Elissa Goes Abroad: LDN

Hello readers (if any of you still exist),

I'd like to preface my London thoughts with the following: Lily Allen once sang about London being all nice on the outside, but under the surface "you can see it's all lies."

As a London native, I'm sure she's right. But I think what she says goes for almost every city, especially a large one. That being said, I'm happy I got to see that marvelous outside.

Thursday 24 September 2015

Blessed with beautiful weather, we were excited to begin our day with a walk to Westminster Abbey. The city was abuzz with life and chatter about the Rugby World Cup. Coincidentally, we almost literally ran into the Romanian team on our way to Westminster, but that's besides the point. Westerminster, opened 1090 AD, delighted the art historian in me. Unfortunately, due to silly rules, I don't have any photos, and if only my words could describe the awe-inspiring craftsmanship of the beauty within those walls. Our audio guides told us much about the history of the Abbey, but some things that really stood out to me were Poet's Corner, and the fact that Mary Queen of Scot's rival Elizabeth was buried exactly opposite to her. I also find it important to state that I don't have many spiritual moments, but laying my eyes upon the beauty and history of Westminster, even in my pain and exhaustion, had me in tears for nearly every moment of my few hours being inside the Abbey.

From Westminster we walked/limped under Parliament and Big Ben. The guilding on the bell tower shines more brightly than any photo I've seen could ever convey. We knew our next stop was the boat tour, and so we boarded the hop-on-hop-off boat with our destination of Greenwich. Once in Greenwich, we explored fun & interactive Maritime Museum, the Chapel and the Painted Hall of the Royal University campus a bit, and I jokingly made comments about how the main courtyard(?) looked much better than it did when Thor visited in Thor: The Dark World. We limped up the large hill to the Royal Observatory to see the large telescope and Meridian Line, and a very spectacular view of the London Skyline, but sadly we missed entrance to the museum by fifteen minutes. But, we found a small garden instead, where we sat for a while, enjoying the tranquility and resting our ankles.

View from the Royal Observatory, overlooking London and Greenwich University

Because we missed the last boat back to London, we grabbed a pint of cider and some food at a pub in Greenwich, and decided we'd try the Tube back to the hostel. We hobbled about Greenwich along the water watching the sunset, before we hopped on the Overground line to Canary Wharf, where we got another gorgeous view of the sunset, and then figured out we had to take the Jubilee Line to Green Park, where we would catch the Victoria Line to our station in Pimlico. We entered the station, and Cerisa saw that a train was waiting and she, just a few steps ahead of me, got on...right as the doors closed. I will never forget the look on her face as the train pulled out of the station. Thankfully, because we had previously established our route and the next train was only two minutes away, we met up at Green Park and had a good laugh about being too eager to get on the Tube. Back in Pimlico, we stopped at the store to grab me a nightly bag of ice for my foot and knee, climbing five flights of stairs, before falling asleep.

The River Thames at sunset, from Greenwich

Friday, 25 September 2015

On Friday we hopped the Tube to Tower Bridge and London Tower. London Tower was full of a lot of interesting artifacts, replicas, stories, and enthusiastic actors portraying Anne Boleyn, George Boleyn, and miscellaneous other members of the kingdom. While the two of us marveled over the beauty of the crown jewels amidst jokes of me marrying Price Harry,and at the macabre torture instruments, the tower is infamous for, I found the most interesting parts of London Tower to be the sad and mysterious tale of the missing princes in the Bloody Tower. For those who aren't aware of the story, The Bloody Tower gets its name from the theory that two Princes, Edward V of England and Richard of Richard of Shrewsberry, the sons of Edward IV, were lodged in the tower after the death of their father by their uncle, Richard of Gloucester. Supposedly, this was in preparation for Edward's coronation. Instead, the boys disappeared and Richard (of Gloucester) took the throne. While all evidence is merely circumstantial, in 1694 a Tower work crew dug up a box containing two smaller skeletons believed to be the bodies of the two princes. While widely accepted, but not proven, that these two bodies are those of Edward V and young Richard, King Charles II had the two bodies buried in Westminster Abbey.

After spending a few hours at the Tower, we walked over to Tower Bridge, meandering through the exhibits, and making an uneasy Cerisa, who is afraid of heights, even more uneasy when I leaped onto the glass floor overlooking the Thames and the road at about 137 feet. But together we walked the glass floor, on both sides, and took some pretty cool selfies.

After Tower Bridge we explored the complexity of the HMS Belfast to kill some time so we could see the drawbridge open on Tower Bridge. We were so invested in what we were learning on Belfast, we almost missed the bridge opening...so close, in fact, that we only caught a glimpse of it as we were running down the sides of the boat to get to the bow so we could see it! Overall, though, the Belfast is an impressive war machine and was fun to explore--even with the "Warning: Asbestos!" signs everywhere!

We got some dinner at this outdoor/Tropical themed place just outside the Belfast called the London Riviera (well known for its chips, and they were the best I've had so far on this trip!) before hopping the Underground to Buckingham Palace. We arrived at the Palace at last light, just enough to see the guards outside starting to slip into shadow. Instead of harassing the guardsmen, we took a seat on the stairs of the sculpture out front and watched the moon rise over the London Eye (or Coca-Cola Eye, as it is technically) before heading back to the store for my nightly bag of ice, and then up to sleep.

The sunset in over Victoria Memorial and the Eye near Buckingham Palace

Saturday, 26 September 2015

The 26th was rather casual in schedule, although crazy in nature. We spent the vast majority of the time running up charges on our Oyster card. As per the suggestion of a few people, we went to Camden Market...however, it was not the Camden Lock Market so....we saw a lot of street vendors, but not the artsy craft market that I was (not really?) expecting. We did get some cheap sweatshirts and some great Brazilian food lunch before heading in the direction of our next brief stop: the last Police Box in London.

For those of you who don't know, or even for those of you who do, Cerisa and I are pretty big Doctor Who fans, and The Doctor's spaceship is an old 50s style police phone box. While it's not the famous TARDIS, it is the last remaining one in the city that resembles what is in the show, so we had to go out to see it and take a few pictures. We'll come back to Doctor Who later on.

We returned to London proper for our next stop: Platform 9 ¾ from Harry Potter! There was nothing extraordinary about Kings Cross station (although St. Pancras Station was gorgeous). We waited in line to take pictures with the fake cart and owl embedded in the 9 ¾ wall. What was actually really nice is they allowed you to take your own photos and they took the professional ones (of course we bought some). After spending some time in the gift shop, we went to walk along the Thames and see the inside of Shakespeare's Globe Theater. However, the latter didn't happen--they were mid-show so we had no luck. Instead, we acted like idiots and found an access ramp to touch the Thames, taking ridiculous pictures while doing so. After getting our hands dirty and cracking jokes about how the Thames tasted better than English tea, we carried on to what was known as the London Bridge Experience. The LBE was a combination of history, horror, and interaction, and it was a blast. After that, we were going to go on the Eye, but the line was too long, my feet hurt too much, and we were really hungry. So instead, we watched the sun set over Parliment, before finding food, getting ice for my knee, and going back to the hostel.

Sunset over the Thames and Parliment, from next to the Eye

Sunday, September 27th 2015

Honestly, not whole lot to report about that day. It was museum day, so we first hit 221B Baker Street (The Sherlock Holmes Museum for the uncultured), followed by the Science Museum and then the Natural History Museum. The Sherlock Holmes museum was cool...it was tiny on the inside, set up as it was described in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novels, with Sherlock's, Dr. Watson's, and Ms. Hudson's room appropriately decorated--with pipes, bullet holes, medical books, and trinkets. Another one of the floors was dedicated to fan letters and uncanny life-size wax figurines of characters from the Holmes universe, such as Irene Adler and the arch nemesis himself, Jim Moriarty.

Part of the Holmes home

At the Science Museum, there was a super cool exhibit called Cosmonauts which told Russia's side of the space race...and surprisingly the Natural History Museum felt kinda empty. Seemed like there was a lot missing from the museum.

Perhaps the most exciting thing about that day was the night we spent on a Jack the Ripper tour. We had a really enthusiastic tour guide (who actually KNEW that New York was more than just the city, because he had lived in the Catskills for some time!). My favorite fact was that they had covered up all of the original crime scenes, except for one, in an attempt to shy the public away from the heinous crimes committed. Despite my aching feet, hurting knee, and overall fatigue, it was a really great end to an amazing time in London.

Until next time,
Elissa