London Rain is Falling Down - 16 July 2011

Get up at 5:30 AM. Walk a couple miles to the bus stop. Ride on the National Express for three hours. Hello London.

This is one of the first things that greeted me:

This place definitely has its billboard priorities straight. We saw a huge 3-D billboard for Harry Potter but we whizzed by it too fast for me to take a picture, so just know that this awesome display is actually second best.

The morning was mostly spent charging past historical attractions and snapping pictures as quickly as possible. Here are a few in the order I saw them.

Buckingham Palace. Queen's home.

Mr. Cameron wasn't out watering his flowers and the security guards wouldn't let me use No.10's knocker.

The beautiful Westminster Abbey. I didn't go inside because of the line. Yes, you are looking at it.

Parliament building on the Thames. Big Ben is directly above my head. We were crossing that bridge just as it chimed noon. Lovely.

The Thames itself. For those of you who didn't know, the Thames is a brackish, tidal river.  Its water is a mixture of fresh and seawater that falls and rises throughout the day. Additionally, its banks are disgusting. My nasty, dirty shoes prove it.

Later, we pulled on our ponchos and raincoats to be groundlings at Shakespeare's Old Globe Theater. A groundling was someone who could only afford a cheap ticket and would stand in the middle of the theater, around the stage to watch a show. This is what we did - for almost three hours. My legs ached, especially after running around all morning! The theater itself was very impressive! I loved imagining Shakespeare himself coming out to great his fans in that great big, wooden octagon. I can't help but include some history. Shakespeare wrote his plays to appeal to the masses of common people. It is therefore logical that his theater was actually built on the "cheap" side of London, literally split by the Thames. I think seeing one of his plays in the 17th Century would have been a rowdier ordeal than what I experienced in the same building. I'm thinking I missed out. :)

Moving on, we arrived early enough that we stood right next to the stage. In the second picture below, the green and yellow ponchos are my group. The play we watched was very well acted, but a little raunchy. I guess I should have expected that from a drama fictionalizing the life story of Anne Boleyn.

I apologize for the blurriness of this picture. I was cold and shivering.

After the play it was back to charging through the streets. Literally. Tom is a very fast walker and I was feeling sick on top of soaked, hungry, stiff and tired. Overall, that made keeping up hard to do. Luckily, he was carrying a bright orange umbrella and the rain hardly ever let up, so even if I was 20 yards behind him (and others were behind me) I could still follow. Here are some of the things I looked at in the afternoon.

St. Paul's - The inside of the cathedral was breathtaking but we weren't supposed to take pictures. I am cursing my rule-abiding nature now. Anyways, the atmosphere there was spellbinding, especially so because the choir sent ringing music throughout the whole hall.

I can't even remember what this building is because we saw so many. Baha. Sorry.

Trafalgar Square with Admiral Nelson looking down on all of us. Unfortunately, he was cut out of the picture.

And finally, the church where Henry Higgins first meets Eliza Doolittle.  Be jealous.

Some other highlights included Winston Churchill's War Cabinet Rooms, Covent Garden, the West End (with all the theaters...), the National Portrait Gallery, World War I and World War II memorials, many flats Mick Jagger lived in, Charring Cross, the Princess Diana walkway, the famous statue of Boudica, the Tate Modern, the Millenial Bridge (destroyed by Death Eaters in the beginning of the movie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince), and the Tower Bridge. 

And through all of this it didn't stop raining. My clothing was soaked but I couldn't wear my rain coat without sweating. The weather made this day a little hard to get through but looking back I couldn't have had the real London experience without it. So I'm glad - in a perverse sort of way.

Hoping your weather is better than mine,

Mariah