London, England - Tea, Crumpets,Theatre and The Queen

Ok so this weekend I had tea and crumpets at Buckingham Palace while watching a play with the Queen.

No, not really...but how cool would that have been? Unfortunately the Queen was in Australia this weekend, so I had to hang out with my friends. Instead I had tea, hot cross buns, watched a play with my friends (who slept through most of it) and stood outside the palace with all the other tourists.

Let's rewind a little bit. I was planning my trip, and I was talking to Russel (fellow bioinformatician at waterloo) about having tea and crumpets and scones this weekend, and then i realized something... You think of England, you think of tea and crumpets. But what the hell is a crumpet? I never knew... so i googled it. You know what it is? AN ENGLISH MUFFIN!! lol. I'm going to start calling them crumpets, crumpet is a way cooler word. And what we call french toast, they call eggy bread... what they call french toast is actually deep fried bread. Yum. Actually the brits are notorious for the poor quality of their food... except maybe their fish and chips. You know why they can't cook? Before WW2 everybody had maids and chefs, then they laid them off because they couldn't afford them in WW2, and everybody started eating canned food... so they lost their cooking skills. The whole country!! Isn't that crazy? I thought it was crazy.

Another thing about London, is that it's very VERY expensive! Imagine all the prices being the same as in Canada, but in pounds instead of dollars, and a pound is worth about 2 dollars. On top of that, I was informed today by a British co-worker that a really good job in England pays around 30 000 pounds a year. A really good job. Needless to say, we ate out of grocery stores all weekend (except of course for a traditional meal of fish and chips), and I still came back broke. Looks like it's shoe leather for me for the rest of the month....

There was sooo much to do and sooo much to see, every step was amazing. And I took a lot of steps. My feet hate me.

On day one I thought I woke up at 7, but had forgotten to adjust my clock for the hour time difference and found out after I was fully showered, dressed and fed that I'd gotten up at 6. Unimpressed. Oh and our hostel is something of a story on it's own.. The website may have embellished a little bit on the quality of this hostel... I felt dirty while eating the continental breakfast. My bunk was right next to a really hot heater.. as in if I rolled over in the night I was in danger of recieving 3rd degree burns, no joke. And finding the box of 'pest control' poison under my bed on day 2 was a nice little treat as well. To make things more interesting, one of my travel companions, who shall remain anonymous, snores really really loudly. No really, he sounds like a train wreck, the bunk bed shakes when he snores. On the first night there was a group of 4 girls in the room and i think they were maybe a liitttlle less than impressed... I slept through most of it....i slept through an earthquake once, so as long as he keeps the bed shaking to a minimum the snoring really isn't too big a problem for me. What was a problem, was the very angry girl who kept storming across the room to yell at him for snoring so loud. He was so scared to come back on the 2nd night that he slept on the floor in another room. I made friends with the new people in the room that night.... it's much easier to do when they aren't grumpy from being kept up all night.

Oh wait, let me actually talk about culture shock for a second! I didn't really experience much when I first moved to Germany, and I would have thought I'd experience more there than in England, but not the case! This weekend showed me the effects that living in Germany have been having on me without me even knowing about it. I'd been in London for about half an hour when Cora mentioned something about the signs or advertisements posted everywhere... I hadn't even noticed them. Subconsciously, I've stopped paying attention to signs and ads, because in Germany I have no idea what they say. As soon as I realized...i can understand this stuff (!!!) it was like an overload of information...so much to take in! A while later I was walking down a hallway or something like it when all of a sudden my journey became really difficult. There were all these people coming at me, so navigating my way down the hall was really hard. I was momentarily confused, didn't these people know that you always stay to the right side of the hallway/stair/escalator? Omg they walk on the LEFT side of the hall, because they drive on the LEFT side of the road!! That was hard to get used to on the weekend... When I was on a path that was head on with somebody I would automatically move a little to the right to go around them, but they would automatically move to their left, my right....well lets just say it was awkward. There were some problems with looking the wrong way before crossing the street also....but i'm still alive! Actually once when I went to get off the bus i walked to the front and turned right and was shocked to see that there were no stairs there! The seat and wheel were there....i had to go left. It was too weird....

Ok, so now the actual sightseeing stuff! As I mentioned, I was up stupidly early, so i went out to explore the city before the attractions actually started to open. First stop, Big Ben and the Parliament buildings! Quick question for you to answer....what is Big Ben? Bet you said a clock. WRONG! It's actually the name of the largest bell inside the clock tower. Tourists aren't allowed inside or inside the parliament buildings this time of year, but they were really nice to look at. We also checked out the London Eye, an enormous ferris wheel that takes half an hour to make one full rotation and costs waaayy to much for me to even consider getting on it with my budget.

Next stop: Westminster Abbey. This place is a MUST SEE, it was amazing...We spent a loott of time there. Inside is covered in monuments of royalty, famous poets, scientists. Darwin, Sir Isaac Newton (anybody read The Da Vinci Code?), Churchill, Shakespear, tons of kings and queens...The monuments are all over the walls, on the floors, statues and tombs everywhere! Funny that Darwin was burried in such a prominent church given that he upset so many religous people. Princess Di was also married and her funeral held here. Whenever a king or queen is crowned, it's done here, on a really really old wooden chair.

Saturday night we scored half price tickets to see Hamlet! I was sooo stoked about this, Hamlet is my most favorite Shakespeare play that i've read, and of course England's culture is so rich in theatre. The play was fantastic (or at least I thought so....a couple of my travel buddies took the opportunity to catch up on some z's), and the guy who played Hamlet was brilliant. I won't be surprised if i see him in a major movie someday...he had that movie star look to him.

Sunday morning i got up a little less early, and we headed to The Tower of London. This is no ordinary tower... it's a medieval castle, straight out of Monty Python :P We spent 4 hours there and took a tour from a Yeoman Warder (nicknamed Beefeaters...like on the bottle of gin). These guys are soo enthusiastic in the tours when they tell stories about things that once happened at the tower, and they all wear a traditional Beefeater costume (not the one on the bottle, that one is really expensive and only worn on special occasions) so I thought at first that they must just be hired tour guides. Not so. To become a Beefeater they have to serve for 20 or 30 years in the army/navy/military and earn certain badges and medals....it's really tough to get the position! The Tower of London was used as a prison for a looott of people, some of them very high profile. There were public and private beheading sites. King Henry the 8th beheaded 2 of his wives at the tower, and in one of the towers you can see carvings and last words in the walls of the cells left behind by prisoners. Another hot feature was that this is where the crown jewels are kept! The building was guarded by one of those guys in the really tall hats who almost refuse to breathe, let alone smile or acknowledge anybody. The jewels were gorgeous, there's a sceptar containing the largest diamond in the world, and the crowns....they're COVERED in more than 20 000 jewels! I took some blurry pictures and got in very big trouble for doing so.... I really don't know what the big deal is though...

Of course, what would a trip to London, England be without a stop at Buckingham Palace? The place is enormous... all I could think about was how much work it would take to keep it clean.....I'm a dork. There were a bunch more of those tall-hatted guard guys here, and then just incase all the tourists outside the gates didn't take them seriously (those hats do look awfully cuddly), there was a guard in normal clothes with an enormous gun. However even he lost his intimidation factor when he stopped his patrol of the gates to hit on some cute blond. "Wherabouts are you from?" Who cares mister, get back to guarding the palace!! Honestly, if anybody ever wants to break in there, just bring a hot chick along, you could hoist an elephant over the fence and the guard wouldn't have noticed :P I dunno about those hat guys though....they didn't appear to be easily distracted....

Check out all the london pics on my space!