London calling!

So we had reluctantly left the land of gingers and Guinness and made our way to London.  We almost did a tour of the old Jameson distillery before leaving town, but had heard you get to sample 7 kinds of whiskey... probably not a good idea.

After flying into Gatwick airport we had to take the tube about a half hour to get into the city.  We waited patiently, and then I started yelling "can anyone tell me where platform 9 and three quarters is?" in the worst British accent I could manage.  For any of you people that haven't read Harry Potter, f' off.  A minute for before the train arrives this obnoxiously monotone man starts telling you to "mind the gap."

Either Brits just like to be bossy (my conclusion) or a lot of people have had fatal accidents falling into the
ENORMOUS gap in between the platform and the tube (subway.)

 Once we arrived in London I had to call my friend Davis to get directions to his place... not expecting to have to oogle naked women while I did so, I was a bit taken aback.  Then I remembered I'm not in America anymore and people can put pretty much whatever they want, wherever they want.  Including vegas style prostitute cards in a telephone booth in the wealthiest district of London.

 Yes, after living out of a backpack for 3 days and probably only getting about one shower during that time Jess and I had to waltz our grungy looking selves past people dressed in outfits more expensive than my car.  Kensington is home to the likes of J.K. Rowling, foreign ambassadors and lots of other people shell out more money for lunch than I did on my whole trip.  It was so nice to see some Americans, so we hung out for awhile but Dublin had taken it's toll and our hosts had class in the morning so we called it an early night.

The very expensive view outside Davis' "dorm"

In the morning Jess and I awoke and decided to take a peek outside on the balcony.  Yep we were still completely out of place!  We got ready and headed toward all of the embarrassingly gaper tourist attractions...

Sometime during all of these shenanigans Jess's friend Andy met up with us.  The did a summer together for the Conservation Core in Reno together.  Why you would choose Reno when you're from Scotland is beyond me.  Andy was super nice and had no idea where anything was, but he had a map the size of smart car and did a good job navigating...  this is a horrible picture, but I don't care he'll never see it because he's one of those "anti-facebook" people, and this blogs never going to get any international recognition.

Anytime he opened his mouth all I could think about was the character Fat Bastard 
the Austin Powers movies, oh and people in kilts.

After that her other British friend Rob met us and we grabbed something to eat and headed to meet Simon.  The best thing would have been if Simon accent matched his hair color and he was Irish.

Simon is in denial that he's a ginger.  If his hair was any
more red I'd mistake him for Carrot Top. (hahaha)

Then we could have had the British, Scottish and Irish accents which all sound hilarious to me!  We were staying at Simon's the remaining two nights of our trip.  After unpacking and having a few drinks we headed to a local pub and had a few beers and ate dinner.  Our appetizers were these things called pork pies.  They are pretty much self-explanitory, purred pork in a flaky pastry kind of thing... pretty good though.  Simon had to go to his desk job in the morning, so it was a short stint at the pub followed by a nice walk home where we met up with this...

"My what sharp teeth you have!"

 I've always wanted to be attacked by an angry pit bull, even better if it's British. 

This dog was literally by itself running down the street with this traffic cone that towered over it when stood up.  Shortly followed by a drunk guy trying to sell us cigarettes, whom I refused to buy any from unless he would call it a "fag"  (apparently that's not a very modern term.)  He then gave this dog orders to attack the cone.  We decided to get out of there before the dog ate one of our legs off while the drunk man laughed hysterically.

  The next day we saw what must have been an extended family of 40 Orthodox Jews who followed us wherever we went for about an hour.  I saw more ringlets of hair that day than you would at a 90's high school prom.  But back to my story... we went to a few museums and passed a few cathedrals that we decided weren't worth dipping into our pub money to pay for a tour of the inside.  After walking around the city and seeing some sights for about 6 hours we said goodbye to Rob who was heading to his girlfriends for the remainder of the weekend, and headed back towards Simon's for a nap while we waited for him to get done with work.

Later their other friend from the summer job came Mandy and another French girl who's name I don't remember because I was trying to block out her continuous babbling from the moment she walked in.  We had some Indian take out decided to head to a bar called the Royal Vauxhall Tavern.  I've never been to gay bar... I have quite a few gay friends who've always told me to go to some of the Minneapolis, but it's never worked out.  I couldn't have asked for a better first time experience.  When I think of British men I think of smartass or stern ones, like the stuck up people from the movies.  

Not men dressed in drag and doing the twist.  But that's what this whole trip is about, a learning experience. Yes it was Mo-Town night at the Tavern and they were playing all the classics.  Aretha Franklin would have felt she'd done herself a solid had she seen the way these men were swing their hips and snapping their fingers.  There were 6 women in the bar, the 3 I came with, myself and 2 more whose faces I never saw because they were attached at their mouths in a dark corner only stopping for oxygen breaks every few minutes.  Yes it was great and the staff were awesome, having fun and handing out condoms to everyone that left.  After being outdanced for over an hour by these middle aged and a few beers later we went home so we could make the most of our last day.

The next morning we woke up and decided we'd go out for a full English breakfast, and then on the way Simon thought it would be better to take us to Borough Market.  After getting halfway there it started to downpour so we had to make our way by the tube instead and by the time we got there it was about 2 pm and we hadn't eaten breakfast.  WELL worth the wait, the food was absolutely amazing and everything had flavor and there was so many weird things like ostrich and kangaroo steaks, then all sorts of baked treats.  I decided to get a burger at the Posh Banger Boys... 

ordered right from the cook who took the fresh patty right out of the fridge and
assembled it all right in front of you, my kind of burger.

ughmazing!  Fresh ground beef topped with a toasty bun smeared with some blue cheese, then some chili sauce and salad, hot cone of chips on the side.  That is the only hamburger I've ordered at a restaurant since leaving home and it was great.

walking across Millenium Bridge looking back on St. Pauls Cathedral

The rest of the day we did a bit more sight seeing including the business district of London,South Bank, St. Paul's Cathedral and the Millenium Bridge.

One of the coolest things Simon pointed out were some old faded paintings of the artist Ben Wilson.  The paintings were sweet because they were on pieces of chewing gum!  This guy takes a little torch melts the gnawed on, spit out, stepped on chewing gum melts it flat and creates little works of art.  Here are some I found online since the ones we saw weren't very good.

wonder if this gig's enough to escape a day job?

So now it was time to say goodbye and head home.  We thanked Simon and called him a ginger one last time while running to our train in Victoria Station that was about to take off with or without us.  We made it to our flight fine and were greeted in Sweden with weather in the 30's.  We arrived at about midnight and took a bus from the airport to a town an hour away where we'd take another bus to a train that would bring us back to Vaxjo.  Well after the first bus we had a 4 hour wait until our next one arrived, this was unavoidable so we were going to just sleep in the train station and everything would be fine.

Everything would have been fine if the train station would have been open, yes we had to sit outside the whole time at 2 am (pub close time) and it was about 25 degrees by this time.  All the hotels in the town were closed and when we asked a city bus driver about hostels he laughed at us and said they would all be closed to because "it was the middle of the night!"  Well no shit I replied, that's the point of a hostel!  So here we are waiting with 2 pairs of pants on, a couple scarves and socks for gloves.

In the end it all worked out and the bus driver who picked us up couldn't speak English so we got to ride for free due his computer not accepting our credit cards.  After a few more trains we made it home at about noon and passed out for 6 hours due to lack of sleep.  I ended up with a cold and a story for the grandchildren.  

So in the end London was absolutely amazing and if I'm ever able to afford a flat for $2000 a month maybe I'd live there.

'til next time.