Tourist Day

Dear Friends,

I apologize for the long neglected blog! I have no excuses other than that I’ve been extremely busy over the past few days.
I’ll pick up where I left off, and describe Tuesday, or as I like to call it, “Obnoxious Tourist Day.” Jono, Brooke and I decided to take in some of the classic London sights, and so, armed with cameras and Canadian accents, we headed down to Trafalgar Square on the Tube. If you look at the photos, you’ll see the massive Lions at the base of Nelson’s Column, which stands in the middle of the square in front of the façade of the National Gallery (it was physically painful for me not to go inside). After wandering around snapping pictures, we headed to Canada House – the Canadian High Commission – on the square and took some more sitting on the steps with the lovely bronze maple leaf doors.

After, we headed through the Admiralty Arch, down The Mall along St. James’s Park towards Buckingham Palace, which felt really surreal. The Mall is tree lined, so it was difficult to see the building before we came out into the Queen’s Gardens, and then our view was dominated by the massive (and lovely) Victoria Memorial which is on a kind of traffic island in the middle of an oval. We were rebels and hopped over a low fence to run across to the memorial and up the steps to be able to see all of Buckingham well. Surprisingly, the front façade is smaller than I thought it would be, with the bulk of the building being behind it and out of view. Apparently I looked like a competent and non-threatening photographer walking around with my camera around my neck, because a few girls asked me to take photos for them before we walked down to the gates to creep on the palace guards. There were only two of them on patrol outside, and unfortunately we had missed the changing of the guard at 11, but I still got a decent photo of one of them as he was doing his turn. I’m going to try to go back one day to see the change, because according to Jono, it’s quite the experience.

The three of us walked back through St. James’s Park and down to Westminster Abbey, where I had a minor geek out, taking a billion pictures of the architectural details (crockets, lancets, rosettes, crockets, colonnades, clerestories, crockets, buttresses, gargoyles, and more crockets). We didn’t go in, because even for a student, admission is £12, but there are certain times that people can get in for free, so that’s something for another day. The Houses of Parliament are right behind the Abbey, so as soon as we rounded the apse, I was rewarded with an eyeful of delightful English Perpendicular Neo-Gothic architecture. The Houses are gigantic, and actually a little overwhelming to look at with all the detail hitting your eye at once. Brooke and I snapped a bunch of pictures, while Jon wandered off to speak to a page about something political. As I was walking down to the south end of the building to get better photos of the Victoria Tower and an equestrian statue of Richard the Lionheart, an couple of American ladies walked by me and I got this little tidbit: “Who was it that killed Braveheart?” “I think it was that guy… (pointing at the statue, which is clearly inscribed on the base).” I lol-ed a little bit.

While we were wandering around, we were treated to our first real taste of English weather. It started to rain, then rained harder, and harder. We managed to make it into a tiny little Boots (drugstore with snacks), with me psychotically trying to protect my camera under my cardigan, and I finally bought an umbrella (houndstooth of course). We also got some sandwiches, and found a step in the Westminster tube station to sit and eat them. When we came back out to take some pictures of the clock tower (Big Ben is the bell) the rain had mostly stopped, but then started again, go figure!
We got on the tube at Westminster station and went to Knightsbridge (I love my oyster card) to poke around in Harrods, which was quite the experience. We went into the “Rooms of Luxury” which were basically all kinds of top designer bags, and jewellery and perfume. Most of the people wandering around were tourists who couldn’t afford much more than a keychain (like me), but there were also a lot of very wealthy Saudi Arabian women all dolled up under their robes who were serious shoppers. Highlights of Harrods included: getting lost on the 4th floor, the room of massive fossils for sale (£24,000 for trilobites anyone?), being called “madam” while looking at stockings, and seeing a lower end watch for sale for £134,000.
The interior design in the store was also really interesting. The central escalator area is called the Egyptian Hall and everything is lotus pillars and statues of pharaohs. At the bottom, there’s a memorial for Dodi Al-Fayed and Princess Diana, since Dodi’s family owned the store until very recently. There was a wine glass with Diana’s lipstick on the edge, and then the ring that was supposedly given to her for their engagement along with photos of the two of them. There were lots of people around taking photos of it.

So, all of this tourist-ing made for a long day, and knowing that a tube strike was supposed to begin disrupting service around 5pm, Jon, Brooke and I headed up to the pub we were meeting our professor at for the evening, the Lord John Russell, right across the street from where our classroom is. All of our class mingled with each other, and then Jon made friends with two Aussie rules football players who were in London as part of a tour of Europe. Brooke, Alison and I also went over to talk to them, which ended up being a hilariously good decision. These two had been walking from pub to pub all day, and so were pretty intoxicated and amusing, asking about Canadian weather, and if moving to Ohio was a good idea. (We told them it wasn’t). Towards the end of the evening, we were getting pretty hungry, and groups started to split off to different places to eat. We told the Australians that it was time to go, and one of them decided that he needed to give Alison his email address, which resulted in his inability to focus hard enough to write his own name on a beer mat. He tried to get his buddy to do it for him, which ended in more confusion, so Sharmylae, one of the other girls on our trip wrote it out as he dictated, and his friend made fun of him for being “mostly illiterate.” I was laughing so hard at this point that I had to turn around so they couldn’t see the tears… interesting indeed. So, we left the pub, walked down Marchmont Street, and found a cheap place for fish and chips, which was exactly what I needed. Then, because of the tube strike, we took a taxi back to our residence, and called it a night after a very busy day! Ahh!