london was bloody fantastic!
saturday.we flew into stansted airport, which is a ways outside the city. the flight was only 40 minutes from amsterdam, and we got grilled at customs--they demand to know why you're there, who you're with, where and how long you're staying, etc. still, compared to the nightmare that was getting out of the u.s. back in may, i'm not complaining!
we took a bus into the city, which took about an hour and a half.
the first thing we did was go to buckingham palace for the trooping of the colour (aka the queen's birthday parade).
then we headed to our hostel,
globetrotter inns, to check in.
when we got there, i realized i had forgotten to pack socks. luckily, i didn't have trouble finding somewhere to buy some.
(good thing london is so touristy.)
we soon became experts at navigating the underground.
(it gets a bad rap for supposedly being confusing, but it's actually pretty easy to figure out.)
we headed to leicester square to buy theatre tickets. we had a few hours before the show started, so we decided to check out leicester square...
(charlie chaplin.)
...chinatown...
...and soho.
these buses are so cool:
the whole driving-on-the-left-side-of-the-road thing is so confusing that they have to tell pedestrians which way to look so as not to get hit.
then we headed to the
theatre royal drury lane to see the show!
yes, that's right--lord of the rings, the musical! it was awesome. at one point, orcs started running up and down the aisles jumping out at audience members and scaring them, haha. e. made me take the aisle seat in case they came near us, but they didn't.
sunday.we went to
shakespeare's globe theatre. it's not the original one, though--that one burned down. this one was reconstructed pretty much the same except that it holds about half as many people.
then we headed to the british museum.
the museum is huge, and we were way too tired to walk around the whole thing. but we did catch some highlights, like the rosetta stone:
after leaving the british museum, we decided to check out this festival.
there were a lot of cool performances and demonstrations:
after the festival, we got our creepies on a jack the ripper tour. it started right across from the tower of london:
jack the ripper was a serial killer in london in the late 19th century. despite theories on who he was, he is still unidentified. he killed east end prostitutes in public places--sometimes even when it was light out--but never got caught. he would cut their throats, slash their bodies and remove their organs. dun dun dun!
our tour guide is a jack the ripper expert. he's written a book about him, and he even gave the same tour to johnny depp to prepare him for the jack the ripper movie he was in, 'from hell.' he took us all around the east end.
(the prostitutes' church, where east-end prositutes would pick up customers. including--you guessed it--jack the ripper.)
(mitre square, and a close-up on ripper's corner--actual spot where he killed someone.)
(ripper's pub--all the prostitutes he killed hung out here at some point.)
monday.on a slightly more cheerful note, we started the day with a ride on the london eye, a 450-foot tall ferris wheel.
each pod can hold about 25 people, and it takes half an hour to go all the way around.
the view from the top is amazing!
once we were back on the ground, we decided to check out big ben...
...westminster abbey...
...and buckingham palace--sans parade-goers.
(the palace guards stay pretty still, although they sometimes switch the arm that holds the gun. they also march occasionally.)
the cabs are almost as cool as the buses:
after that, we went to
madam tussauds wax museum, where i definitely had the most fun!
(i've always wanted to do that.)
next came the scary part.
(it's one of those haunted house-type tours where you walk through and people jump out at you, and even though they can't touch you they can get freakishly close.)
we left madam tussauds and came across a beatles store:
then we headed to
her majesty's theatre for another show!
(it was incredible. i really can't get enough of musicals. i love them. it's a good thing i didn't do my study abroad in london--i'd be completely broke from seeing musicals every night!)
tuesday.our journey to
dr. johnson's house, the house-turned museum of samuel johnson--aka the guy who wrote the dictionary--took us down fleet street (à la sweeney todd)!
(sadly, it was lacking in demon barbers and human pies.)
but we got to the museum just as it was opening.
(the bar at the top was so people couldn't use the window to lower their children into the house to steal things.)
we got to try on the clothes of the era at the museum!
(i think that part was meant for kids, but oh well.)
(it's harder than it sounds.)
(a brick from the great wall of china.)
spectacles, designed to wrap around a powdered wig and be tied with ribbon:
(if only my glasses could be so cool.)
then we went to the
petrie museum of egyptian archaeology.
i got in a couple of pics before i was informed that photography wasn't allowed. whoops.
then we grabbed some food, caught our bus back to stansted, flew back to amsterdam--where the customs people could care less why you're there--and hopped on the train back to leiden.
cheers,
b.
