Roseyland

Click here to read all of my London & Paris trip posts in proper order.

Are you excited? Today is the day we take the train through the chunnel to Paris. I have been fascinated with the chunnel since high school when I saw a documentary about its construction. This train ride was one of the things I was looking forward to most on this trip. Turns out, it was a little anti-climatic, but still cool. Here is St. Pancras station in London, where you catch the Eurostar. A nice thing about this station is that getting through security is pretty quick. We showed up an hour before our train, but I think we would have been fine with 30 minutes. Another nice thing about this station is that you can buy Paris Museum cards and Metro tickets here. That way you are ready to go when you arrive in Paris. My aunt and I each bought a 4-day museum card and 10 individual Metro tickets. This turned out to be almost perfect. The museum card gets you free admission to most of the museums and attractions in London (except the Eiffel Tower). It’s debatable whether or not the museum card is worth it money wise. It probably won’t save you that much, unless you are a very aggressive sightseer. The museum card is very convenient though, because you don’t have to stand in line to buy tickets. You do still have to stand in the security lines unfortuanatly. All in all, I would buy the museum card again, but buy it in Paris (or London). There are services that will send you the card in the US or have it waiting for you in your hotel, but they charge surcharge that sort of negates the value of the museum card (in my opinion). Also, I wouldn’t bother with the unlimited use metro pass. It is unlikely that you will ride the metro enough for it to be worth it. Okay, enough advice, let’s get on the train.

This is a picture of the seats on the train across from us. One nice thing about train travel is that first class is just a little more money, so I went for first class tickets. It’s only a slightly large seat, but they serve you a meal which was much better than airplane food. I also liked that they had so many different seating arrangements. Four people could sit around a common table, and two people can sit side by side, or facing each other across a table.

Two and half hours later, we were in Paris. I didn’t even notice when we went through the chunnel. I thought it was just some random tunnel, and then we came out and my cell phone told me I was in France. Below is a picture of the Eurostar train in the Gare du Nord in Paris. I was kind of shocked that when we got off the train we didn’t have to go through customs or anything, we just walked right into Paris. I have to take a quick moment to say that the train travel experience was so much better than the air travel experience. You can show up 30 minutes before your train departs, your luggage stays with you, there is more room to walk around on the train, the food is better, and when you arrive you just get off the train and go (no waiting for luggage). I would love to be able to take a train like this to Chicago or Memphis. Okay, I’m done. Oh wait, one more thing. In Europe at the airports and train stations, you get all these random people coming up to you asking you if you need a taxi. Do not take a taxi from these people, only take taxis from the official taxi stand areas.

Right across the street from our hotel we had a McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken. I knew McDonald’s was everywhere, but I was a little surprised to see a KFC.

We had lunch at McDonald’s, because I get a strange kick out of eating at a foreign McDonald’s. The picture below is from inside the McDonald’s, you can click on it for a larger version. I love the way the menu says “Notre menu Golden Best Of”, Notre means our, so I guess they are saying “Our menu Golden Best Of”. It’s like english words with French grammar. In case you are wondering, I had the Royal with Cheese.

After lunch, we took the Metro to Montmartre and headed to Sacre Coeur (pronounced Sack-ra Ker, I think) which is a church at the highest point in Paris. These are the steps we hand to climb to reach Sacre Coeur with the city of Paris in the background. This was the first thing I really saw in Paris, and it was a bit of a culture shock. Paris is filled with gypsies and immigrants. Many of these immigrants can’t work legally, so they try to sell things to tourist. Some of them can be very pushy. At the bottom of these steps, one guy even poked me in the chest when I ignored him. It’s a good thing I don’t have anger management issues, or I probably would have been in a brawl with an illegal immigrant within my first hours of being in Paris. Now wouldn’t that be a great story. Don’t let that scare you away though, this was the only semi-bad experience I had with these people.

This is the Basilica Sacre Coeur at the top of the steps. I’ve heard that this is one church in Paris where they strongly enforce the no pictures inside rule, so I didn’t risk it. Notice the guy singing on the steps. This was a very cool environment. The guy was singing Video Killed the Radio Star and the crowd was singing along in about 10 different accents. Also, the pushy immigrants did not hang out near the church, so that was nice too. You can see a YouTube video of a guy singing on the steps here.

Here is another view of the crowd at Sacre Coeur with Paris in the background.

This is the Eiffel Tower in the distance as seen from Sacre Coeur.

This is the Moulin Rouge, it’s not far from Sacre Coeur, so I had to take a picture on our way back to the metro. I actually would have liked to see a show here, just because it is *the* Moulin Rouge, but I was with my aunt, so um, no.

Next we took the Metro to the Arc de Triomphe. I think the Arc was commissioned by Napoleon, and it is a tribute to France’s war veterans. Underneath it is France’s Tomb of the Unknown Solider. The Arc is also much bigger than it looks in this picture, and you can climb to the top.

These are the steps to the top of the Arc. There are 284 of them. According to Wikipedia, you can also take an elevator. Huh, that would have been nice to know.

This is a view of Paris from the top of the Arc de Triomphe. In the distance, you can see Sacre Coeur, which is where we just were.

This is the Champs-Elysees, which is pronounced Shaams-el-ee-saay. If you say champs elsie, people will hate you. Anyways, the Champs-Elysees is one of the most famous streets in the world that I didn’t know existed until I went to Paris. There were lots of shops and restaurants with outdoor seating on this street. The shops I saw included Louis Vuitton, Cartier, a Disney Store, and a Virgin Megastore. We went inside the Virgin Megastore, and the Michael Jackson memorial was playing on all the TVs. Michael’s daughter Paris was speaking, which confused the hell out of me because the TV kept saying that Paris was speaking, but I was in Paris, and that made no sense. Eventually I figured it out.

Here is the Eiffel Tower from the top of the Arc de Triomphe. It’s tall.

Here is the viewing platform on top of the Arc. It’s weird, because from below you can’t even tell that there are people on the Arc, but there are actually a lot of people on the Arc.

The is the Tomb of the Unknown Solider under the Arc de Triomphe with the Champs-Elysees in the background.

As much as you plan and plan and plan, no trip goes perfectly. I got a lot of good advice from @Susanisk who lived in paris for like 6 months or something. One of her pieces of advice that I was most looking forward to taking was eating at Le Relais de Venise, which serves steak and frites (french fries) with a sauce that is supposed to be to die for. Here is a picture. After the Arc de Triomphe, we walked all the way to Porte Maillot to eat at Le Relais de Venise. When we got there, there was a sign on the door saying that they were closed the entire month of July for remodeling. Ironically, they have a London location, but I wanted to eat at the original in Paris. Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to go back to Paris someday. Do you want to come with me? I’ll buy dinner. Hell, I’ll even spring for wine.

After the dinner fail, we walked back to the Arc de Triomphe and down the Champs-Elysees to Avenue Montaigne. Avenue Montaigne is a street filled with very fancy and expensive stores of designers like Dior, Chanel, Ralph Lauren, and Jimmy Choo. In other words, I could care less about Avenue Montaigne. Here is a picture of Dior.

The Eiffel Tower has a way of popping up everywhere in Paris. Here it is as seen from the end of Avenue Montaigne.

This is the Flame of Liberty. It was given to France by the International Herald Tribune (a english language international newspaper published in Paris) as a symbol of French-American friendship. Thank you Wikipedia. It is also located over the Pont de l’Alma tunnel which is the site of Princess Diana’s fatal car crash. Many people think the Flame of Liberty is a memorial to Princess Di, but it’s not.

At this point, it started to rain so we decided to head back towards our hotel and look for dinner. We ended up eating at Pizza Pino. Pizza in Paris seemed a little odd, but my goat cheese and artichoke heart pizza was delicious. After dinner, we walked by a protest. These are North Africans protesting for the right to work legally in France, or something like that.

This ends another long day. Tomorrow we take a boat trip on the Seine, visit the Louvre, and walk under the Eiffel tower. You can see more pictures and a few videos from my trip here.

Click here to read all of my London & Paris trip posts in proper order.

Day 4 is the last day in London. You have of course read days 1 through 3 by now, if not, you should go do that (scroll down). We have a lot to do today, because who knows, I may never make it back to London. We start the day at St. Paul’s Cathedral. St. Paul’s has been the site of many Royal weddings (Prince Charles and Lady Di), memorials, and the feed the birds scene from Mary Poppins. The cathedral opens at 8:30. My hope was that we could see it and make it to Buckingham Palace by 10:30 for the changing of the guards. We made it by 8:30, but one of the main attractions of St. Paul’s is climbing 530 steps to the Golden Gallery for a bird’s eye view of London, and the steps don’t open until 9:30. I pretty much had to run up the steps, if I had been 10 years older, I think I would have died. This is St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Here are the front steps of the cathedral. I had tuppence, but unfortunately the bird lady was nowhere to be found. It must have been her day off.

You aren’t allowed to take pictures inside, but it is very pretty. If you walk up 257 steps, you can reach the Whispering Gallery, which is 30 meters above the cathedral floor on the inside of the dome. If you put your ear up against the wall here, you can hear someone whispering on the other side of the gallery. I was by myself, so I just listened to other people’s whispers. They didn’t say anything exciting. I should mention that these first set of steps are pretty easy to climb. They are big broad steps with lot’s of room to pass people, and they are only about half the height of a normal step. So if you go to St. Paul’s, you should at least be able to climb to the Whispering Gallery. If you want to keep going, you can climb another 119 steps to the Stone Gallery. These steps are smaller and steeper, but there are places to rest along the way. The Stone Gallery is a ring outside the dome where you can take pictures of the London skyline. Here is a picture of the Stone Gallery.

If you are really tough, you can climb another 154 steps to the Golden Gallery. These steps are small and steep like the previous set of steps to the Stone Gallery. The Golden Gallery is another outdoor viewing platform like the Stone Gallery, but much higher and smaller. This is a picture of the Golden Gallery.

Here is a view of London from the Golden Gallery near the top of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Notice the London Eye in the distance.

After rushing up and down the steps at St. Paul’s, we had to hurry and get to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guards. The changing of the guards starts at 11:30, but most guidebooks recommend arriving at 10:30 to get a decent viewing location. Here are the people waiting for the changing of the guard on the Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace.

This is the crowd in front of Buckingham Palace. This is almost an hour before the ceremony is supposed to start.

I took this guy’s picture by complete accident. I didn’t even realize it until I looked at my pictures that night. It’s an asian dude wearing a Wendy’s biggie athletic department t-shirt. I find this hillarious. I wonder what that says about me? Let’s not think about it.

Okay, here is a slightly creepy confession. I like taking pictures of people. Especially candid shots of interesting people. Unlike the last picture, I took this one on purpose. I was completely intrigued by these two girls in their head scarfs. This picture sums up a big part of the London experience for me. You are in this city filled with tourist from all over the world. On one hand, these tourist come from vastly different cultures, but on the other hand, they are doing all the same touristy stuff you are. These two girls for example were acting exactly like any two american girls would on vacation, but their head scarfs were this constant reminder that they were from a much different part of the world. Stuff like this just sucks me in for some reason. I also saw two women (I’m assuming) eating dinner at an outdoor cafe wearing full burqas. I so wanted to take their picture, but I couldn’t find a way to do it discreetly.

Okay, the moment you have been waiting for. The reason I flew 4000 miles from home. The changing of the guard!!! was canceled because of rain. That sucks. I did get this picture of the guard retreating from the rain though. Pussies.

After the failed attempt at seeing the changing of the guard, we went to the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms. I didn’t take any pictures of this. You were allowed to take pictures inside the museum, but I was so used to not being allowed to take pictures inside that I just didn’t. Anyways, the Cabinet War Rooms were very cool. They are the rooms from which Churchill and his war cabinet worked during World War II. They are underground and covered by a thick concrete and steel slab so that they could survive the air raids. The rooms have been refurbished to look exactly like they did during WWII. After the Churchill Museum, we stopped by 10 Downing Street to take a picture. This is where the Prime Minister of the UK lives. I have to say, it’s not quite as impressive as the White House.

Next, we took a river cruise on the Thames, pronounced “tims”. In England, Thames = tims and Berkeley = Barkley. I think the English need to learn to speak english. Here is the Millennium Bridge from the river cruise.

This is the HMS Belfast. The Belfast is a British war ship used in World War II. Now it is a museum, but we didn’t go inside. Maybe next time.

Here is the Tower Bridge with the drawbridge up. I hear the Tower Bridge is haunted, but I don’t believe in ghost.

After the river cruise, we walked around a bit to see some odds and ends. This is St. Paul’s again from the Millennium bridge.

Here is Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Actually it’s a very accurate reconstruction of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. If we had been in London longer, I would loved to have seen a show here.

This is Regent Street. It’s a major shopping street in London, a lot like Michigan Avenue in Chicago. I went to the Apple Store here. It was the biggest Apple Store I have ever been in.

This is a picture of a man in a turban and sunglasses on a platform in Trafalgar (pronounced tra-fall-ger, I think) Square. I have no idea why he was there or what he was doing. There was a crowd around him, and every once in a while he would try to throw a paper airplane into the crowd, but they all got trapped in the net below him. This is one of those times in life where you look and say, “Well that makes perfect sense”, and move on. If by chance you have any idea who this guy is or what he is doing, please leave a comment, I would love to know.

Another picture of Trafalgar square. I guess I should mention that this is a square in central London. It’s pretty much exactly what it looks like.

This is St. James Palace. Nobody lives in St. James Palace today, but it is still officially considered the “senior-most” royal palace. Whatever that means. St. James is part of a complex of buildings where members of the Royal Family do live today. Prince Charles, Harry, and William live in a big mansion just on the other side of St. James’s Palace. Buckingham Palace is also nearby.

I keep telling myself that I am going to limit these post to 10 pictures, but I am failing miserably. Did I mention that I took over 1300 pictures during my 9 day trip? You can see 400 of those pictures and a few videos in my flickr set here. So this was my last day in London. Tomorrow we ride the Eurostar train through the chunnel to Paris. It was kind of sad to leave London. It’s such an amazing city, and just as I was starting to figure it all out, it was time to leave. I’m sure Paris will be fun too though, tune in tomorrow to find out

Click here to read all of my London & Paris trip posts in proper order.

Today is day 3, today we go to Windsor, Stonehenge, and Bath. If you missed days 1 and 2, you must scroll down and read them first. We have a lot to see today, and I simply don’t have time to stop and explain things that you missed. When planning this trip, I had a big internal debate over whether or not to take any day trips outside of London and/or Paris. On one hand we only had 3 full days in each city, which does not feel like nearly enough time to truly experience a city, but on the other hand, it would be nice to see more of each country than just a big city. After a lot of online research, I decided that a trip outside of London would be fun, so I signed us up for a Golden Tours bus tour of Windsor, Stonehenge, and Bath.

The bus was going to pick us up at our hotel at 7:45 in the morning. That’s early, but before the bus arrived, we walked down to a cafe to get coffee and something to eat. On the way back to wait for the bus, we walked by an Iran Air office. Not something you see in the US. In the window was a model of an Iran Air concord. WTF? Everyone knows Air France and British Airways were the only airlines to ever fly the concord, and on top of that, no airline flies the concord today. So what is Iran Air trying to prove with this model? Silly Iran.

We got on the bus with about 50 other people and headed off to Windsor while the guide told us all sorts of things about the English countryside that I don’t remember. Upon arriving in Windsor we went straight to Windsor castle. See the guys in the funny costumes? They are Military Knights of Windsor and it’s Sunday, so they are going to church in St. George’s Chapel.

Another picture inside Windsor castle. The Queen’s private apartment is in the tower in the distance and on the right. The state apartments are on the left. We were able to tour the state apartments, which are basically a bunch of very fancy rooms used for formal banquets and things. If you remember, they were damaged by fire a few years ago, but they have been rebuilt and are very impressive. Unfortunately, you can’t take pictures of them.

More Windsor castle.

See the flag in this picture? That means that the Queen is in residence. I would have stopped in and said hi, but our tour guide had us on a tight schedule.

Here is a picture just outside of Windsor castle of the village of Windsor. There are lots of small shops and restaurants that I would have loved to explore, but we had to get back to the bus.

This is the outside of Windsor castle.

On the way back to the bus, there is this cool covered area with cafes that have outdoor seating. It reminded me a little of Paris, except that I hadn’t been to Paris yet, but it does remind future me of Paris.

After Windsor, the bus took us to Stonehenge. I’m glad that I saw Stonehenge, but honestly, I wouldn’t travel halfway around the world just to see it. That’s just me though, you might be different.

The area around stonehenge is covered with these ancient burial mounds. What’s weird about this is that I also know (thanks to @Jspaghetti) that the area just across the river from St. Louis in Illinois is also covered with very similar burial mounds. Coincidence? I think not! Obviously this is proof that aliens colonized the earth thousands of years ago. I wonder when they will come back for us? Hmm… After studying the rocks at Stonehenge, I’m pretty sure it will be on a Tuesday.

This is the traditional English pub that we had lunch at. I had roast beef and yorkshire pudding. Yorkshire pudding bears no resemblance to pudding, it is more like bread. Weird. My aunt asked for an iced tea in this pub, and the waitress said that she thought iced tea taste like cat urine. At first this seemed strange to me, because what was she doing drinking cat urine, but on the other hand, that is exactly how I would describe iced coffee, so maybe she’s right. I still love iced tea though, maybe I should try cat urine.

After Stonehenge, the bus took us to Bath, England, which is the location of England’s only natural hot springs where the ancient Romans built a bath house. Bath was a beautiful city, it took me by surprise and felt very european.

Here is a view of the Roman bath. The water doesn’t look so clean, but you can drink it if you want. I did not try this. I am not that brave.

Another view of the bath.

Here is the bath with a giant church in the background.

And finally, one more picture of the bath.

This is a park in Bath. It rained while we were there, and before the rain, the park was filled with people, after the rain, not so much. See those chairs? in a lot of the parks in England they have these chairs, and as far as I can tell they are free for anybody to use. Government furnished chairs. That’s how socialism works, they give you free chairs, and then boom, everyone has health care. Be careful, there is no such thing as a free chair.

Here is a river in Bath, it’s pretty.

Here is the river in the other direction. This boat was nice enough to pose for me.

Here is a courtyard in Bath. See the building with the ice cream cone on it? We had ice cream there. I had clotted cream and carmel ice cream. It was delicious. They also sold fudge, and they had fudge flavors I had never heard of before. Things like brown sugar and something, and clotted cream and something. The English are big on clotted cream. It sounds disgusting, but if you ask me, it’s just another form of butter.

An hour an a half bus ride later, we were back in London. We had dinner at a pub, and I was thrilled to get to try Chicken Tikka Masala. I was worried that I wouldn’t get to try this dish, because my Aunt refuses to eat in an Indian restaurant. Apparently she has something against good food. She said that my Chicken Tikka Masala looked disgusting, but she did try it and even claimed to like it. I’ve head that this is the unofficial dish of England. It’s an Indian inspired dish with chicken in a creamy flavorful sauce. I loved it, I need to find a place in St. Louis that has it.

So that was day 3. All in all I’m very glad that we took the bus tour. I felt like I got a much better feel for England by getting out of London, even if it was for just a day. The tour was very well done and definitely worth the money. That being said, if I had more time, I would just buy a train ticket to Windsor or Bath and explore on my own. You could easily spend a day in either city. Tomorrow is our last day in London, we will be visiting St. Paul’s Cathedral, the cabinet war rooms, and we will try to see the changing of the guards. You can see more pictures and a few videos of my trip in my flickr set here.

Click here to read all of my London & Paris trip posts in proper order.

Welcome to the Roseyland London and Paris excursion day 2. If you haven’t read day 1, you should scroll down and read it first. There is a lot of important character development in day 1, and I’m afraid you’ll be completely lost without it. Day 2 was our first full non-jetlagged day in London. We had noon tickets for the London Eye, so my plan was to walk by Buckingham Palace on the way to Westminster Abbey, which we would visit before the London Eye. Here is a picture of Buckingham Palace. If you could see the flag, you would know that the Queen was not in residence. Apparently she didn’t care that I was visiting. Bitch. Anyways… a few people told me they were disappointed with Buckingham Palace, like they thought it would be grander or more ornate or something. To me it looked exactly like I thought it would, and I was suitably impressed. I also thought it was cool how close you could get to the palace, the gates are only about 50 feet from the building.

These gates are just to the right of Buckingham Palace, and they are the royal gates to Green park, or something like that. The gates are closed, but you can easily go around them and into the park. Apparently they are just closed because they look nicer that way.

This next picture is from St. James park which is a long park in front of Buckingham palace. This picture is looking away from the palace, and you can see the London Eye peeking over the trees on the right and some castle like looking building on the left. I don’t remember what that building was, but I think it has something to do with the government.

This is the front of Westminster Abbey. You can’t take pictures inside, which is nice, because there are so many people walking around the nooks and crannies, that if everyone was also trying to take pictures, it would just be ridiculous. Inside there are a number of tombs and memorials for british royalty and some famous british citizens. Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin are buried here. I love that Darwin is buried in one of the most famous churches in the world. Take that stupid intelligent designist!

After Westminster Abbey, we headed to the London Eye. Here is the inside of our capsule. I don’t know why these other people are inside our capsule, but I thought it would be rude to ask them to leave, so I let them stay.

I wanted to take picture of our capsule, so when we got near the top, I went out the emergency door, climbed over the metal beams, and got inside the next capsule. Then I took this picture. I found out later that this is frowned upon, so don’t try it. Instead, you could just take a picture of the capsule next to yours and tell people that it’s your capsule. I think it was totally worth it though, and this is one of my favorite pictures from the trip.

Here is a picture of St. James park and Buckingham Palace from the London Eye.

This is parliament and Big Ben from the London Eye. I only took about 50 pictures of this building. I think this is my favorite, but it’s a tough call, they all sort of look alike.

After the London Eye, we decided to spend the afternoon at the Tower of London. The Tower of London was built to be a Royal palace/fortress, but it ended up being a prison for political prisoners. Anne Boleyn was imprisoned and executed here in the 16th century. For more information on the Tower of London, see here and here. Also, read this about Anne Boleyn’s trial, final hours, and execution. I find it fascinating. This is a picture from inside the Tower of London complex, not far from where Anne Boleyn was executed.

Here is another picture from inside the tower. The circular memorial is a memorial to all those who were executed at the tower, and it is at the approximate location of many of the executions. The building in the upper left of the picture is where you can see the crown jewels. They are impressive if you are into sparkly things, you aren’t allowed to take pictures of them though.

This was one of the coolest parts of the tower to me. Behind the upper center windows is a cell where many political prisoners were held. They carved messages into the stone walls, and you can still see them today. These are from 400 or 500 years ago, I can’t get over how amazing that is.

Here is a picture of the Tower Bridge from inside the Tower of London. The picture doesn’t really do the scene justice. Trust me, it was cool.

That night we went to see a play in London’s west end. I have to thank @susanisk for recommending Avenue Q. My original plan was to see the Phantom of the Opera, but Avenue Q was way more fun and lighthearted than Phantom would have been. After a long day of sightseeing, we needed something fun and lighthearted. Also, it includes a scene of hardcore muppet sex. Who doesn’t love hardcore muppet sex? Oh, and one more thing, in London, during intermission at a play, they have ice cream. Why don’t we do this in the US? Everyone loves ice cream. Here is a scene from Avenue Q that I found on YouTube. This is a nighttime shot of Piccadilly Circus not too far from our theatre.

And with that, day 2 is over. Tomorrow we travel to Windsor Castle, Stonehenge, and Bath. So get a good nights rest, you are going to need it. You can see more pictures and a few videos of my trip in my flickr set here.

Click here to read all of my London & Paris trip posts in proper order.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Roseyland organization has gone international. About two years ago, I decided to get a passport. I didn’t really have any reason to get a passport, but it seemed like a good idea. I mean you never know when you are going to need to flee the country on short notice. Fast forward a couple years, and my Aunt and I decided to take a trip to London and Paris. It’s a long complicated story, but my Aunt wanted to see London, I wanted to ride a train through the chunnel, so some how we setteled on a 9 day trip with 4 days in London and 4 days in Paris (the 9th day disappeared somewhere over the atlantic). Lucky you, you get to come along, and by come along, I mean read about it in my blog, which really isn’t as much fun, but it is far cheeper and less exhausting. I think I’m going to write one blog post for everyday of my trip, and maybe a few extras, but we’ll have to see how it goes. Here a picture of some Great Britain Pounds, my passport, and some Euros. Foreign money is so much fun, it’s like Monopoly money with holograms.

We departed for our trip on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009. The plan was for me to fly to Chicago and meet up with my Aunt who was flying from Nebraska. Then we would both be on the same flight from Chicago to London. My flight was delayed because of a broken compass. They tried to fix it for an hour, and then gave up. They did find us another airplane, but it turns out that plane had something wrong with it’s landing gear. Way to go American Airlines! Finally they flew us in another plane and we made it to Chicago 4 hours late, which means I missed my plane to London. Fortunately, there are three flights a night from Chicago to London, and I made the second one. The picture below is my view during the 8 hour flight to London. This was on a 777, which is an amazing airplane. The engines are big enough to stand in and each seat had a personal video screen with movies and TV shows. The longest flight I had been on before this was 4 hours, so 8 hours in airplane seat was a new experience for me. Five hours into the flight, I was convinced that sitting in a coach airline seat for more than 4 hours was a form of torture far worse than water-boarding. Then I found a way to stretch out my legs. This helped a lot, but I wish I had figured it out 5 hours earlier. I didn’t get much sleep on the flight, but I did watch 17 Again and I Love You Man. Both are decent movies, if you are stuck on an airplane.

Since I didn’t have a window seat on the plane, this was my first view of the UK. I was fascinated by the the signs that said UK Border. The made me wonder just where I was if I wasn’t in the UK yet. Was it some sort of no-man’s land? I was also scared to take this picture, because I’m pretty sure the US customs people don’t want you taking their picture. As it turns out, even using your cell phone in an International terminal in the US is a $500 fine. I figured in the UK I could just claim to be a dumb tourist though, and nobody seemed to care. Also, notice how worn down Heathrow looks. I think the UK could spend a little money on remodeling their biggest airport.

I left Chicago Thursday night and arrived in London on Friday morning, which was actually like 4:00 am to me. Everyone said you have to stay up all day the first day, so that you will fall asleep at night and hopefully wake up adjusted to the new time zone. So we checked in to our hotel and headed out to do some sightseeing. Here is a picture of a London telephone booth and a statue of some guy and a tower that is a monument to something. I was tired, give me a break.

This is a picture of Piccadilly Circus. Despite the name, there were no hula hooping bears, elephants, or trapeze artist. I think the UK needs to look up the definition of circus. Piccadilly Circus is kind of like times square and is near the west end theaters, Regent street shopping (think Michigan Avenue or 5th Avenue), and not too far from Buckingham palace.

Since we were tired, we decided to take a an open top double decker bus tour of London. This was a great way to get our bearings and relax at the same time. Here is a picture from the bus. The woman in the hat was our tour guide.

Here is another picture from the bus. If you look close, you can see Big Ben in the background. Now if you were from London, you would say, “Actually, that’s not Big Ben. Big Ben is the bell inside the tower, which you can’t see”. Whatever dude, it looks like Big Ben to me.

One thing that fascinated me about London is that there were giant jumbo jets constantly flying overhead. It’s surreal to see something as relatively new as a jumbo jet flying over architecture that is so old. It’s also weird to think that these planes are coming from and flying to destinations all over the world. It definitely reminded me that I was in a truly international city.

We were in London right after Michael Jackson’s death, and one of the shows in London’s west end is a Michael Jackson themed show. Outside of it, fans had created a memorial with flowers and signs. Kind of cool I guess.

This is Harrod’s, a giant department store in London. It’s owned by an Egyptian man who’s son was in the car with Princess Diana when she died. There is a small memorial to the two inside the store, but I didn’t see it. I did however buy wine and salted caramels. The caramels were delicious. I haven’t tried the wine yet.

Due to my love of subways, I had to take a picture of the Tube. This is actually one of my favorite pictures from the trip. That might have something to do with the attractive young ladies, but I also think the blurred motion of the train is cool, and also the way some parts of the picture are blurry and some are in focus. This of course was all by accident, I actually thought this was a wasted picture until I looked at it on my computer. If you click on the picture, you can see a larger version.

Another thing I loved about the tube is that if you are going one direction on the Piccadilly line, there is this recorded voice that says, “This is the Piccadilly Line to Cockfosters”. It’s funny because it is this female british voice that speaks in a very dignified manner, but Piccadilly and Cockfosters are completely ridiculous words. You should hear it yourself, here is a Youtube video I found.

One thing that that took me by surprise about London was how few British people there were. The employees in our hotel were eastern european, we had waiters from South Africa and Italy, and of course tourist from all over are everywhere. If felt like only 10% of the people around us were actually British. I don’t know why this surprised me though, because you would see the same thing in any big american city, and I’m not complaining, I thought it was totally cool, I just didn’t expect it.

Hopefully tomorrow I’ll have day two posted. This will include Westminster Abbey, The London Eye, and The Tower of London. In the mean time, you can check out pictures and a few videos from my trip in my flickr set here.