London, Done Right

This time, London was amazing!! Maybe it was merely because I just needed to be around people I knew from before Europe, but for the most part, I truly did enjoy acting a little more like a local this time around.

I get into London and meet Jess and Richard at his place. We stay up a little late hanging out, so we wake up late the next morning. Poor Jess has bad allergies that have turned into bad sinuses once in London. She’s blowing her nose the whole trip.

That first day was amazing. Since we started so late, we decided to do something simple and just plain eat. Since I like sweets more now, Richard could take us to the cupcake place he loves. So we walk around some of Central London. Then, we stop at a Hummus restaurant. It was SO cool. Very organic company. Small but chic venue. The company has two restaurants in London as of now. You order a bowl of hummus, small or large, and they give you one or two warm pitas. Jess and I split a large Vegetable Hummus, which I so needed because living off baguettes, chorizo and eggs was making me feel sort of….fat?? They had amazing ginger mint lemonade too.

First, macaroons....

Then, we look at wedding cakes at a luxury store that I can't remember the name of it...I stink...it's like Harrods....

Good ol' pals.

Hummus Bar...yum!

The ways to eat hummus...

After, we tried a Hummingbird cupcake—amazing cream cheese frosting. We ate it at the British Museum before a short tour of the Rosetta Stone, Cleopatra’s tomb and some paintings from the time of the Mexican Revolution. It’s free to enter the British Museum, so obviously, it was a perfect place to nosh on our cupcakes. Besides, the weather in London turned absolutely cold and rainy while I was there, so eating outside on a bench was not an option. After the British Museum, we headed to Ben’s Cookies, where they leave them a little doughy on the inside. YUM. Finally, we headed to a pub to pass the evening.

Hummingbird cupcakes.

Maybe we should stop by the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum...

The Mummy of Cleopatra.

 

Mummified cats.

Richard and a Ben's Cookie.

We took a pub walk that night. London has cheap walks that give you history but also make things a little fun. This walk took us to some really old pubs with lots of character. It was very fun, but very cold.

Really cool old old old pub. Like a dungeon.

The next day, we headed to Saint Paul’s Cathedral. The first version of St. Paul’s was built back in 600 AD, however, it’s been rebuilt about 6 times due to deterioration and mostly fires. It stands today somewhat different than the original, but still just as gorgeous. The views from the top were amazing. But it was SO windy. Inside, it’s just plain magic. 

Breakfast of awesome pizza and good drink.

View from St. Paul's Cathedral.

We had taken our time getting up that morning, so by the time we were done with St. Paul’s, it was kind of late. Jess had spotted a sign for Dirty Dancing on stage, so we checked for tickets for her and I that night at the box office. We were lucky and got moved up toward the front with better seats than our ticket price usually paid for. So before the show, we headed to a 50’s themed American diner restaurant to eat. It was very appropriate for the show we were about to see. 

Did I mention that Dirty Dancing on stage was AMAZING!!!? It’s hard to depict accurately a movie that so many people know down to the last detail (people like Jess and I), but the producers pulled it off. The actors definitely watched the movie a thousand times, especially the girl who played Baby, because she had so many of the little facial expressions down. All of the actors were excellent and some even sang  songs from the movie. But they were good, so it didn’t ruin the effect. The music is a very vital part of the movie’s scenes. Most were very good at the American accents too, but the guy who played Johnny must’ve been Irish or something because after the intermission, his voice started having too much of his native accent. It was kind of weird to see the American classic spoken with a foreign tongue. Plus, you could tell he was a dancer so his gliding walk didn’t really match the strut of Patrick Swayze. No one can replace Patrick Swayze….Anwho, it was an amazing production. Just sooo fun.

The stage before the show. Aren't you getting chills already??

Yesterday, we woke late a-gain. We headed to the Tower of London, somewhere I never visited before when I came 8 years ago. At first, I was bummed cuz it was expensive, and it’s not like I’d just been to 20 castles/towers in the last month….not. But I was a good sport, hopefully, and tried to suck up my money worries. We got a good free tour in the beginning and got the basic scheme of the place. The Tower of London used to be the home of the Royal Family. Periodically throughout history, however, it’s been used as a fort, a prison and even an artillery hold. We saw where they would behead other royalty—crazy how many of their own kind they would kill! And for silly reasons sometimes, too. We saw an abundance of armor too. My favorite was seeing the World Record’s biggest armor—made for a 6 ft. 8 man. Imagine the intimidation factor! Of course, they made it seem more enormous by placing it next to one of the world’s smallest armor outfit. They think it was made for King Charles.

Smallest next to the biggest.

Next we saw the Royal Jewels. Jessica kept calling it the Crown Jewels, so now I don’t even remember what it’s officially called. But it was all the crowns and scepters and dishes and rings and other jewelry of the royalty in England they could muster up for show. Pretty cool to see the current Queen Elizabeth II’s garb. We saw one of the ravens after that they keep for pets there. There are about 6 ravens that habitat the Tower of London, and word is that if they ever escape, the Tower will fall as well as the parliament of England. So they kind of clip their flight wings so they can fly, but not far, so hopefully they will never fly away. They put them to sleep in their cages every night. Btw, a raven is HUGE.

Later, we visited a cute little pub that looks like Granny’s house where they made really cool (and expensive) elaborate drinks. I didn’t like mine, but it was pretty. We made our way next to the best food I’ve had in weeks: tacos!!!!

Meztizo is a club/bar that has a special night on Thursdays: Mexican night! So we met up with lots of Richard’s friends and ate 1-2 pound (currency, remember, in London) soft tacos of chorizo, pork, steak, chicken…yum. They had all the good toppings too, and of course, didn’t forget the cilantro. They also had specials on Coronas, so it just felt like we weren’t in London anymore. It must’ve been the hangout though for the London-area Mexicans, because there were plenty of people there who didn’t speak English very well. It was really really su-weeet. They played awesome music, like Mexican club music, so it was a really fun time, especially because there was a good size group of us and I had met them all before. Nice to reunite. And of course, to have a fun night with Jessica.

Discounted Imported Bucket. Yay!

In the end, I probably spent more money and ate out more in London than I have in the time span of 3 weeks on my backpacking trip, but it was great. I felt like a local, except at the Tower of London, because Richard took us to all of his favorite spots. It was an awesome break from all the backpacking I’ve been doing. And for the next month I’m out here, I will only be with friends and family, so it’s looking very optimistic. Let’s just hope my bank account begins looking that way too, very soon hopefully…..

Change of location. Now I am in the Lille, France train station. I took a very expensive Eurostar train to get out of London, and since I couldn’t book a reservation for a train down to Marseille for today while back in Spain for some reason, I figured I’d wait till London. Then, I figured I’d wait till I got to Lille, because I didn’t get time in London, and usually, it’s relatively easy to find a seat on a train. Welllll it’s not from Lille on Easter Weekend. EVERY seat was booked to Marseille. So, I worried my self about whether I was stuck in Lille for the weekend, until I finally found a guy who found me a ticket. But I had to pay for it. And it was super expensive. Like 128 euro expensive. I couldn’t use my train pass. And it gets in a few hours later than I expected. But hey, at least I can get to my next destination!

Am in the waiting room now. Sat next to a very nice young man who let me borrow his iPhone to let my friend Ellie know I would be late. He didn’t speak English. So it was a little tough. But I’m okay. Hopefully, my guilt about this ticket price won’t kill me before my starvation….just don’t even want to open my wallet for a LONG time.