London

After Exeter Julia got on a train, still a bit hungover and came to meet me at our prearranged meeting point in Waterloo station. After checking in chez Eddie's, a friend of mine from RMC and the navy who is doing his masters at King's College, we went out to a couple of pubs to meet some more Canadians that were also studying or working in London. It was nice to have some English beers again. Julia was particularly enamored with the bitters.

The next day we went to see the sights, and here they are:

Buckingham Palace,home of the Queen and of many well armed police officers. As you can see by the flag on top, the Queen was in that day.

Big Ben,
with some pretty gnarled trees around it.

The Eye of London,

with Big Ben in the background. This was taken 30 seconds walk from Eddie's dorm room so you can see we were quite central. You can also see that it was very mild out.

The River Thames,
also quite near to Eddie's and, although you can't see it, off to the right is the National Theater. More on that later.

Westminster Abbey,
It's big and important but so is the price for going to pray there (£11). So this is as close as we got to it. We got to see the inside a bit more in and old film of the Queens coronation they were playing were they keep the crown jewels. Again more on that later.

The Royal horse guard,
these high polish kids are not far from Buckingham Palace but I really don't know what they have to guard. I really liked the sign.


This was in the park in near the Palace. The squirrels there were pretty much domesticated. This one is moving a bit to fast for the camera, probably stole somebody's coffee. They really weren't shy and they got really close to the people feeding them to get their food.

Picadilly Circus,

with it's ridiculously large advertising.

Trafalgar Square,

with Nelson's Column in the middle. Here you can see him on top of his tall pillar.


Surrounding Trafalgar square were many embassies, including;

The Canadian embassy,

the Australian embassy was also there and many others exept for New Zealand, which Eddie told us was in a random Mini-Mall somewhere.

Statue of Oliver Cromwell.
Strange monument to the Women of world war II.

And here is Julia at the British Museum.

Here were showcased all sorts of important historical things that the Brits stole from the rest of the world, such as the Rosetta Stone the Elgin Marbles. We didn't get to see the main temporary exhibit that was about a Chinese emperor that was buried with hundreds of clay statues representing his army.

That night we went to brick lane to eat some curry. There are many Indian restaurants there and you haggle for better prices, free beer and free deserts. Plus we could also bring our own wine which of course we did.
In the forground is Julia and I, and in the background is Eddie and Alexandra. Alexandra is a friend of Julia's from CCCMA in Victoria. She now also lives in London and is doing research there.

After the curry we went out to a bar. It was pretty big and as you can see there was a lot of people outside were they also served drinks and food.

The next day we went to the Tate Museum of Modern Art, which was guarded by a giant metal spider.
The Tate is housed in an former power plant(coal probably) and is pretty big.

You can see it behind Julia who is standing on the Millennium Bridge which crosses the Thames.

This gives them the ability to exhibit such things as this;






a giant crack in a cement floor. Symbolic and interesting.

This museum like the British Museum and most of them in London are free. Even the Tours are free. We got the tour of the minimalist branch and the guide was very knowledgeable. Good thing to because the first piece of minimalist art was a collection of metal tiles on the floor that everybody could walk on.

At some point after that we passed by there again to see the giant spider being dismantled.




That night we went to Chinatown, which is rather small, and had some Pho (vietmanese beef noodle soup). Joyce, another friend of Julia's this time from McGill, also joined us. She also lives in London now and is a teacher there. That night Eddie wanted to take us to the Canadian Pub to see the hockey game. Unfortunately, it was undergoing some renovations. So we went to some other place instead and had fun all the same.

The next day we went for a walk along the Thames while Eddie was in class. We made it to the Tower of London. We got ourselves an audioguide and before starting went to see the Crown Jewels because we were told that the place were they keep them closed at 4:3o and it was getting late already. So we saw the many, crowns, maces, orbs, spoons, saltshakers and punchbowls and the various rocks that adorned them as well as the many Beefeaters that guarded them, including the first and possibly only woman Beefeater. Also in this picture probably the most sun London has seen all winter.


After that we started with the audio tour. Here you can see Julia next to the water gate where traitors where ferried into the tower while it used as a prison.

We kept on going with the tour until we saw that the Beefeaters were starting to usher people out. We had misunderstood the person that was renting out the audioguides and the entire place was shutting down at 4:30. Unfortunately, we had not yet seen the White Tower which is the main building in the Tower and the reason we were there. We were told that we could get free tickets for the next day since we had bought them so late. We got them and gave them to Eddie since we would already be back in Germany by the time the place opened the next day. It was very saddening.

But then we went to the Tower Bridge. We also got there as it was closing but they let us in and we got to get the full tour accompanied by all the staff that were almost done their work day. The Tower Bridge is a bascule or seesaw bridge (it opens for boats). We saw the view from the catwalks that connect the two neo-gothic towers as well as the original machinery that was used to pump water and make the bridge tilt up. Here's part of that machinery. Julia was very impressed by the aesthetic.

This is one of the actuator that was used to store bridge lifting energy.


Their were also a lot of historic posters about the bridge. One of them was about the bus that had to jump the gap while the bridge was lifting because somebody forgot to pull the rope across to tell cars not to go onto the bridge.

After that, for our last night in London we went to see Much Ado About Nothing at the National Theater. It was great. At one point the main actors even had to jump in to a pool. The set was well done and the actors hilarious. It was a good end to our London adventure.

Exept that wasn't the end exactly Right after the play we had to leave to get the last train back to Stansted, the airport out of which we were flying. To our dismay we missed it and had to wait until 3:30 am to get the bus. While waiting we did meet two American basketball players going to sweden were they lived and played, an Italian from Sardinia, and Mexican who was going to Sardinia and her niece. They kept us entertained until the bus came.