o]

Oh, and for everyone out there doing the math (*cough* Alvin *cough*), YES, I will be skipping class on Thursday.  My professor doesn't take attendance anyway, and my friend is getting the notes for me.  So there.

This weekend

A few things:

*I'm not traveling anywhere this weekend because I've got two nasty essays to write (one about US foreign policy 1910-1929 and another about local food systems. Joy.), a presentation to get done and a Spanish podcast to summarize. They're due right after I get back from London, so I want to get them out of the way. This is just to clear up any lingering doubts that some people may have that I'm actually going to school. Sorry there won't be any thrilling escapades to report. I might go see "The Young Victoria," though, it came out yesterday in the UK.

*I finally, finally, FINALLY switched my photo hosting website. I finally got Picasa to work on my computer (no idea why it hadn't been working...). You can view all 206 pictures from Belgium here. I'll work on getting the rest from this semester up this weekend, so they'll all be in the same place. EDIT: Got 'em all up. It didn't take as long as I thought! Check it out here. I've even included some never-before-seen pictures of Preston (ha, they're just the ones that didn't make it to the blog.).

Ok, that's all.

Thanks...I mean, Gracias...no, wait. CRAP. Merci beaucoup!

Before I get to Brussels, let me tell you about the night before, Thursday night. My new friend, Aubrey is a member of the Christian Union here at UCLan, and she invited a bunch of us to a free dinner they were putting on. I don't pass up free food, and neither does Jori, lol. So we all sat a table with people we didn't know and they quizzed us about life in America (I didn't know it was so fascinating). We covered school systems and where we all lived. I knew Aubrey was from Missouri, but I didn't know she was only half an hour from Kansas City. I made the mistake of mentioning that I had been to KC recently for the American Royal (she had no idea what that was). All of the British people at the table pounced on it. What in heaven's name is the American Royal (I suppose this sounds oxymoronic, American + Royal...)? Well, I explained, its a livestock show. Livestock? Yes, livestock. Sighing, I explained that in the US, I'm an animal science major. No, I don't want to be a vet. Well, what do you want to do, then? Research, probably. You mean animal testing? *Facepalm* This is why I hate explaining myself over here. It's opens the door to awkward questions and even more awkward looks.

Apparently word got around that there were three Americans in the room. A group several tables over set out to name all 50 states, if we could name three counties in England. I was actually quite impressed, they got about 43! However, they spelled Massachusetts horrendously wrong and thought Columbia was a state. Of course, the counties were a cinch, I can name about 8 (Wanna see? Derbyshire [Mr. Darcy], Yorkshire [Brönte sisters, pigs], Cheshire [cats, pigs], Hampshire [sheep, pigs], Dorset [sheep], Berkshire [pigs], Lancashire [where I'm at now...], and Hartfordshire [Elizabeth Bennet]. Aren't you impressed?).

Anyway, I finally got to bed that night. We got up bright and early, trudged to the rail station and got to Manchester Airport with no problem. We made our flight in plenty of time and got to Brussels about 11AM (they're GMT +1, an hour ahead of England). We flew with RyanAir, a European discount airline. Discount airlines don't usually use the main airport in the city, its typically a regional airport, farther away from the city itself. This is how they rip you off. Charleroi Airport (the one we flew into) is a 45 minute coach ride into the city of Brussels. It cost 13 euros to use the coach one way. Good grief. We grudgingly paid this (we couldn't very well walk, after all), and got to the Gare du Midi station on the south end of Brussels. I was armed with a map I got at the aiport and we set off in search of our hostel, on the north end of the city. Katie was under the impression that we would forfeit our beds if we showed up past noon. I was skeptical, but we decided to attempt the Brussels Metro system in favor of walking to the other side of town. Fortunately, its really cheap and we found a very nice woman at the ticket station that spoke English and directed us to where we needed to go.

We got to the hostel fine, after realizing that all the street signs, I mean ALL of them, are in both French and Flemish (or German, I'm not positive). We dropped our backpacks off and set out in search of the Grand Place (creative, I know), which is the main square in the heart of the city. Along the way, we found the Place du Martyrs (Martyr Plaza, rougly).

Place du Martyrs

Kinda a crappy day for sight-seeing, but welcome to Northern Europe.

The Grand Place is reputed to be one of the most beautiful squares in all of Europe. It doesn't disappoint in terms of scale and oppulence.

We were really hungry by then, so we looked for somewhere to eat nearby. Europe is handy because most places post their menu with prices outside, so you can decide if you want to eat there or not. We managed to find a cafe close by. So we got inside, had a closer look at the menu and it was ALL IN FRENCH. Not that I was surprised, but I thought being halfway fluent in another Romance language would help. Nope. Not at all. So we cast our fate to the winds and ordered in French. I wound up with a ham and cheese pannini thing (jambon et fromage), which was quite good, and warm wine (vin chaud) which was gross. Belgium doesn't have the smoking ban that the UK does, so it was VERY smokey in the restaurant. And every. single. person. had a beer. No kidding.

After we finished up, we walked around the Grand Place some more and found a store solely dedicated to BEER, lots and lots of beer.

A girl I met Thursday night recommended I try a raspberry beer, and assured me it was "quite lovely." I got some. It wasn't. We continued to walk around the city centre-ish area. We found a waffle vendor, and I got a waffle with chocolate syrup.

YUM!

The Grand Place is famous for it's incredibly intricate façades. Have a look at this:

Behind the Grand Place.

The whole place is cobblestone! Everywhere!

There is a really great shopping center near the Grand Place. It has a lot of higher end stores, but also chocolateries and lace stores. Brussels is famous for its lace, but I had no idea what to get as a souvenir. So I didn't get any. By this time, it was about 3ish and the combination of walking a lot and getting up really early prompted us to go back to the hostel for a nap. We got out again around 5 to get something to eat. Again, we cast our fate to the winds and ordered in French again. I got a ham sandwich with pesto (only it didn't have pesto...odd).

We did manage to see the Manneken Pis Friday. The picture is self explanatory.

Don't ask me why this is a cultural landmark. Totally underwhelming.

Katie and I had been talking about how we were going to get to the airport on Sunday morning. As far as we could tell, the coach that got us into Brussels started running at 8:30 AM, which wouldn't work because our flight left at 7:20. So we decided we would cancel our reservation at the hostel for Saturday, go to the airport the night before and hang out/doze off until our flight the next morning. We got back from dinner and told the lady at the desk our predicament and she told us that we were insane. Well, not in so many words. Apparently the coach left at 4:30AM and would get us to the airport in plenty of time. So she ordered us a cab to get us to the station at 4AM and we got to sleep in a decent bed Saturday night. YAY!

We got up fairly early Saturday morning to begin our full day of Brussels. The hostel had a free, if spartan, breakfast and we partook of that before we started our sight seeing. I figured out that it would be easiest if we started on the south end of Brussels and moseyed along to the north end throughout the day. Because we had conquered the Belgian Metro system the day before, we took it to the Louiza station, just outside the Palais de Justice, which is where we officially began. The Palais de Jusice is the Law Courts of Belgium. It is supposedly the largest secular building constructed in the 19th century. It is rather huge, but currently undergoing renovations, so there was a lot of scaffolding in the way.

Neat view of the city from the Palais de Justice.

It was totally open, no one inside. Lots of grafitti on some of the stone.

The Palais de Justice is a short walk from the Royal Palace (the Belgian royal family's "official" residence, but not their regular residence, go figure). So we walked there next, and to the large gardens there.

Impressive, huh?

Our next stop was St. Michael's Cathedral. They began to build it in 1305 and finished up in the 1500s some time.

Now THAT is what I call an altar.

St. Michael himself killing a lizard of some kind.

We made our way back towards the city centre and found what I had been looking for all along:

TO DIE FOR.

Need I say more? I will anyway: they were EXPENSIVE. But I enjoyed every bite.

Mission accomplished.

Belgium is big on their comics (dunno why...). There was something comic-related going on, but neither Katie nor I could figure out what.

We went back to the beer store and as I wanted to bring back some stuff for my college friends (hahahahahaha). Actually, just Leeann. She had requested a Belgian beer. I had quite a time explaining that I wanted a wheat beer to the woman in the store. Eventually we figured it out and I got what I wanted.

We got back to the hostel and crashed. We had an early start, after all. We got to the airport without incident. And then we got to security. I had a nasty feeling that the beer wasn't going to make it through. It didn't. The security gaurd told me that I could go back into the lobby and drink it (it was 6AM, mind you) and keep the bottle if I wanted. In the end, he dumped it out (though I'm not entirely convinced HE didn't go into the lobby and drink it himself) and gave me the bottle. I found the duty-free store past security, but they didn't have the brand I wanted. I think I can find it over here though. Not the same, though!

We made it back to Preston without incident, though we were (and still are) tired.

We decided that there isn't enough to do in Brussels to keep us occupied for a solid two days, but it was interesting nonetheless. We saw everything we wanted to see, had some great food, and even learned a teensy bit of French.

I'm having a horrendous time uploading all the pictures to photobucket. I'm working on switching them over to something else, I'll let you all know when that is!