Pub Crawling in London England - Day 2

Dangerous Double Decker Buses

The air was crisp the next morning with a hint of rain in the air (Well, yeah, I was in London).  Within the first 5 minutes outside the hotel room, Angie almost got taken out by a Double Decker bus.  I had to grab her and pull her back onto the sidewalk before she got laid out.  Of course, she had looked the wrong way!  I pointed to the ground showing her the correct way to look for traffic.  Yes, on the ground in many places in London, the English help out people who are used to traffic going the opposite direction by placing arrows on the ground that say, "Look Left" and "Look Right."  We had a good laugh even though Angie's laughter was more from nerves than anything else.

That Woman to My Left Wants Me Dead!

So we "Looked Right" and continued on our journey to our first stop; Buckingham Palace.  Along the way, we took a few photos to document our adventure.  The first one of the whole trip was of me standing next to a monument.  Angie checked it immediately because it was a new camera.  She really loved this photo a lot until she realized that I was posing next to a war monument of some sort.  Right next to my head was the hand of a dead soldier.  I told her to erase it, but she wouldn't hear of it.  She loved this photo and would not part with it.

Soon, it started to sprinkle as we made our way over to Buckingham.  When we got to the gates we were surprised to see there weren't many people there, but we were visiting on the off season midweek so maybe that was the reason.  It ended up being great for us because we could take tons of unobstructed photos.  Nothing like a bunch of big heads of random people in your photos to capture the mood of your trip.

After about five minutes, you have pretty much seen Buckingham palace, unless you can get in.  Angie loved the guards standing at their posts that were big boxes.  It was like seeing animals at the zoo.  I kind of felt sorry for these guys and hoped that they were paid well.  That can't be easy!

We ventured on and went to go see the Parliament Building.  After a while, we wondered if we were heading in the right direction and wanted to know what time it was as our bodies hadn't adjusted to the time change yet.  Thirty seconds after asking the question, the sounds of a huge clock chiming twelve filled the air.  Indeed, we were heading in the correct direction.

After seeing Big Ben and The Parliament in images everywhere my whole life, it was so surreal to be standing next to the real thing.  Nothing quite hits home that you are in London until you find yourself in this area.  It was awesome and I too many photos.  Angie on the other hand was more excited by St. Thomas Hospital thanks to the movie 28 Days Later.  Well, okay, I guess it was a close second.

We decided to walk along the Parliament to get away from the crowd, but that was not going to happen anywhere in that area. There were people milling around everywhere!  I feel sorry for anyone who works by th parliament.  I temped briefly by Herald Square for a time in NYC and I almost went postal.

Street Scene

After the parliament, we realized that we were pretty hungry and went on the hunt for food.  Because of the exchange rate we were looking for something cheap and after 10 minutes, we found it.  I wish I could remember the name of the noodle shop we went to.  It was in a food court area by The Thames and it had the best spicy noodle soup ever.  They also had this canned peach tea which was amazing considering it was canned.  This was one of the best meals that I would have in London.  In fact I lost 7Lbs while I was there and I can't afford to lose weight.  I didn't much care for the food and we were walking about 5-7 miles a day.  There was no way that I wasn't going to lose weight.  

We continued to wander the streets for the rest of the day looking at random sites.  I found a nice jade ring at flea market and Angie got a necklace.  Because the US Dollar was (and is) so much weaker than the British Pound, both Angie and I were being very thrifty.  Affordable jewelry was hard to find.  Affordable anything was hard to find!

That night, we went to a delicious Lebanese restaurant by our hotel and were in bed by midnight but our bodies were still adjusting so we decided to watch some TV.  TV in England is a whole different beast.  I am used to TV in the US where you have 1000 channels with nothing on any of them.  In England, they have 6 channels with nothing on any of them; at least it saves time on channel surfing.  To be fair, this may be because we were staying in a horrible cheap hotel that didn't believe in cable.  Either way, it was very limited.

We did come upon a talk show, Thelma and Louise, CNN, MTV 2 which played a mix of videos from the 90's and videos from Germany, our favorite was Schnappi.  They also had a show on about teenage hoodlums.  The best part was the subtitles. Oh, did I mention the people were speaking English?  Apparently, they felt that the accent they were using was too thick and Londoners needed help, thus subtitles. We finally settled on the next Bollywood Star, how could anyone pass that up?  The sad thing is we never did find out who won. 

Another difference between American and English TV are the commercials.  In America, you have a span of 5-7 minutes of commercials in which you can use the facilities, grab a snack or take a quick jog.  I thought that would be the case in London as well until I kept trying to use the facilities.  Within 30 seconds the show was back on.  So, I would try again on the next commercial break only to find it wasn't a mistake the first time.  Maybe this only happens on late night TV.  They also really like ringtone commercials a lot too; especially in German!

After about an hour of viewing, we decided it was time to sleep as we had a lot planned for the next day.  So I rolled over onto my side slowly sliding into the sinkhole of my wooden bed and attempted for the second night to get a good nights sleep.