Back in black

So I'm back in the states, if you were wondering, and soccer has started full swing. Apparently the weather decided to turn cold while I was gone, as we now have started to use our heater a little bit, but I suppose that's to be expected - as soon as soccer starts the weather turns cold.

The UK was great, and I had a wonderful time. I will try to put up a few pictures sometime later on the site, but most of them are of buildings that a lot of people have seen already, so I don't feel like I'm in a rush to get them up. The only problem I'm having with jet lag is that I keep waking up way too early in the morning for my liking, but all that will take to cure is one late night and sleeping in. And I suppose it's not a bad thing to get up early in the morning.

"I'm a wee monster!"

It's been a long time with no post, but I've been busy. Tuesday night, I guess it was, I got the red eye bus up to Edinburgh, and arrived at 8:00 the next morning. Edinburgh is a very nice town, but it didn't give me a very warm welcome - it rained without stopping from before I arrived until after I went to sleep that evening. I hide in a museum for most of the day, and learned some fun things about Scotland, but still got soaked walking to and from it.

On Thursday I found a nice little tour of the highlands to join. There were only five of us in a little mini-bus, which made for a very personal tour, especially considering that two of the five couldn't speak English, and so were basically just along for the ride. I got to ask a lot of questions, and, or course, talked about football with the driver. We also got to listen to some nice Celtic music when he wasn't telling about the places we were, so it was an awesome day, altogether.

My bus got back at 7:00 Friday morning, and I decided to walk back from the station, firstly because I didn't want to wake Rachel up that early, and secondly because I wanted to see some of Westminster (the city, not the Abbey) in good light (all previous visits had been during or after dusk). It was fun seeing the city of London wake up, and was a nice walk. After that, since it was such a beautiful day, I walked around Hyde Park (largest royal park in London) and Kensington Gardens, and then hit the National Portrait Gallery until around 7. I saw Elizabeth, Shakespeare, Jane Grey, and some other tutors, and then spent a lot of time on their computer, looking up pictures of my favorite British actors and actresses that aren't actually shown in the gallery. Good times.

Today the plan was for the National Gallery and a pub for some football matches, but a bad allergic reaction to something yesterday and Benadryl today sort of knocked me out, so I made a quick run into the Gallery, saw three of the four turtles, and then explored Saturday afternoon and evening at Coven Garden, which was a zoo, although a very interesting one.

Tomorrow is our venture off to Fulham for a football match, which I'm looking forward to greatly. Before that, if I'm feeling ambitious, I might head to Westminster Abbey for services, but we'll see. I think we'll also be going to Wimbledon, just because I can. I thought about putting some pictures up, but have decided instead that it's time for bed, and I might put them up tomorrow. Although the really bad techno music from next door might mean that I put them up tonight.

Be Prepared

Today I wasn't particularly prepared, so I didn't get to hear somebody sing that song on stage. Silly me, assuming that there would be a Sunday evening performance of The Lion King that I could go see. So instead I Googled things to do in London on a Sunday night, and found absolutely nothing, aside from clubs, which I'm not really interested in.

The problem is that everything here closes so early, which I'm just not used to. Museums close around 6 PM, and the same with stores. So I finally realized that the London Eye might be open after dark, and decided to check it out. I saw that it closes at 8 PM, but didn't know if they let the last 'flights' go up at 8, or if everybody was off by then. I decided to risk it, and arrived at about ten 'till 8, making it on the last flight of the evening.

It was pretty nice because our room was almost empty, there only being four other people in there with me: two Americans and two Japanese. The view was pretty awesome, with London all aglow. Parliament was especially fantastic. My pictures couldn't turn out very good, but I think I got a few that are decent. And I figure I can just buy some postcards for good pictures; I was up there for the view, not pictures.

Yesterday I popped into St. Paul's to find out what time services were, and arrived just in time for a concert. It was Saturday Evensong, but they were giving away some music awards, so it was basically a concert. I couldn't understand any of the words, so I don't know what they were singing, but the music was very cathedral-ish, and added a definite atmosphere to the cathedral.

Scotland tomorrow!

My buddy and me! (it wasn't a doll!)

I've cruised about London for the past two days with my best friend Soren. He really is a great traveling companion. He always wants to go where I want to, and I can tell him to shut up when I want, and he does.

But in serious news, I have spent the past two days cruising around London on a tour bus. It was well worth the money, I must say. Yesterday I traveled around the heart of tourist London, and say most of the things to see from a great vantage point. While I really enjoyed my exploration tour from the previous day, it was nice on my blistered foot not to walk around everywhere. That's not to say that I didn't do my share of walking, but it wasn't across the whole town like before.

I also got to go to the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is awesome. I'll talk more about it later once I get pictures up. And right next to it is the Natural History Museum, and I can never resist one of those. It's pretty amazing, and has so much stuff in it - dinosaurs, rocks, bugs, mammals, whales - anything you could want to look at. It even had a dodo bird, which I think might be the coolest thing of the day. Obviously not a live one, but one that I think actually did live at one point. Gotta love the empire and the fact that Britain once ruled half the world, and so has stuff from half the world.

Issues

London is great. I was really looking forward to being able to walk everywhere, and aside from a blister on the bottom of my ankle (really, how do you get one there) I've loved my two days of walking around the city. I'm getting a bit mixed up because everything is so much closer than I think it is, but it's so cool to be able to walk to so many attractions in an afternoon.

There are a couple things that I'm having issue with.

1. Pedestrians rarely have the right of way in sidewalk.
2. Added to this, cars come from the wrong direction, and rarely have blinkers on. But so far I've only almost stepped in front of a car a couple times. Mostly I cross when the other people cross and I'm good.
3. No Mt. Dew. I need not say more.
4. The buildings are too tall. When you get among the buildings, it's very hard to get good views of the cool ones because everything is so packed.

Tomorrow (and probably the next day) I'm being a total tourist and going on the open bus tour of London.

Across the pond

I made it here safely, although my phone didn't. Either I left it in the car, or it has disappeared. I really hope it's in the car.

The adventures started early, at least for Rachel, who saw that my flight was getting in like 45 minutes early and had to race to the airport. Once there she realized that we had no way to contact one another and did not set up a place to meet. Luckily everything went smoothly, and there were no problems.

After letting me take a short nap, we decided to go on a walk though London to see some of the places on my list. It was nice a cold, which I loved, and I got to see a handful of the big attraction here at dusk and beyond when they weren't very crowded.

After this I got to meet Rachel's friend Ellen, and she, Rachel, and I stayed in the dorm talking about the differences between English and American schools and whatever else we felt like talking about. It was a good way to help me stay awake until 10.

Today I'm going to be a total tourist and go on a bus tour of London where you can get on and off the bus at various attractions. I don't have any problem being a tourist, because I am one. After that, who know, but I'll keep you updated.

I have been remiss

Some how I managed to post this on the quote page, but it was supposed to be here. Pretend you're reading this on Monday.

So Jessica told me last night that it had been a month since my last post. It has, which is quite pathetic of me. Granted, it has been a busy month, but I still should have been posting. The only excuse that I can think of is that I've been slowly using Facebook and that has taken all my posting time on the internet.

So today I'm jumping across the pond to visit Rachel, which is going to be an awesome trip, I hope. We have some madness planned, and some madness will hopefully be planned once I get there. I'll be posting from over there, so you'll get to hear about some of the exploits from here. I'm going to jump out on a limb and promise a post every other day (depending on internet availability), so check back often!

That's it for now, I'll check back when I'm in a different time zone!