Another (not so) brief update

Let me start with a brief rundown of Katie's visit. To see some pics you can check out my last post!

Saturday 3/14:
-Katie landed a little after 9:30, emerged from the airport doors around 10:30
-Bus ride back to Royal Holloway
-Brief walk about campus, visiting the Founder's Building, etc.
-Grocery run to pick up the essentials for the week
-Staying local and simply taking our time as we walked everywhere.
-Make spaghetti dinner
-Go to the Happy Man pub off campus for sticky toffee pudding dessert

Sunday 3/15:
-Train into London
-Tower of London (and the weird former port authority building across the street from the Tower), complete with Beefeater tour and crown jewels
-Trafalgar Square to check out the St. Patrick's Day celebration and get lunch from a street vendor place. The celebration turned out to be a huge free concert of Irish bands and boy bands... the Irish boy band was really bad, but we had a good time.
-Speaker's Corner at Hyde Park. That's where are the crazy religious and political nuts go to espouse their ridiculous theories while standing on soap boxes, step ladders and buckets. Very funny to watch.
-Casual time sitting and resting on the grass in Hyde Park. It was a beautiful day. Actually, it was a beautiful week. Katie never saw rain in England.
-Buckingham Palace... as anticlimactic as the first time I was there. But a couple good pics.
-Walked over to the area around the Houses of Parliament and the Eye. Got some daytime pictures. Ate dinner (grilled cheeses... budget). Got pictures at night.
-Trained back to school and passed out!

Monday 3/16:
-Monday was a slow day because I had class in the afternoon (2-3), essentially killing possibilities of going anywhere.
-In the morning I showed Katie the absolute chaos of the computer center as I had to hand in my final paper to the Geography Department.
-Class (Katie did homework I think).
-Long walk around Engelfield Green (another town essentially touching Royal Holloway) and the Engelfield Green cemetery, looking for old graves. Surprisingly not very many.
-Night filled with homework, unfortunately. I had three classes the next day, and one I had to make a presentation for... and then he never got around to letting me give my presentation!

Tuesday 3/17... St. Patrick's Day!
-Lazy morning.
-Class 12-1. Katie used the time to go visit the farmers' market held at the students' union every Tuesday. She grabbed some apples and potatoes. Nothing too exciting.
-Lunch together... then back to class 2-4.
-Immediately after class at 4, threw a bunch of clothes in a backpack, and took off on a train for the city!
-Arrive after battling rush hour type crowds on the Tube at the Generator Hostel. They initially put Katie and I in different rooms, despite telling me when I booked that we were together in a four person. After objecting we wound up together in a 7-person. Weird. But it worked.
-After dropping our stuff we headed to my favorite pub in London, The Boot, for dinner. Nice atmosphere with St. Patrick's Day decorations up, and Irish folk music playing in the background. Made me love it even more.
-Next we headed back to King's Cross Station to take pictures with the Harry Potter Platform 9 3/4 pushcart. Mom, you'd know what this meant if you just read the books like I asked...
-From there we hopped on the Tube for a ride to the Square Mile/City of London. It is where the original city of London began, where the original London Bridge led, and where the current financial sector lies.
-We saw "The Monument" in that area, which commemorates the Great Fire of 1666 which burned down most of the city, yet ironically also killed the rats that were spreading the plague.
-We saw the inside out building (you'd have to see it to understand) that is Lloyd's of London.
-Also views of Tower Bridge at night from London Bridge.
-Snapped some pics in a red phone booth
-Hit up a pub that I had read was the best in London, called the Nag's Head. Turned out to have terrible service. Left us both with a bad taste in our mouths.
-Headed back to the Generator to attempt sleep.

Wednesday 3/18
-Started the day with a search for Greenwich Park, which is dissected by the Prime Meridian. Katie and I met on spring break last year in Ecuador, where we jumped over the equator... so we wanted to jump the Prime Meridian together too! It took us a long time to find (it's just generally a trip to find anyway...). We first wound up in Sloane Square due to some bad information. Eventually we found the park, and looked on a park map to see where the Prime Meridian cut it in half. We found the spot we were looking for, but it was not marked with a line. So we made our own with our coats, and jumped over! One of the highlights of the trip.
-We then hastily returned to the Eye in the middle of the city to hop on (we had bought time specific tickets). Another beautiful, sunny day gave some nice views, and our fellow passengers were nice, so we got lots of pictures.
-From the Eye we grabbed a quick hot dog lunch and headed towards Wesminster.
-Got confused by where we were going and wound up just behind the Houses of Parliament, but eventually figured it out.
-Found Westminster and discovered it was closed! Took some pics outside, and headed to St. Paul's, which we had been intending to do as well.
-Spent a good long time in St. Paul's exploring the art, sculpture tombs, and dome (climb lots of stairs for views from above both inside and out!).
-Stayed in St. Paul's for Evensong, a short evening service.
-Headed home for a very late dinner!

Thursday 3/19:
-Started the day with a walk to Runnymede, where the Magna Carta was signed. It's still nothing but a big field, but now Katie can say she danced where the Magna Carta was signed.
-Ate some lunch at home.
-Caught a bus to Windsor. Queen wasn't home when we got there. Explored St. George's Chapel, took pics with the funny bear hat guard, explored the State Apartments. As we were getting ready to go, we wanted to kill time, because it wasn't quite time for dinner. So we went into a couple gift shops. As we finally were choosing to leave, I was going to comment about the Queen never being around during my three trips to Windsor, and my two to Buckingham, when I noticed that her flag was flying! She arrive while we were there!
-Explored the town a bit.
-Dinner out.
-Home for a movie.

Friday 3/20:
-Slow day... class 10-12, 2-4.
-Just generally spent as much time with Katie lounging about as possible. I think she explored a bit on her own while I was in class.
-Made dinner together.
-Back to Happy Man pub for more sticky toffee pudding.
-Explore Founder's Building... find really creepy closet. Really creepy.
-Back for a sad bedtime :-(

Saturday 3/21:
-Up early to catch a bus to the airport. Super :-(


All in all it was a splendid week. More to come about what's happened since then, and what's coming up. Soon I hope, because I leave Sunday!

Katie's Here!

Just a few pics to keep you updated on what the past week has been!

Funny bear hat guard at Windsor





The longggggg walk at Windsor

Runnymede

St. Paul's Cathedral (up the stairs and outside obviously!)

Westminster... outside: it was closed :-(

The Eye

Prime Meridian in Greenwich Park (we made our own line)

London Bridge and "The Square Mile" or "City of London"

Houses of Parliament and Big Ben

Buckingham Palace

Hyde Park (just after Speakers' Corner)

Trafalgar Square St. Patrick's Day Concert

The Tower of London

Royal Holloway, Founder's Building

Royal Holloway Internationals Journey Downtown!

Hey,

A little late on this one... On Saturday Royal Holloway led a guided trip to downtown London for all the international students. Along the way were were to hit Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, the National Gallery, and a Jack the Ripper walking tour (not to mention dinner), all for free (if you count already paying for it in the cost of attending school here as free)!

We were supposed to get a late start, around 1:15 (or 13:15 as they annoyingly like to write it here). Turns out the bus (coach, as they say) was a little late, so we didn't get out even that early. As we were waiting for the bus to arrive we got to see the Royal Holloway version of American football. I was surprised when I had learned they had an American football club, but intrigued. I expected it to be touch, or flag, or even tackle without pads, rugby style, but indeed they had the full get up. Kinda dull to watch though; they weren't very good. They clearly hadn't been playing for their whole lives!

When the coach did get there we piled on and expected to be downtown in no more than half an hour. Two hours later, after sitting in ridiculously slow traffic, and listening to our desperate tour guide's painful attempts to say interesting things (she was reduced to explaining London parking restrictions... I wished she would just let us make faces at the cars next to us!), we were finally there! We piled off the bus and took a short stroll to find ourselves in front of Buckingham Palaces. According to the Union Jack flag on top the queen was not home :-(

After a few picture opportunities and some short explanations from the tour guide, that I again found less than fascinating, we were off again! We were late and had a lot of ground to cover. We blew through the mansions surrounding Buckingham, hearing briefly about what royalty was supposed to live where, and how none of them were ever home. Eventually we came to a big building that is apparently the home of the Horse Guards. As best I could understand from the rushed explanations, the horse guards are supposed to guard the entire area in which Buckingham sits, and every day at four o'clock they go home (I guess people only attack the queen before dark). But before they leave they get inspected for appearances (see pics).

This is my conclusion after seeing the beefeaters of the Tower of London, the Horse Guards, and the guys in funny bear hats... there is a reason Great Britain is not the single greatest world power, as they once were. All these guys in elaborate costumes I'm sure served very important functions in the past. I also understand they are a great part of British national pride and image. But honestly, aren't they just an awful waste? They serve no legitimate function beyond being tourist attractions, yet I'm sure they cost an awful lot of money! And think about the man hours wasted for just one guard in a funny bear hat! He probably trained for years to do that job. And then he spends years standing completely still in all sorts of weather. And what does he accomplish beyond getting his picture taken a lot? It is the mentality and resources behind this sort of tradition that are the reasons Britain is no longer leading world politics (but they are a big reason Britain probably has more pictures of members of its "military" on refrigerators worldwide than any other country).

After the horse guards we bolted towards Trafalgar Square, which was a riot. Almost literally. The Palestinians were out in force, protesting to the long-dead Admiral Lord Nelson about the actions of the Israelis. Nelson was standing tall and firm, unresponsive to the commotion at his feet. The police were much more responsive. There were hundreds of them around, and sirens were going off left and right as police vehicles suddenly mobilized all at once and started circling Trafalgar Square. No idea why, things seemed peaceful enough, but apparently driving in circles with sirens blaring was necessary.

Needless to say we were glad to get into the National Gallery. Pleasantly enough, even though I wouldn't have had to pay anyway, the National Gallery is free! And it is massive. Our tour guide was desperately trying to lead a group of 30 or so people through the gallery to see the bits she felt were important, bypassing impressive paintings by the hundred.... I'll have to go back.

After the National Gallery whirlwind tour we stopped for dinner, which was good, but not particularly eventful. Cake. Mmmmm.

Finally, we were on to the last activity of the day/night. Jack the Ripper walking tour with a real bonafide "Ripperologist." The guy was an excellent story teller. As he walked us around the East End to the locations of Jack's 5 murders he described them and the efforts made to catch Jack. I never realized how gruesome he was. I knew he was a serial killer; I didn't know he was so gross! It was very interesting, even though all of the buildings were so different from the time period being described (I don't think Jack the Ripper jumped any of the prostitutes in the parking garage... but maybe).

When that tour was over we said our thanks and took off back to Royal Holloway on our 'coach.' As we drove back the driver pointed out some of the notable sights from famous movies, like Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter films (which I had actually already seen on our tour of "The City" with Arcadia), a street Bridget Jones apparently ran down in her underwear (or something, dunno, never saw it), and the rooftop on which the Mary Poppins rooftop scenes were filmed.

Whew!

Last little bit now. Sunday I spent trying to do my school work. In fact I didn't do any. Instead I filled out an application to an internship I am applying for this summer (for those that may have heard about the CDC thing... it won't work; for those that haven't heard of the CDC thing... never mind), and an application to volunteer at the local "old persons" home. A lot harder to volunteer than in the US. Frustrating. Then Sunday night I was planning on getting updates about the Steelers AFC Championship via internet phone with Katie. Turns out one of the guys from Bucknell also studying here is a Steelers fan and found the game streaming online. So I got to see the Steelers win the AFC championship! WOOOOOO. Granted the game ended at 3:30 AM London time, but it was worth it ;-) Now I just have to find someplace I can really watch the Super Bowl. I have to see that in full resolution and in its entirety of course!

That was long. Good job getting through it. As usual, email or comment if you like. I'll do my best to get back to you.