Clay and I have been making our way through London for the last few days, and all I can say is that it's been AWESOME. We came here with no itinerary, and didn't even get train tickets until the last minute--the general plan has mostly consisted of, "Oh yeah, that sounds cool, let's go there," and "I wonder what's down that street. Let's walk that way," which, as far as I'm concerned, is one of the best ways to travel (particularly when you or your friend has a pretty good sense of direction). And the best thing about London is that the coolest things in it are generally found by just picking the right streets to turn down. So yeah-- it's working out pretty well for us.
Our journey began with a train ride from Bath, of course, during which Clay was productive and I was convinced to knit more of the pink purse that he's making for Hadrian as a joke (or rather, the purse that he's knitted two rows of and has tricked me into actually doing the rest of it). Upon arriving in London, we grabbed some pasties for a late lunch and made our way to my uncle Daniel's office so that we could drop off our luggage. This unfortunately involved a ridiculous amount of confusion regarding which bus to take and how to find the office which is in a building that isn't where it's supposed to be, number-wise, on the street. But despite this, we made it eventually, and then set off to explore for a few hours.
We decided to visit the National Gallery-- the major "historical" art museum. It was a good walk from the office, but it went through Soho, a trendy area with a major gay scene, so we decided that it would be fun.
A brief tour of our walk (in pictures):
The BBC Tower (though we were nowhere near it).
Gay bars galore in Soho.
Chinatown.
Piccadilly Circus, which we found when Clay decided that we should take a detour to try to find the Queen's Grocer. We never did, but we found all of these other things:
Like this war memorial.
And this cool building... I have no idea what it actually is...
though I think you can see St. Paul's in the background.
And then we walked down this big street, which turned out to be The Mall (ending in Buckingham Palace), and came out through a rather impressive set of gates.
Then we saw a suspiciously tall monument, which turned out to be...
Trafalgar Square! And along with it, the National Gallery! How convenient.
So we stopped to take a few pictures.
And admire Admiral Lord Nelson a bit.
And the general atmosphere.
And the fountains.
And the giant ship-in-a-bottle.
And Clay's water-spitting talents.
And the view from the National Gallery's entrance.
Then, even after all of our adventuring excitement, we were still excited to go through the Gallery. The paintings there were absolutely incredible. The collection was huge, and included many many medieval pieces in beautiful condition, and, well, basically bajillions of paintings from every period, really. I saw some favorites from Art History 102, such as Jan Van Eyke's "Man in a Red Turban," and "Arnolfini Wedding," several wonderful Reubens' paintings, Da Vinci's "Virgin of the Rocks," and.... sorry, I'll stop. But it was glorious.
After purchasing WAY too many postcards, we headed back to the office (this time, by Tube), and picked up our bags... only to drag them to a nearby pub where we had drinks with a few of Daniel's coworkers, which was fun (especially because we really hadn't eaten much... so the drinks made everything seem pretty darn funny). We headed to the flat an hour (or two?) later, dropped off our bags, and went out for a late Vietnamese dinner (which was delicious!). We returned to the flat and basically collapsed from exhaustion, and got just enough rest to be able to do it all again the next day!
...to be continued...
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