Things I have learned in the last three days: There is nothing like good friends, you have to ask for the check in a restaurant and you have to call it the bill, Tacoma weather is not cold, and high tea may just be the best thing ever invented (aside from burritos).
Also, warning: This post is rather long. But I still hope you read it all-- it is better than reading about the Cold War/writing a lab report/cleaning/making dinner, right? :P Further warning: I am not actually capable of writing short things, as many of you know, so expect my future entries to be long too. :)
We went to bed at 4:30 in the afternoon on Thursday, but even though we were in bed for sixteen hours, I didn't get enough sleep. Friday morning was quite a struggle. I felt like a drugged sloth, I had no appetite and I pretty much (much to my annoyance at myself) wanted to be at home. But after forcing down a bit of toast and a lot of tea for breakfast, Helen and I went out into the biting cold and I began to feel much better. We took the tube to Westminster and started exploring around that area. A side note about the tube: Best invention ever (oh, aside from tea and burritos). It is so easy to use, which is good for us tourists who need to feel better about our ability to not seem like tourists (even though I'm sure we still do). Plus, it is fun to scan our oyster cards when we go through the line just like locals (although the first time I used it with a ticket, I was very confused and probably looked like Mr. Weasley when Harry is trying to teach him how to use the tube). More on the subway later. Anyway, we emerged from the Westminster tube station, and standing in front of us were the houses of Parliament, Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. I'm pretty sure my jaw literally dropped. Of course I had seen pictures of all these landmarks before, but I was stunned by the beauty of the buildings. Pictures cannot do them justice (as I learned when I tried to take some myself-- it's not easy to capture a building hundreds of feet high when you are standing at the base of it!). There is something more to them than just their appearance, although the architecture is magnificent. They seem to radiate the spirit of the inhabitants that have filled them; they simply breathe history.
Houses of Parliament!
We walked around for a while taking pictures, although Parliament is very clearly marked in multiple places (like everything here-- also more on that later) that trespassing is a crime, so unfortunately we could not witness the House of Lords for ourselves. We went across the street to Westminster Abbey, but we didn't go inside because they have a free evensong every night, and we are going to try to go to that tomorrow so that we can get inside the Abbey without paying and hear some cool singing. After that, we walked down and got our first glimpse of the Thames! It was extremely cold outside, so there weren't any boats on it, but it was still pretty, and we had a good view of the London Eye across the way. We decided to keep walking that direction to get to the opposite bank. We walked down it and then back over a different bridge to come out on the other side of Parliament. We were hoping that there would be a visitor's entrance there, which there was, but it was decidedly closed. We found some pretty trees and interesting sculptures along the way, though. By then, we were starved, so we took the tube to Leicester Square and found a cafe. I had barely eaten anything so far, so I decided to order pasta with veggies even though it was a little more expensive than a sandwich. We ate, and I wasn't that hungry again, which was disconcerting. In Costa Rica, I never got my appetite back, so I was a little worried, but I told myself that it was just part of the adjustment-- and the difference is that the food here is actually good, unlike in Costa Rica (speaking of which, we have yet to encounter the stereotypical British food. Some weird stuff, yes, like eating blocks of cheese for breakfast, but nothing too bland or boring). Anyway, we finished eating, and the waitresses kept coming past us but they didn't bring us the check. We waited for about ten minutes, and then we made eye contact with one of them. She didn't come over. Helen got out her wallet, and she saw her, but she didn't come. I went to the bathroom and came back, no check. By this point, we were starting to get really annoyed and I thought that they were purposely being rude because we were American and I hadn't eaten a lot of my pasta so they were ignoring us. They were just standing around and laughing and talking to each other, so it wasn't like they didn't see us. Finally I flagged one of them down and we got the check, after waiting for about twenty minutes! Later in the day, Kayla told us that here, you always have to ask for your check, so that solved our mystery.
From there, we went to the National Portrait Gallery and saw the Tudors floor, but we didn't have time to see anything else because we had to meet Kayla. We met her at Trafalgar Square, and it was so great to see her! We wandered around there for a bit, taking pictures on the big monument and with the statues. A word for the wise: it is much harder than it looks to get up on the statues, and it hurts when you jump off! My feet were not sure if it was worth it, but we got some pretty hilarious pictures of us scrambling up the side of the monument, so I suppose it was. We decided to just walk around and explore, and we vaguely set out to find 10 Downing Street, since Helen and I hadn't been able to locate it earlier. We found the street it is on, but we got distracted by the building of the horse guards, and we walked through it (and past an extremely expressive guard-- it was time for him to move places and when he started stamping his feet, he positively startled everybody. He also blew air out of his mouth in a sigh, and I am pretty sure it was more emotion than he is allowed to have on his face-- he did not look happy, maybe because he had just been posing for a picture with some tourists. Anyway, those guards in general are quite startling when they walk. They stomp so hard, it seems like they must hurt their feet! I mentioned this to Helen, and she told me that I was curious about the weirdest things. Haha. Perhaps I am just more concerned than the average person for the well-being of feet, given all the problems I've had with mine!)
So we went through to the back of this building and came upon a lovely park, which Helen correctly identified as St. James' Park! (Another weird thing about the British: they ALWAYS put apostrophe-S on everything already ending in an 's.' So like it is St. James's park. Not that that is incorrect, but as a stylistic choice for signs and whatnot I don't think I quite agree. But more on British punctuation, grammar and font to come [I know you're excited!]) We walked through park and saw some pretty white pigeons (I took a few pictures for you, Dad) and some interesting looking geese, as well as a girl who thought it would be a good idea to have a squirrel sit on her knee and eat out of the palm of her hand-- yeah. All of her foreigner relatives/friends were watching and taking photos and laughing, because I assume that they don't have squirrels wherever they are from, and Kayla and I were like, have they not heard of rabies in Eastern Europe? Anyhow. Not the point. The point is that our exploration-by-wandering was extremely successful, for on the other side of the park, we came out at Buckingham Palace! We took a lot of pictures and I felt mind-blown trying to imagine the life of a monarch (something that has been happening to me rather a lot over the last few days; I have concluded that the only cure for it will be to star in a movie about a queen. Starting work on my British accent presently.). There is a large and beautiful statue, or really many statues in a monument, outside of the palace, and the main sculpture is of Queen Victoria, so Helen and I took pictures in front of it since she is a character in our book. And since she is like the most awesome queen. I need to read a biography on her. Anyway, by this point, we were pretty much walking icicles. My butt cheeks were literally starting to feel numb when I moved. I'm not kidding. And I thought Tacoma reached arctic levels of frigidity-- I won't be complaining when we're back there! (well, not most of the time anyway.) So we decided, like true Brits, that the remedy for this was to find a pub, which we did via a charming park. There are parks everywhere. It's like a dream come true. And what's more, most of them are tree-lined. There is probably nothing I love more than rows of trees. I adore them. I took a lot of pictures in this park, and we found a pub-- Helen's and my first English pub experience. We went upstairs to the dining area, which was good because downstairs smelled like beer and cigarettes, even though smoking wasn't allowed in the building, and I got a tea to warm me up. Kayla had some chips, so I tried my first British chip, and I even put malt vinegar on it like the Brits do. It was good, but I actually didn't find the vinegar to be strong enough. We stayed there for quite a while, getting warm and catching up. It was really nice.
Just chilling in front of the palace...
Afterwards, Kayla and I left Helen to meet her friend from Denmark who was coming into town, and we took the tube to Queen Mary College, where Kayla is studying. We met up with Morgana, another friend from Puget Sound (and the three of us all lived on T/P3 freshman year and are part of our group of five best friends from RDG-- we greatly missed our other two parts), and it was great to see her as well. We went to Kayla's suite and made pesto pasta, glazed carrots and salad. It was glorious. I finally got my appetite back, and I had three servings of pasta and a lot of vegetables. It was so nice to be with them and just relax and act like normal, just cooking and talking together. Since Helen and I have no kitchen, we obviously have to go to restaurants, and I just found it so relaxing to be cooking with them. It was so normal, and it was just what I needed. We had a really good time, and Morgana rode the tube back with me to make sure I found my stop okay (it might be silly, but I really feel less secure without a cell phone here). I pretended I was a Londoner as I made the short walk back to our hotel, and marveled at how far one can come from morning to evening. I had thought about how lovely and safe Tacoma seemed that morning, and now I had had the best day and was feeling great, despite being tired.
I slept ALL NIGHT without waking up which was a miracle on ice, and I consumed much more breakfast and much less tea this morning. Helen and I had decided to follow through with our tentative plan to go to Windsor, and we ended up being so glad we did! We took the tube to Paddington Station, which was charming although I think I will be even more enchanted by King's Cross (even if it didn't have Platform 9 3/4, the pictures of it look cooler/it is outdoors) and we successfully purchased tickets for the train to Windsor. I even was brave enough to ask a man how we were supposed to know what platform our train departed from. The answer was just to watch the signs, which was what we were going to do anyway (more on the British and their signs later). The train arrived and we took it. You don't have to show your tickets or anything, and you only have to submit your ticket in order to leave the station at some train stations, so theoretically you could ride without one, but it's expensive if you get caught. It seems weird to me that they wouldn't create a system to check it, but there are so many people going so many places in such a big hurry that it makes sense to me why it doesn't exist. Public transportation is a way of life, not something you make a lot of preparations for, like in the U.S. We changed trains at Slough (pronounced Slow, but with an accent that I can't do. It reminded me of a poem Candace and I found once in high school that had a bunch of different words that ended in -o, -uff, and -ough but they were all spelled with -ough and it was very funny at the time.) This was also thanks to the successful reading of signs and listening to announcements. We arrived in Windsor a short time later, and were again mindblown when we emerged from the station and saw a castle right in front of us.
Look, another palace! But only part of it-- it's huge!
Despite this tantalizing view, we searched around for lunch (duh, we have our priorities straight). We wanted to go to this charming place called The Crooked House, which was a 17th century-style restaurant with high tea and everything, and on a cobblestone road, but it looked too expensive so we chose a different cafe, and I got a cheese and tomato sandwich and tomato soup. It wasn't the greatest but it was enough to sustain us, and we headed toward the castle. It was simply gorgeous, and ridiculously sprawling. I couldn't help attempting to imagine the life of a monarch, which is nearly impossible. I can't imagine having all of those ROOMS! Aside from the inevitable stress and strife that comes from being a politician and a celebrity at the same time, and none of it by your initial choice, which is, of course, also unimaginable. I just can't begin to fathom what the life of a queen must be like. I want to become the Queen's BFF for a day and ask her everything about her journey of monarch-ness. I mean, there's probably a plethora of biographies I could read about it, but that is not the same thing. We went into St. George's Cathedral and saw a lot of important people's graves. Helen paid a little homage to Elizabeth Woodville and we gasped over Henry VIII, Jane Seymour and Charles Brandon's tombs (after spending all semester living with Helen and Michelle I couldn't help but pick up some interest in the Tudors, even though that wasn't a part of history I ever really studied), and over King George and Elizabeth's tombs (the monarchs from The King's Speech... that movie really made this trip more interesting, haha). Then we went to the State Apartments and saw lots of portraits, paintings, weapons, china and furniture, all of which blew my mind with their history-- I kept imagining the monarch that had sat there, or used that, or had a ball in that room. In all, Windsor was well worth the 15 pounds we paid to get in.
The Queen's garden-- aka the most awesome garden EVER! I want one. We couldn't walk in it, unfortunately, but that makes it cooler because it means she might actually use it when tourists aren't around (unlike most of the stuff that's open to the public).
By this point, we were even colder than we had been the day before. My hands were literally burning from the cold. (I stopped imagining what life was like for the Queen and started imagining how the Donner Party must have felt.) We had decided earlier to have high tea at the Crooked House, since that was affordable and a cool experience, but its three tables were full, so we went to a few other places looking for traditional tea and scones before ending up back at the spot we'd had lunch. They had heat lamps AND Scottish Cream Tea (aka scones, jam, clotted cream and tea), so we knew we were in the right place. We ordered our tea and paid our pounds and pence and sat down at a table, feeling very British as we spread clotted cream and jam on our scones. It was delicious, despite the fact that there was a lot of candied fruit in the scones-- it didn't taste like normal disgusting candied fruit-- and that I still don't really know what clotted cream is. We took a few pictures of our tea, which was not very British but was very fun, and then we went back to the train station. Another way that the train system is much more casual is that your ticket will take you back at any time the train runs, it isn't for a specific time. We were even COLDER there while we waited for our train. Something else interesting but not as cool is that the billboards tell you the expected time for the train, and it will say 'delayed' if it is coming later than expected, but then once it gets there it will switch to saying 'on time' just because it has arrived. It doesn't really make a difference, but it annoys me because it is NOT, in fact, on time, and I know this because I have just spent the last ten minutes fending off frostbite while waiting for it.
When we got back, we were feeling pretty mellow and didn't want to go spend much more money, so we just hung out in our hotel room until dinnertime. We walked to an Italian place nearby, and although our Italian waiter seemed to be new and to not understand English perfectly well, which was not a very good combination for me and my desire for a chicken salad, it was an enjoyable dinner and the restaurant had a nice ambiance. They have dinners during the week that include a full meal and dessert and a drink for only five pounds ninety-five, so we are going to go there on Monday before we go to the theater, because we wanted to have a really nice dinner that night, and it is a really nice place, and getting dessert will make us feel even fancier, but we can do it cheaply! And now we are just sitting in our hotel room, both typing madly away. We had a late night yesterday, and we splurged on Windsor today, so we didn't want to spend more money tonight. Tomorrow we will meet Kayla and hopefully Morgana at the Brick Lane markets, which are near Kayla's college, and then go back to Westminster Abbey and the Portrait Gallery, and then probably explore around our neighborhood more. I can already tell that I am going to be sad when we have to leave London, especially because it feels like we will be leaving right when we get used to being here, but it is probably a good thing we are leaving because we have pretty much exhausted the supply of things to do here that are free.
I kept saying "more on that later" on the subject of London and its various qualities, but this is already a very long post and you all know how long I can talk about the subject of fonts, so I will leave that as a teaser for my next entry, and instead I will go wash my hair in our very very small shower. I know why it is called a water closet now-- the shower is a literal closet! Well, that's probably not why, and I could probably only fit about 1/6 of my wardrobe in the shower, but you get the point. :)
tea, scones, clotted cream and jam!
