Cuz london is drowning an' i, i live by the river!
Trip Start
Sep 16, 2008
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Trip End
Ongoing
London, England, United Kingdom
Saturday, January 10, 2009
getting to london was another early morning for me, but luckily i live a 2 min walk from the train station. the ride from edinburgh to london is around 4 hours, depending on the stops. i got to king's cross just after 10am this past monday. after settling in and a substantial lunch of pasta al fourni made by alessandra (my friend, who i know from ulpan last year), her boyfriend ted took me on a bike tour. bicycling in london is not as frightening as i thought it might be...despite nearly being run off the road by a bus. in less that 3 hours i saw parliament, the national theatre, the tate modern, the city, st. paul's, aldwych, covent garden, soho, china town, trafalgar square, buckingham palace, whitehall, and westminster abbey, and we also hand a pint somewhere in there as well.
later we went to brixton for some 'reasonably' priced japanese food (the first sushi i've had since i got over here) and went to check out a jazz bar, though unfortunately on a jazzless night.
my tuesday started ambitiously with an 8-something am wake up. i got to the british museum a bit after openning at 10 and stayed until just before one. the british museum is quite the place. i wish i studied something that necessitated me to hang out there. the space itself, let alone the collection, is great. in terms of the collection i enjoied the mesopotamian collection the most. while the egyptian and greek and roman collections may be unparralleled (or perhaps only closely parralled by a handful of other museums), i've seen lots of greek and egyptian stuff elsewhere. but i've never ever seen sumerian and assyrian stuff like that. and you can take pictures!
i met alessandra at SOAS, which is right near the museum, for lunch, then i walked. i walked to oxford street to observe the shopping. i walked to marble arch at hyde park then through hyde park to the albert monument and the royal albert hall. then through imperial college to the science museum, which i checked out and enjoyed. the wellcome trust has a history of medicine section, which needs to be refurbished, but is still cool. they also have old cars, computers, rockets, a particle accelerator from the '30s and one of the moon landers.
then i walked through knightsbridge, kensington, chelsea, belgravia (which are like yorkville on steroids) then back to buckingham palace and westminster to get pictures that i couldn't take on the bikeride, then walked backed home.
wednesday morning i went to trafalgar square, then walked to westminster abbey, which is very cluttered. i realised while there that i was visiting london at the perfect time, because the audio guide would say something like "you may have to wait to get up the stairs..." or "be sure to keep moving around the tomb..." but there were no crowds. i stood staring at QEI and could have done for as long as i liked. the abbey contains a sort of whos-who and if you're not buried there you can at least get a memorial. notables (for me) were darwin, newton, mary queen of scots (who has a replica tomb in the scotish national museum) and the british general from the plains of abraham...not montcalm, the british one...james wolfe! he had a big monument. i then walked to waterloo station to meet a friend of my from my course who's from london. we then walked to the tate modern, which, like the british museum, is a great space, if not more so. from the tate, which i enjoyed, but didn't see enough of, we checked out st. paul's cathedral to get a view of the city. unfortunately the very top was closed, but we still got a view. the cathedral itself is pretty amazing and filled with tombs and monuments, mostly of army and naval officers. we then went to brick lane, which is a really great street filled with bengali restaurants. we then hung out in a few pubs in the spitalfields/shoreditch area which was fun.
thursday i went to the victoria and albert museum, which like all the museums is huge, and the natural history museum, which was great. then i checked out harrods. harrods is crazy, and a bit overwhelming. it just got more and more extreme the further you went on. i'm glad i missed the di and dodi memorial, i'm not sure i could have taken it. obviously it's the place for luxury items. i don't know a whole lot about clothes and things, it just all looked expensive, which was enough to impress me. but what i really enjoyed was the food area. they had everything. beyond the unprepared groceries, the had bars/restaurants for sushi, dim sum, tapas, rotisserie, soup and sandwich (15 pounds for a sandwich!) and some ham-themed place i didn't understand. then there were prepared foods, of which you could get middle eastern and indian above the luxury-grade euro-fare. then there's the coffee and tea area. and the dessert area. the dessert area! they had turkish delight, and i'm pretty sure it was from turkey. and chocolate and cookies. they had a gelato bar and even a krispie kreeme area...or perhaps, pavillion, which to me didn't really fit, but i guess it's exotic here...like racoons or something. then suddenly i found myself in some french cafe, which was too much, so i turned around. i bought a sandwich at the deli area, a drink and pastry, which together cost less than 10 pounds and walked to hyde park to eat.
then i caught the tube to camden town, which was also a bit crazy in it's own way, with 'alternative'ness. it's a nice area though it's vibe is more of an image and industry now than i gather it used to be. what was really nice was following the canal to regent park. a friend told me a nice walk is to follow the canal from hackney to camden lock, but i might wait for nicer weather.
in the evening i met alessandra and we went to the national theatre for a free brazillian/choro/bossa nova/tango performance, which was great, though it was in the foyer, which got crowed as shows let out or started up.
yesterday, friday, i went back to the british museum to see the rest of what a really wanted to see. it was cool seeing greek stuff from ancient lydia, 'cause i had been to some of the places the artefacts were taken from last year. i also saw some yolgnu funeral-pillars from arnhem land, the place in australia where i attended the garma festival, as well as things taken from BC first nations. even though you can't deny how great the british museum is, as well as museums in general, perhaps, it's definately way better to see these things in the place where they are from, or really, where they belong. after the museum and before catching the train i checked out the brixton market on electric avenue, which was cool, and since all the meat vendors are arab, it reminded me a bit of israel.
so, london=good time. i was sort of expected a manhattan-style chaos, but i didn't find it, and it seems pretty livable as well!
