London

Kelly!!! My lovely girlfriend came to meet us at the train station, and so one of the first faces I got to see in worldly London was the most familiar one, and beautiful as ever. Don't worry; that's all the sappy stuff for this post, in case you're already gagging. Dan also met us at the station, and assumed the role of patient tour guide right from the start, helping us buy our oyster cards (the girls almost shat with delight when they saw the special edition royal wedding oyster cards they'd received) and accompanying us for some fish and chips later in the day. This is my second time in Britain, and I learned a lot the first time I was here: The beer is cheap, pubs are ubiquitous and everyone has a lovely accent. I love this place. The flat that we rented turned out to be nice enough, although a bit far out of town (which is not unusual in London since it's so big), and it was only after the landlord had already left that we discovered that it was missing one rather important piece of equipment: A shower! It didn't even occur to me to ask if there was a shower in the flat. It would have been just as likely, in my mind, that there was no front door, so when Kelly went into the bathroom and said "Oh... where's the shower?", I assumed that either she was making a joke or she hadn't looked very hard. In the end, Kelly was right (as usual), and after a long look through the house we could find no shower whatsoever (I would have settled for a hose and some duct tape), so we ended up taking a lot of baths in London. Crap.

We were very busy during our stay in London, and we didn't have consistent access to the internet either, so I really didn't have any chance to blog (or at least I'm using that as an excuse for not keeping up). I can't remember exactly when things happened, so I'll just give a general sort of summary of our trip and hope to both not forget anything important and not fabricate anything too extravagant. We got over to Dan and Charlotte's house for a wonderful stir fry dinner, and Dan was a gracious enough host to meet us almost every single day to show us a new part of London. The only day that he failed us (and even then it was not an epic failure) was the day he took us to the normally bustling markets in the trendy part of town only to find that they'd inexplicably shut for the day (picture of disappointment left). It was so great to see Dan again, neither of us could believe that it had been over two years since we last saw each other... how time flies.

When we weren't following Dan around London, we were exploring on our own, blazing a trail through the sights until we were tired enough to go home and have a... bath. The girls got up early one morning and went out on a bus tour which covered most of the major sites, including Westminster Abby, St. Paul's Cathedral, Big Ben, etc., while Jason and I stayed home and chilled out for a bit. One day we all got out to the tower of London, which was an interesting site with various attractions inside, and a great view of London bridge. We saw a medieval torture chamber, the crown jewels of England (sparkle much?), suits of armor (such as these two up and left; the biggest on record and one of the smallest), watched the whole while by the gargantuan ravens which prowl the grounds in search of small fingers to munch on. It was totally worthwhile, though exorbitantly priced, and we left feeling satisfied and full of useless facts, not having losing a single finger to the ravens. Although as you can see Jason was killed by an inanimate object (if anyone could do it, Jason would be the one). We left him for the ravens but they didn't seem interested in Canadian.

We also made our way to the British Museum, where we saw a whole shitload of other old things, collected (pillaged/stolen) during colonial times from friendly foreign cultures (scared victims) and forgotten archaeological sites (foreign museums). In my opinion, the most interesting piece they had on exhibit there, although I must say that there was a lot of fascinating items, was the Rosetta Stone, which was in remarkably good condition considering its age and history.

Basically, our time in London was spent eating a lot of terribly fatty food (forget the queen, god save fish and chips!), drinking a lot of cheap cider, having lengthy stare-downs with pigeons (pic right), sitting on the metro for way too long, and taking way too many baths. Oh, and tie shopping with Dan. I was feeling a bit traveled out after the tourist blitzkrieg that was Paris and Barcelona, so it was nice to just relax for a while. On the 25th we left our flat, Lana heading to the airport and Kelly, Jason and I heading to Edinburgh. If I never have another bath in my life, I will be a happy man. You just can't get clean in there, damnit!

C