10-30

Day 7

Today was our big sightseeing day in London.  And the weather was the absolute epitome of how they describe the weather here: overcast, windy, rainy, gray.  But it wasn't bad.  In fact, worried about the cold, I wore my heaviest winter sweater (the one I take to the cabin in case I can't make a fire quickly enough), and that was probably too much.

Happy Halloween, ladies.

Jeff and Emily got up at five, as they usually do, and left me in the room to go get breakfast between six and nine, so I think it was the one day this whole trip where I got to sleep in.  I didn't get any breakfast, though, and they showed me photos of the empty streets and them cavorting in the rain.

There was an NFL game there in London that afternoon, so the abhorrent Americans were out and about, wearing their football jerseys and eating with their mouths open (showing off those beastly cosmetically-straightened teeth of theirs).  So that was a negative, but hey, it was also the day before Halloween, so there were folks out celebrating that, which is a plus.

We took the Underground into London, then walked around for a few hours.  I found a few--not a lot, but enough--Halloween decorations, despite the fact that the business district (even the pubs, four-star restaurants, and dentists' offices) was all closed.*  This was the most elaborate decoration I saw, so I used it for my October 31st Facebook message:

Jeff and Emily had been on a tour up and down the Thames, so they suggested we do the same today.  We also went by (and inside) the London Eye, the giant wheel from that first episode of "Doctor Who."

Yes, I'm aware it was not the FIRST episode of "Doctor Who."  But I'm also aware of the kind of people who would take issue with that statement . . . so it stands.

There were thousands and thousands of tourists throughout this section of London, to see the palace, to see Parliament, to see the towers and the bridges and the streets and the famous buildings.  Whether there were too many tourists, or London's streets are simply too small, I'll let you decide.  But in the morning, when we were alone in the business district, it didn't seem so small anymore.

I already said I could get lost anywhere, but come on!

This was what appeared to be the oldest and most run-down part of the Underground/Tube, so I got a picture with Jeff of it.**

I'm sure a tour of the sights of London is something you only need to experience once, but I got two in as many days.  

Apparently, we've been calling the Elizabeth Tower "Big Ben" all our lives, when it's the bell inside the tower that's Big Ben.

We also went up in the Ferris Wheel, with a bunch of strangers, and took turns taking pictures from each vantage point.  Everybody was pretty civilized and patient in there, but I understand, if you were stuck up there with a madman, a Jehovah's Witness, or Barnaby the Flatulent, it would be a totally different story.

We did quite a bit of walking, with Jeff depending greatly on his new walking stick.

One of the things I had wanted to do in London was pee at a urinal that a hundred other men that hour had used without flushing.  But another thing I had wanted to do was eat fish and chips in a pub or restaurant.  We found one across from the Thames (located conveniently right next to the London Dungeon!), and I was surprised to discover that the staff at the fish and chips place were all done up as murder victims.  While I personally love it, seeing servers with fake blood running down their faces might not be the most appetizing thing for customers to see.

While we're on the subject of things I wanted to do while in Europe, I had set an admittedly-weird goal of seeing the Gherkin Building in person, and getting a picture with it.  So, here is a picture of me with it:

The jerk and the gherk.

And here is a picture of me grasping the Gherkin (Warning: explicit content):

Later, Emily asked if we had any interest in seeing the Globe Theater, which is a recreation of the original Globe, which was built in 1599.  It was financed by American actor/director Sam Wanamaker, when he discovered that there were no replicas in the UK, and a mere plaque (now a parking lot) where the original Globe stood.

It was really cool, and everything was astoundingly period-accurate and reverent to the Bard.  Even the hand sanitiser dispensers were in theme:

At the end of each night, I open up my laptop and try to catch up on what's happening (shockingly, I've gotten about two emails each day that I've been gone, despite me usually getting between ten and twenty a day back home), while Jeff and Emily go to sleep.  I blog a little bit, but haven't been good to post the entries (which I don't really care about, as long as I'm writing up a little bit of what I do each day).  There's no way I would remember any details if I waited until I came home to write it down (which will be a pain when it comes time to podcast, I'm sure), and many times each day, I think, "Oh, that's interesting; I'll have to remember to mention that in my blog later."  And then I don't.

*Just kidding.  Only one of those things is real.

**Jeff seems pretty averse to taking pictures (in fact, he is averse to using his cellphone), but Emily likes to.  She'll often make me and Jeff line up somewhere to pose for a picture, and later, she and I did so with each other, while Jeff hung back and looked surly.  Emily's iPhone camera is about five times better than my Android camera is (okay, maybe only four times better), and some of her pictures of the same thing I took a picture of look like two different locations, due to the colors and detail.  It's pretty strange.