London Lunacy...

I wish I could have taken video of our entire day in London yesterday just so you could understand how bizarre some parts of it were. I will do my best to reconstruct our day from the beginning, while still keeping this post a reasonable length. We had a wonderful time visiting our friend, Reuben, who is studying at the London School of Economics. It was a very full, very tiring, but very enjoyable day. (I apologize for the crummy picture quality. For whatever reason, after 6 hours of editing photos and uploading to this lovely blog site, the unedited versions showed up. I guess they will still get the point across, although not as perfectly as I would like.)

Reuben, Matthew, and Chad chilling in the library/park place where we sat to eat lunch. We never did get a picture of the four of us together. Next time.

For starters, we arrived at King's Cross Station in London around 10:30am after riding our bikes to the Cambridge station and then taking the less direct train from there. First item on the agenda: Chad and I wanted to locate Platform 9 3/4, aka the platform that Harry Potter and friends used to get to Hogwarts. Due to massive refurbishing going on all around London for the 2012 Olympics, King's Cross was a royal mess. We were determined, however, to stay on track. We passed Platforms 1 through 8, rounded the corner toward Platform 9, and saw this...

Thought it was so clever of the information people to say, "All Hogwarts pupils can now catch their train from..." Glad they played along with HP lovers.

Isn't it hilarious? Not to despair, we would not give up so easily.

Victory! I know I look incredibly stationary, but you better believe, I was on my way through that wall to Hogwarts. Using my newly acquired magic, I made it a short trip, and I met back up with Matt, Chad, and Reuben in what seemed to be no time at all. Haha.

Onward from the station, we ate lunch at a park near a library with a creepy Isaac Newton statue and a tree dedicated to Anne Frank and all children who have perished in wars or conflicts. From there, we decided to check out the Camden Market because it was fairly close by. Chad had never spent any time in London before (except at the airport and train stations), so we tried to make the day a mixture of touristy things and of things we had not previously seen.

 Although we did not purchase anything at the market, I did haggle a vendor down from 18 pounds to 12 for a dress. I decided it still was not worth it, and promised to go back and buy it, but never did. Oops. That part of town is definitely a little more Indie-artsy-tattoo-ish, so we saw some interesting clothing/hairstyles. "Punkies" (pronounced poon-keys) is what our Spanish friends would call them.

Closeup view of the cool pocket watches that we did not buy.

Just to give you an idea of how crowded the street was that ran perpendicular to the market. Please note the man in the center of the photo. His jacket says, "Jews for Jesus." Alright.

After seeing more of the same mish mash of market stalls, we decided we were sick of the uber-crowded sidewalks and jankity chotchkies, so it was off to Big Ben! Took the Tube to the Embankment stop, walked across the Thames to the South Bank, and saw some classic London hot spots. Here are a few of the better shots we got around that area.

Sidenote: I wanted to point out this funny tidbit. Apparently, my go-to outfit for exploring London always includes this white shirt. This was our first picture in this spot back in 2009, after we had studied in Spain and below...

Exact same shirt, worn yesterday! haha. (Once again, I don't know why the edited versions of these pictures did not upload so sorry if they are blurry or a little discolored.)

Crossed Westminster Bridge and came to Westminster Abbey, where Will and Kate got hitched!!! We didn't pay to go inside, but maybe we will next time. Our goal was to get the most sights seen in one day, so we didn't have hours to spend at any one location.

The north side of the Abbey. Very pretty.

The west entrance, where Will and Kate walked in on their wedding day for a straight shot down the aisle.

Just a random lamp and vine-covered wall on the south side of the Abbey in some sort of courtyard thing.

Cool window also in the courtyard.

Next, we went around the corner, past 10 Downing Street (the equivalent of America's White House), and down a few blocks to Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery.

Really old school double-decker bus and telephone booth we saw as we walked toward Trafalgar. The booths were originally black. The edited version of this picture is really cool because I antiqued it and tweaked it a little bit. Oh well.

Kind of random yet pretty cool boat in a bottle outside the National Gallery.

Official countdown to the Olympic Games! That's the Gallery in the background. It has a diverse collection of some amazing art, and the best part is, admission is free.

After hitting the highlights at the National Gallery, we hopped on the Tube once more to St. James Park and Buckingham Palace. Let me back up for just a minute and clarify - by 'highlights' at the Gallery, I mean world-renowned works by Van Gogh, Manet, Monet, Rembrandt, Degas. It's kind of surreal to see these paintings in person. Most people only get to see them on wall calendars. The nerd in me wanted to just sit and stare and contemplate, but Chad was on a tight schedule. Had to keep moving. ("Chad is on a tight schedule" was the running joke for the day. He is about the most easy going person, and was up for following us three crazy kids from Broken Arrow around the city like we knew what we were doing.)

Sunflowers by Vincent Van Gogh. Saw it.

The Water-Lily Pond by Claude Monet. Saw it.

We took a route to Buckingham Palace that we have never taken before, and it was beautiful.

We couldn't figure out what this building was, but it was more impressive than the Palace from our vantage point in the park.

Then, we started noticing a theme amongst the wildlife - they were almost not wild at all! They were acting like pets. Squirrels, ducks, pigeons and geese had no problem whatsoever with walking right up to a person and taking food from their fingers. It was incredible! After about the fifth time we saw people pulling snacks from their pockets for the animals, I decided to capture the madness with a few pictures. Here is the best one I got.

This particular fuzzy chubby squirrel had just taken a cracker from this guy's hand and was chewing it wildly.

We then proceeded alongside a tree-lined path to the residence of the Royal Family.

I don't know why England has so many of these paths, but it never gets old to walk down them.

Palace! How'd you like these types of gates to block off your front yard?

If you look just over my left shoulder above the center archway, you can see the balcony where Will and Kate kissed in front of thousands of onlookers after their wedding. (I realize that many of these buildings have much more significant historical value than just having to do with the recent royal wedding...but, I can't help but relate them to Will and Kate. I just wish I was her sometime...or at least that I had her wardrobe/figure/pocketbook.)

Lonesome guard standing watch. Do you think the guns are actually loaded?

Last major stop before dinner was St. Paul's. We had been telling Chad all day about how beautiful it was, how we should just walk in the door to get a glimpse of it, etc. Well, when we started getting closer to the church, we started noticing a lot of police vans. Like, a whole lot, lining both sides of the streets. Suddenly, we became aware of the sound of helicopter rotors nearby, and then we saw the helicopter that was circling repeatedly directly overhead. Every street we attempted to turn down to get to St. Paul's was blocked by a row of police men and women wearing bulletproof vests. A couple of times we got brave enough to approach them and ask what was going on. Their responses were basically the same, "We don't know the details of the situation, but this street is closed." So, just about the time we passed a building that was labeled as the London Stock Exchange, we started seriously wondering if we should be getting out of that area. Was there some sort of bomb threat that we didn't know about? Our cell phones had no signal. We started seeing news vans. An eerie feeling of being in the wrong place at the wrong time crept over all of us. 

About this time, we saw a very disturbing sight. I was unable to photograph it, but it's probably a good thing. A man passed us, walking rather briskly, but this was not an ordinary man. This man was probably in his late 50s, white, wearing a short red dress, makeup, heels, a blonde curly wig, and strutting his stuff like he was a runway model. It took us all a good minute to comprehend what we had just witnessed. Then, Matthew (with his uncanny sense of comical timing) said, "That's the guy the police are looking for!" This was not the first time any of us had seen a drag queen, nor will it probably be the last, but the strangeness of the incident was amplified by our seemingly unsafe surroundings.

We agreed to try to turn down one more street towards St. Paul's before giving up and leaving for a less weird locale. We finally rounded a corner onto a road that led us up to St. Paul's, and we could see what all the commotion was about. British university students had overtaken the steps of St. Paul's to engage in a protest of their recently increased educational expenses. "That's it?" was my first reaction. I'm sorry that you only have to pay like $14,000 a year in tuition and fees because your system of higher education is so highly subsidized. Their fliers literally said, "Tax the rich to fund education. We demand a decent system of grants to keep all students above the poverty line." Give me a break. I understand that it would be upsetting to have the cost of your education increase threefold over a short period of time, but it's hard for me to believe that many college students are forced into poverty. Get a job instead of whining for an entire day on the steps of a national monument and keeping tourists like me from getting to see what I came here to see. Whatever. It made for an interesting afternoon. I guess freedom of speech can't be constrained. The amount of police present seemed a bit like overkill, but they are probably leery of large crowds getting out of hand after the riots that happened in August.

Here they were, protesting their hearts out. Note the Guy Fawkes masks that some are wearing. If you haven't seen the movie "V" for Vendetta, and don't know who Guy Fawkes is, look him up.

Odd juxtaposition of the statue of the Queen in front of St. Paul's with police and protesters all around. Also interesting lighting on the Queen's silhouette.

Dome of St. Paul's.

As we left the protest site, we noticed this cool reflection on a police van. As we got closer the picture became clearer. Thought it was neat.

Having had our fill of political unrest, we realized that our bellies were feeling pretty empty. Time for some pub food! Walking down Fleet Street and then Strand, we came upon the Lyceum Tavern near the Lyceum Theater where The Lion King musical is currently playing. I ate a dish known as Toad in the Hole, which is sausage in Yorkshire pudding with mashed potatoes and veggies. Matt had a Beef Stout Pudding, which is beef and onions stewed with Sam Smith lager and gravy then served in this breaded mountain. We were starving, so we didn't think to take pictures, but it really was more delicious than I'm describing, and it was really inexpensive. Finished off dinner with sticky toffee pudding and ice cream.

Feeling refueled, but pretty much ready to be done for the day, we thought we should pay a quick visit to Piccadilly Circus. It was already dark, and the Circus is kind of London's version of Time's Square (although much less impressive), so it's best viewed at night. We stopped and watched an extremely anticlimactic break dancing show that lasted all of 2 minutes before the sub-par performers stopped the music and asked the disappointed crowd for money. (See the video below for their "big finale.")

Before giving up for the night and heading back to the train station, we passed yet another inexplicably peculiar sight: sidewalk urinals. There were four men, all standing in a tight circle around an open designated peeing spot. So weird. I did not take the picture below, because it would have been disgusting to do so, but here is a picture I found online for an example. Maybe the city just got sick of people relieving themselves in the street? Seems to me like some indecent exposure waiting to happen.

This would be my worst nightmare (besides my teeth falling out) - having to use the bathroom in front of other people!

Ok, sorry, last ridiculous story for day, and it also so happens to involve the bathroom. We stopped at Starbucks to get some coffee and use the bathroom before the train and bike ride home. After I came out of the unisex restroom, which was only intended to be used by one person at a time, a man and a woman went in there...together. Don't really want to think about that. Then, once they came out of the loo, Chad, Matt, and Reuben used it (separately and without touching anything with their bare hands.) And finally, as we left, an elderly man and woman went in to the bathroom together! What on earth? Two couples using the bathroom at the same time. Twice within 15 minutes.

Anyway, I'm sure you are now as exhausted from reading this as we were at the end of yesterday. It was a sufficiently unusual but satisfying day. The Allen Scholars from OSU that will be applying to come to Cambridge next year should be arriving here at any minute. They are coming to do a bit of a preview of the University and meet with some people in different academic departments, just like we did over Spring Break. Hopefully they like it as much as we have so far! Thanks for sticking it out and reading so much. Cheers!