Today I ventured down to Oxford Circus (no clowns were harmed during the writing of this post) so that I could exchange my faulty airline power cord at the Apple store. By now we were navigating “The Tubes” with ease so it was no problem getting around London.
The Nokia store had a cool window display of funky headphones. All they sold there were cellphones and accessories, but it was heavily marketed as music store.
The Nike store was promoting their new line of ultra-light track shoes for the Olympics with a golden sprinter. And yes, the shoes were REALLY light!
After successfully tricking Apple into exchanging the power cord, I just started wandering around the streets aimlessly, eventually hopping back on the tube, for one stop north to the Piccadilly Circus stop. Still no clowns.
But they did have horses
The weather was perfect, and I had a cold blended vanilla drink in my hand, so I started wandering some more, eventually stumbling upon The National Museum (which was closing)…
…and Trafalgar Square which was quite an impressive site!!
After dipping my feet in the fountain to cool off a bit…
… I headed West under a massive archway…
… which lead to Buckingham Palace.
And once I snuck by the guards…
… I ended up at the gates of the palace. I should have called ahead however. Apparently the Queen doesn’t read this blog and wasn’t expecting my arrival. The Canadian gates…
…were closed.
But I was able to get in via the West African gates.
And then finally…
wait for it…
More gates!!
Turns out… the Queen had just run out to the corner store to buy some eggs and milk. I didn’t feel like waiting around on her, so I wandered the grounds some more to check out her collection of fountains…
…bronze statues…
… and gold statues.
Until finally it was time to go home, so it was back down into The Borg aka The Tubes.
Authored by: Digital Knowmadd on July 27, 2008.
Filed under: England,Europe,Travel | 1 Comment »
We decided last minute that we had better experience a night out in London for our first and only Saturday evening. We knew the drinks were going to be expensive so we began pre-fading at the house. After a few hours of that we were ready to head out on the town around 11pm.
After leaving Sheppards Bush “The Bush” as it’s known to locals, we hopped on a quick 25 min tube ride
to Covent Garden which is a very popular area for shopping, restaurants, and nightlife. On the tube ride we met some friendly locals who were also partaking in a bit of drinking on the tube (recently banned). After they heard we were from California they though it would be a good idea to serenade us with the theme song from the OC “California” at the top of their lungs!
After we reached Covent Gardens we walked around a bit and then found a nice restaurant bar to hit up before heading over to Soho for the clubs. We ordered 3 grey goose and soda doubles which came to 48GBP or $100. Now we were really feeling the effects of the drop in value of the dollar coupled with the notoriously expensive London nightlife. We thought it was best to head over to Soho before we were completely broke. On the way we spotted a traditional English phone booth and climbed in!
Once we finished playing around in the phone booth a 5 min walk led us to some of the most popular clubs in London. We settled near the entrance of one and asked what the cover was. We were told $140. We figured that was ridiculous until another spot was $120…and finally a deal at $50. At this point it was after midnight and with less then two hours left we opted to remain on the street and people watch. We did find some $8 hot dogs which at the point felt like quite a bargain!
Authored by: Jay on July 26, 2008.
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We got off to a bit of a late start today as the jet lag and the back-to-back 4am evenings finally caught up to us, but we were determined to at least make it to the Imperial War Museum. Entrance to the museum is free, but worth so much more. The journey was later juxtaposed with a walk by Westminster Abbey and an anti-war protest outside of the House of Parliament. And finally a bit of nature with this bag-ass-bird in St. James park.
Authored by: Digital Knowmadd on July 26, 2008.
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Today we met a tall gentleman by the name of Ben.
Ben was being watched over by The London Eye
Who was also watching our backs.
Good thing too as there were some weird creatures roaming the streets.
That caused us to be late for our meeting…
…with a genius.
“What is important is to spread confusion not to eliminate it.”
Authored by: Digital Knowmadd on July 25, 2008.
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The Walkabout Inn, an Australian pub, with 3 Americans, two Swiss, and a side of fries.
Flora, Jay, Jason, Reena, Hadas
We ended up here instead of going back to The Defectors Weld. Apparently the brits aren’t too keen on sarcasm, at least the bouncer wasn’t. Note to self. It’s all good though because we got to relive the 80s thanks to the DJ. Oh, and as we were leaving, the police were outside as someone forgot their blood on the sidewalk. Not quite sure what that was all about. We all still had all of our blood with us.
Authored by: Digital Knowmadd on July 25, 2008.
Filed under: England,Europe,Travel | 2 Comments »
