Tower of London

Embarrassing confession of the day: I used to think the Tower of London was one of the towers on Tower Bridge.  And I thought that up until the day my tour guide said "here's the Tower of London" and pointed at what would generally be described as a castle or fortress.  Whoops.

Due in part to my ignorance and in part because it is Sar's favorite part of London, I took a tour of the Tower.

Top left: Traitor's Gate
Bottom left: My tour guide
Top right: The White Tower and Tower Bridge
Bottom right: Old meets new. Tower of London in the midground, the Gherkin in the background

Fandoms' London

Upper left: The pub Charles Dickens frequented, still standing

Middle left and bottom left: the buildings Gringotts was modeled after

Center: "Feeeeeeed the birds!"

Upper right: Temple of Templar Knights, as seen in The Da Vinci Code

Bottom right: Millenium bridge.  Aka the bridge the death eaters destroy in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

That's right.  I never even made it to 221B Baker Street or Platform 9 3/4 (it's just not the same anymore) and still I was surrounded by fandoms!

Changing of the Guard

The bottom right picture is the only one I think needs elaborated on.  Basically the entire changing of the guard is a little story, and at this point one of the guards does an elaborate inspection of the guard houses to make sure no one is hiding in it or next to it or behind it.  It's a little comical, and I enjoyed it.

I made it to the changing of the guard Friday.  I was there over an hour before it started (which is at 11:30am, by the way) and there were already people everywhere.  I managed to find a tiny spot at the fence, luckily, and camped out there for the next hour.  Let me tell you: people get really pushy at these monuments.  If you want a primo spot, you need to be comfortable with people basically stepping on top of your feet (and staying there), shoving their boobs into your back, reaching around you to take pictures etc.  

You also have to be strong.  There was a lady who sent her kid to try and squeeze a spot for her family, and now generally I have a soft spot for kids and let them in front of me but this kid weighed more than I do and was almost as tall as me, so no.  No you cannot stand in front of me when you got here five minutes before the start.  No.  Get here earlier.  But she kept instructing the kid to use their elbows to move me and the woman next to me out of the way and she got really irritated when we wouldn't move aside.  Then there was an American woman who kept reaching over people to tap me and tell me to get down.  Granted, I had stepped up on the cement base of the fence (as had everyone else at the fence) but that was because I had an enormous iron detail on the fence that was as tall as my forehead that blocked my entire view if I got down.

Lesson to be learned: if you want to see anything, you need to get there at least an hour early (or maybe go on a day when it's raining?) and then you need to stand your ground because there are plenty of people ready to rip you from your spot.

More London

First, Traditional London:

Covent Garden! (Look kids!) Big Ben!  Tower Bridge!  (Look kids!) Big Ben...again!  Tower of London!  (Yeah, I didn't realize it wasn't a tower.  I thought it was part of Tower Bridge.  This is embarrassing, especially given it's my best friend's favorite part of London.  She's weird, it's ok.)

Notting Hill Carnival

I joined back up with Julia and Anna (who made me promise not to put the picture I took of her up on the Internet because she hated it) and we set out to take London by storm.  We made it as far as Notting Hill, where the festivities for the annual Carnival were winding down.  It was basically a parade of colors.  If we had made it a little earlier we could have participated in the street party and Caribbean foods, but we didn't realize what time it ended until it was almost too late to see anything at all!  So we were glad to witness what we did (except for the woman sleepily grinding on a guy on one of the floats...we weren't glad to witness that.)

Yay!  We've caught up!  I actually am in London right now!  Right now as I type this and write now as you read it (provided you read it the day it goes up on my site, because September 2nd I take the Eurostar back to Paris).

Syria: Musings of an American in London

We interrupt our regular schedule of one post a day to bring you a timely perspective of the Syrian crisis from an American in London.

Art and architecture in Liverpool

Liverpool is an artsy city, not just because of music: it was declared the Cultural capital of Europe in 2008.

Liverpool music scene as experienced by a non-musical person

I took a side trip for a few days to Liverpool and Manchester.  It's actually a lot cooler than I thought it would be.  Liverpool is a city I could see myself living in.  I loved that all day every day I could hear people singing on the streets, usually The Beatles, of course.

I was lucky because David, the guy I met on the ferry from Northern Ireland, had stayed at a great hostel while he was in Liverpool (and I was in Edinburgh) so he recommended I stay at Hoax.  It's a new hostel -- only opened this month -- so it had low prices despite being in the most desirable part of town.  It was right by the Cavern (top left), which is where the Beatles played before they outgrew it.  I happened to be there during Beatles Week and so there was a constant (sold out) line up of cover bands playing there.  There's also a statue of Eleanor Rigby (top right) in the alley where Hoax is, and the brick wall outside the Cavern (bottom left) has the names of all the famous people to sing there.

The basement of Hoax, Hopskotch (bottom right), is a bar they also own, and I wandered down for open mic night, where I heard this adorable girl play some great covers of American Country music.  You just never know what you're going to hear over here!

Bath time

On my last day in Cardiff I took a day trip out to Bath, which is really all you need.  It's pretty (mostly due to the fact that all the buildings are primarily made out of the same white stone) and it's neat to wander around the only entire city that UNESCO has designated a world heritage site, but there's not a lot to do.  I spent an hour touring the Roman Baths, and then window shopped a little, then I was ready to go home.