Internet access.......

Well.... I just have a few minutes online - some of my new friends and I are doing dinner in about an hour and I have to check some class material on here. There was a mix-up about us getting wireless here at the college so I haven't had access to the internet for a day and a half!!!! I almost went crazy! lol... So I should be able to put up a blog tonight when I get home from dinner but until then.... cheerio!

More Accidental Tourism

Today I got up with a mission - ride the London Eye, see Big Ben, the houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey.... and then.... explore a bit and see what I manage to run into.

I did just that. Got up at 8:00, ate a free breakfast at the hostel and took off toward the London Eye via the tube. Got there and the line was only about 5 minutes long. Kathy had told me to go early to avoid the lines and she was right. By the time I got off, the line was about 5 times as long.
The first pic is a view down the Thames from the Eye and the second picture is of the egg things that you ride on. The whoe trip took just over 30 minutes because it goes so slow around but lets you have lots of time to see London and take some fantastic shots.


















Got a great view of Big Ben - or officially the Clock Tower of the Houses of Parliament. Big Ben apparently is the name of the bell inside the clock tower. There's a bit of London knowledge for you.




















Westminster Abbey is actually just a block away and the grounds includes St Margarets which is the church of the Houses of Parliament and even house a seat reserved for the Speaker of the House. It's where Winston Churchill got married and is still in use as a church today. Pretty cool building actually.




















Then Westminster Abbey itself.... FREAKING BEAUTIFUL. I've never in my life seen anything like it. Number one - so much history interred there that it is almost overwhelming. So many people buried there - Kings of Queens of London - William and Mary, Mary Queen of Scotts, King Edward (well three of them), King James, Queen Elizabeth I, Charles Dickens, Isaac Newton, George Handel, Laurence Olivier, Geoffrey Chaucer, Rudyard Kipling - Even Charles Darwin... It's astounding how many English greats are in that same place.
























Then the fun started. I took off walking down the Thames just to see where I ended up. I ended up in the London borough of Lambeth and ran into the Imperial War Museum. The museum commemorating mostly Britian's involvement in World War II. They had some stuff from WWI also. It's the kind of museum (free by the way) that you can spend all day - 8 to 5 and not quite see it all. It too was a little overwhelming. They had a cool Secret Service area dedicated to MI5 and MI6 (English versions of CIA and FBI) and a 2 floor Holocaust Museum inside - that was the most incredible memorial to the Holocaust that I had ever seen. It was a little bit much emotionally - it was really a no-holds-barred look at the issue that was refreshing - but REAL.

Outside was a Tibetan Peace Garden dedicated by the Dalai Lama himself in '99 and a peace of the Berlin Wall. A really cool find for the accidental tourist today. I'm back at the hostel - it's about 8pm and I'm beat. I have to move to my "permanent" home tomorrow where I'll be for about 5 weeks during classes so I think I'm gonna head to bed early tonight - but tomorrow is another day!

Got a late start today!

Well I started off today a little late. I was still feeling a little jet-lagged and slept till 11AM this morning - but I probably needed it so I won't feel too bad about it. I decided to look up a Fridays and check it out. The menu is SO different than that of the states. Bunch of stuff I've never heard of and a bunch of stuff we used to have but got rid of. Tried something I never heard of for a meal and drink -- good stuff.




















Next I headed down to Trafalgar Square again to really spend some time exploring around and take in some touristy sites. It really is a cool park. A couple of huge fountains and these lion statues everywhere - 4 in total and they're HUGE. The girl on the back of that lion is my age so that gives you an idea of the size. Tons and tons of people there and just really in the middle of a lot a stuff. Including the National Gallery (below) which is free of charge and has soo soo many awesome works of art - Titian, Raphael, da Vinci, Monet, Michelangelo and so so many more. Well worth my time.

















Next I headed down Strand Street and towards Buckingham Palace - according to the signs - Home of the Sovereign since 18hundred something. The sovereign... LOL.... ohh these Brits.
Really cool building architecturally though - and massive. The front is only the beginning there are so so many additions on the back - the place is massive! The fountain out front dedicated to Queen Victoria is really beautiful. The street for about a miles is lined with British flags up to the palace gates.
























I also got a good shot of two at the Royal Guards including (what I think) is a funny video at the end. I missed the changing of the guard however, that was only once today at 11:30AM and I got there about 2pm. But I have plenty of time to back and see it before I leave.






















I also headed to St Martin in the Fields - a church just off Trafalgar Square. I believe it's Catholic - had a holy water basin thingy (excuse me plz - I'm not Catholic) - lots of candles, etc. BEAUTIFUL church. It's been restored recently apparently. They still hold regular services there. There was an orchestra of some kind practicing there today. I think it might be the people who on weeknights are putting on Vivaldi concerts. They also have a diner and gift shop and art gallery downstairs in the crypt. One of the cool things you can do is take a brass engraving of an artwork and use these wax crayons to do what's called a rubbing. Mine is pictured below.











































Then ... continuing down the path to be the accidental tourist I've turned out to be... I trotted around the corner looking for a soda and ran into Leicester Square (pronounced Lester). It was really cool too.... Lots of statues and green space. One of the coolest things was the Piano in the Park thing they have going on. There's just a piano there with a bench and laminated sheet music and anyone is welcomed and encouraged to come up and start playing for everyone. And a LOT of people did.. super cool. They had a statue of Charlie Chaplin there too. I later needed to kill some time before dinner and decided to watch a movie (what else is there to do at Leicester Square... lol - watch the 2nd video at the end). I took in dinner later and headed home. A pretty eventual day. Tomorrow will be an early day - going to check out the London Eye first thing tomorrow!!!

Oh yeah - P.S. - London is Michael Jackson CRAZY! OMG- its all anyone here can seem to talk about - in all the papers - they had a candlelight vigil for him tonight at Trafalgar Square - the cinemas are already playing his Thriller movie tonight all over town. And UK Amazon - Michael Jackson is all 10 of the top 10 albums today..... so many people were searching for info they actually crashed the UK Google site.. The website shut down to protect itself because so many hits were coming through that it thought it was being attacked by a virus and went into self-preservation mode of something. He was planning his 50 concert farewell event here in London to start in July and then he would retire for good after.... Goodbye Michael! It's safe for LA children once more.

London Day 1 Cont'd

This is one of my new favorite pictures. It's spray-painted everywhere in the subway and the automated lady on the subway says it about a hundred times at each stop, I swear. Mind the Gap!

Today (as I mentioned in the earlier post) I was needing to kill some time before the hostel check-in so I jumped on the tube and ended up by accident at the London Bridge Subway Stop. So I got out and sure enough some really cool stuff to see including London Bridge, Tower Bridge, some old ship, lots of downtown skyline buildings as well as the Tower of London in the background and some other buildings I've yet to identify. So this will warant further exploration just today I was tired, feeling dirty and and wanted to get back to the hostel so I snapped a few quick pics and that was that. My cousin Angie told me about an old boat that you can tour, and that was there too! It was shut down for renovations when she was here, but it's there. I'll go inside of it when I have more time another day.


The Swiss Re Headquarters. Don't know what
that is yet, but what a cool egg shaped building!!!







That's the Tower of London behind those trees.
That's going to be one of our class excursions so I'll leave that for later!














This is the famous Tower Bridge. It was built from 1886-1896.
One of the most famous landmarks in London.







I hope to get This is the actual London Bridge built in 1973
closer soon to get some better close-up pics of it. See the inscription below


























































Tonight I wanted to find this cool bar I had been told about called Kudos. It's supposed to be really hip and trendy and it's in the heart of London. So I went online to the London Travel website and it told me to get off on the Charing Cross station. So I did.... Wow... first of all this is the town of Westminster and it's go so much going on right when you get off the tube. The National Galleries are here, Trafalgar Square, The Benjamin Franklin Home (I'll have to get back to you on that one... it confused me a little.) Also you can even see a pic of Big Ben in the distance, very very close. So it was late afternoon and I was hungry. I proceeded to the restarurant above - Ciao. This was a cute little Italian food and Gillati restaraunt. I had dinner there and then proceeded to find Kudos. It was a cool bar. I had a couple of drinks and headed back to the hostel. But tomorrow... tomorrow I plan on devoting the day to Westminster and Trafalgar Square area. So expect pictures and updates tomorrow!

Day 1 London!

So I arrived at the Heathrow Airport at 7:50AM London time and spent the next 1 1/2 hours trying to navigate through customs and UK border control. It was soooo super obnoxious -- waiting in line for that long just to have them look at your passport, ask you why you're there.... look at you funny and then send you on through. Was quite annoyed about that - but it helped to kill some time.....

Check-in at the hostel isn't til 2pm... (but I didn't know that). Somehow I managed to lose the very detailed directions I had laid out for myself about how to get from the airport to the hostel I'm staying in for the first three days between Indy and London.

I figure out the tube (London Underground - subway) map pretty well and found my way to the correct station to get out but then couldn't find the street... You see in London, they sometimes post street names on poles like in the U.S., but more often than not they post them just anywhere that seems appropriate at the time : on building walls, on fences - just anywhere!















I managed to stop someone on the street to ask them for the number to "directory inquiries" because i had already put this number in my UK cell phone - a number given to me by IU Study Abroad, but it of course was old and didn't work. Thanks to my awesome friend Sarah, I arrived in London with a pre-paid UK cell phone with the equivalent of US $50 loaded on it already. So that really helped.


I got a hold of the hostel and they directed
me in the right direction: Here's a picture of it with their cute little Green Door.









So I arrive at 11:15 and find out that check-in isnt' until 2pm so I have to kill 3 hours. So I jump back on the tube and go exploring. I explored the Waterloo station which is like a massive version of Union Stations in the US. It's where Subway, elevated trains and passenger trains all converge in a massive station. The funniest part of Waterloo station is that I found the signs for the "Men's Toilet" - yes they don't say bathroom, restroom or lieu - they just say toilets. Very simple and to the point I guess... but it was a pay toilet! It cost $.50 US equivalent just to enter the bathroom!!!

So after paying for that I took some pictures of the Waterloo station - massive!















So I eventually made it back to the hostel but not after first visiting London Bridge. I didn't stay long, b/c I wanted to get back and shower but I took lots of pics of that and will post them tonight. It's off for a nap for me now! I've been up for about 21 of the last 25 hours and I'm beat. It's 4pm now here. We are five hours ahead of Eastern Time.... so say hey and look for another blog tonight!

On my way to London....

So on Tuesday night my parents picked me up and we headed to Chicago to hang out Tuesday night and Wednesday day for my birthday and pre-trip. On Wednesday we did the Chicago Botanical Gardens which is really huge. It was a fun little afternoon and then they dropped me off at Chicago O'Hare for me to depart out.
My flight left at 6:00pm, took 8 hours (and I lost 6 hours on the way) so I arrived in London this morning!

Virgin Atlantic really treats its customers well. They gave us goodie bags with all kinds of stuff in them including toothbrush and toothpaste, and socks to keep your feet warm! Goofy, I know but i wore sandals on the plane and my feet really were cold... so I took advantage!







The only thing I didn't like about the flight was the
uneasy feeling I got when I saw this:

In case you didn't read that it says "REMOVE BEFORE FLIGHT" ..... and yet it remains in the exit door mid flight! Had a bit of a panic attack over that... but we all landed safely so no harm no foul!







As you can see too... the headrests had little TV screens in them that not only played movies and games but also tracked the flight real-time. So this was right before I fell asleep - we flew over the very edges of Canada and then Greenland as well on the way there. The UK is very very north compared to the U.S.

So that's it... the next entry is Day 1 London.... stay tuned!