London! (finally)

Aside from turbulence, I think the thing I hate most about traveling by plane is feeling like you are going to miss your flight. This might explain why I’m sitting at a coffee shop at the Edinburgh Airport two and a half hours before my departure. You might be thinking, “You only spent £20 on this flight; it’s not a big deal if you miss it.” And you're probably right. But after fitting a weeks worth of clothes in a backpack (a miracle in and of itself), I was not about to miss this flight. And if you think this is the first time I’ve been this early to a flight this semester, then you haven't met the woman at the Costa Coffee kiosk who already knows my order: grande mocha (yeah, I’m hard-core). In fact, just two weeks ago, I was sitting in this very airport, waiting for my flight to London-Heathrow. Having never been to London, I obviously took the town by storm. But, rather than try to recount every antic over the five days I was there, I thought I would just share a few observations I made from my first experience.

1) The London Bridge is not really falling down. It’s actually quite secure. This was a disappointing discovery for me. I can’t help but think that this was the brilliant political platform for some parliamentary candidate. S/he probably promised to restore the bridge back to working capacity, not thinking of all of us poor tourists who came across the pond to see a dilapidated bridge. I sent in a comment card to the London Bridge museum explaining my disappointment. Still no word back. And why is it so much less majestic than the London Tower Bridge. I don’t want a t-shirt or a picture taken on something shitty like that. What do I say, “oh yeah, this is a t-shirt I bought to commemorate my visit to a flat boring, well-constructed bridge.

"...is falling down, falling down, falling down."

London Bridge: boring and structurally sound

London Tower Bridge: definitely better

2) The leaning tower of London (aka Big Ben). Look out Pisa, London wants to join in. But once Londoners realize their clock tower is leaning, some stupid politician will come and fix it, just like the bridge.

Just lending a hand to Big Ben

3) Royal guards do not always wear red poof ball hats. Again, London let me down. I searched everywhere for one of those classic London sights: a royal guard standing by the palace, wearing his red poofy hat and not smiling. Apparently, they wore black in the winter (?) or else they were mourning someone’s death? Idk.

Classic American

4) Changing of the guard? WTF? This whole changing of the guard thing just blew my mind. I thought this was another case of smoke and mirrors, like those magicians who try to distract you with one hand while they swap out different colored scarves with the other. I spent an hour and half watching a bunch of band members prance around with their instruments and play Star Wars theme music and “It’s a wonderful world.” And yet, after all of that, I was not actually sure that they changed the guards. WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN! AND WHAT ABOUT THE RED POOFY HATS!!! REFUND!

Marching band in Buckingham.

5) London 2012 is a misnomer. They should call it: Stratford 2012. After visiting the London Tower, I saw an Olympics flag flying outside this building, so I went in to ask them where I could find all things Olympics. They directed me towards the Stratford stop on the Tube. The Tube map made this trip look deceivingly short, but an hour later, I finally got to Stratford, a suburb outside the city. This was where they are constructing the Olympic village. They weren't giving tours of the construction site, but they also didn't patrol the site well. So I broke some laws and ventured into the athletes village in search of some Olympic rings or something. I found a big cloud looking building and what I think was the Olympic stadium. I'll count that as a success.

Oh hi Olympic rings...

They call it "the cloud," but I was hungry, so I thought it looked more like a marshmallow.

Evidence of an alien attack on London.

if strikes continue as they have, this could be how the Olympic village looks in two years. get excited!

6) Harrods takes the term “elevator music” to another level. So for those of you who have been living under a rock (like I have), Harrods is the incredibly fancy department store, where normal people visit and rich people shop. After walking in, I got lost in this labyrinth of a food court. When I finally got out, I passed by this Diana and Dodi memorial (not gonna lie…kind of creeped out by this) and made my way to the escalators. As I traveled up the escalator, I enjoyed some beautiful opera music. Then as I approached the fourth floor, I looked to my right to find a woman, actually singing opera off one of the balconies. WTF Harrods! No elevator/escalator will ever be the same.

The next Susan Boyle.

7) Platform 9 ¾ is actually between platform’s 8 and 9. Let me preface this observation with the fact that I’ve never gotten past page 30 of the first Harry Potter book, so this might be obvious to others. Despite having never read the books, I knew that the platform was at the Kingscross train station. When I got there, I walked to platform 9, which makes sense to me. Then I walked down about three quarters of the way. I got worried when I didn’t see the little baggage cart thing sticking out of the wall. So I walked a little farther, then a little bit farther. I got to the end of the platform and turned around. I walked the entire length of the platform again…still no platform 9 ¾. I continued to do this for about 5 minutes (mind you, there is no train scheduled to leave from this platform for another hour). So I eventually went to ask this woman in a fluorescent yellow top. As I breathed in to ask her my question, she just said, “its on platform 8,” not even looking up from her book. Thanks. (But really, does that even make sense?)

I'm such a hypocrite.

8) We can blame the sexual corruption of London’s youth on the invasion by phallus-loving aliens. Yes, I kid you not, I found their space ship in the financial district. They landed their phallic-shaped vehicle right behind this historical district of London. And tell me you aren’t distracted from this traditional building by the giant shiny dildo in the back.

Dildo spaceship. More aliens!

9) Afternoon tea is expensive! This was probably just a misconception on my part, but what happened to tea being the cheap option? I mean, its just water and some leaves. We went to Fosters and Masons (the Queen gets her groceries from them) for afternoon tea. So I sat down and looked at the mirror, expecting to pay something like £5 or something for a few scones (bisquits) and a kettle of tea. Try £15. I nearly went outside and gathered my own leaves, boiled my own water, and baked my own scones for that price.

10) PPF Speed Walking comes in handy; Deb Ingles would be so proud! On the first night in London, a bunch of the Bobby’s decided to go the Evensong one night at Westminster Abbey. We got there two minutes after 5pm, for the 5pm mass. We tried to plead with the monk to let us in, much he just stood their stoically, not responding. We’ll come back another time, we thought. So on our last night at about 4:30pm, we realized we still had not gone to the Abbey. So the four of us all but ran out of Fosters and Mason and made our way to the Abbey. Luckily, I took speed walking for my PPF (a mandatory physical fitness requirement at Emory). The cool thing about having Big Ben around is that it rings every 15 minutes and so at about 4:45, it started to ring and we started getting anxious. About the same moment, the rain started to pour. So we are now literally running through the streets of London, in the pouring rain, in the dark, trying to get to this evensong. I literally got to the gate of the Abbey as Big Ben rang for 5:00pm. So basically I sat through an entire service drenched in some mixture of rain and sweat. So enjoyable.

Does this remind anyone else of Home Alone?

Can't you just see a guy with a snow shovel coming out of the shadows?