Part 6

Yes, I skipped Part 5.. I still have to edit pictures and actually write out what happened that day, lol

April 14th, 2010 – London, England

First and foremost, I guess I should apologize in advance if my tone about London comes off rather pessimistic and sarcastic. I’m semi bitter about how the days events went, but in the long run..I see it as a chance to go back again for a “re-do” trip. So, don’t let this ruin your impression on the city, especially if you haven’t had a chance to go there yet. It’s a gorgeous place…I just had crappy luck.

Paula, Dad and I took a train from Saxmundham (you gotta say it slowly and in an estute manner) to London…on the way there, Juliana hopped on board when we stopped in Ipswich. It really wasn’t that far of a train ride (an hour and a half total) compared to driving, which would’ve taken about 2-3 hours AND had hellish traffic to deal with. When we first boarded the train, we noticed there were little tags on the seats that had “Reserved” printed on ‘em. Well, we took the seats anyway considering we’d just move when the rightful owners came to claim ‘em…whichever stop they’d be on. The whole time, we were expecting to get “turfed”, as Juliana put it. Turfed means “kicked out”, lol. Luckily, that never happened to us (I guess we picked the right seats), since it happened to a few people around us .

So, once we got to the Liverpool street station, we managed to hop right onto a double-decker bus to check the city out considering they drive around all the scenic places on their routes. It was awesome! Dad and I got front row seats on the top level and were able to take some pretty good pics of the place..I’m SOOO glad I didn’t drive around London. I would’ve had a seizure due to the way people drive there….they’re insane. Double-decker buses pull right out infront of one another, cars dart in and out of traffic while pedestrians assume you’ll stop for them if they walk out into the street without looking. It’s like New York, but older.

I fell inlove with the lamps near the business district... they had little griffins on the top of 'em!

After a few minutes of being a tourist, looking at the sites and taking pictures.. we reached our stop at Saint Paul’s Cathedral. That building is absolutely breath taking! Just a little ways down from the actual cathedral, there was a monument statue dedicated to the firefighters that saved the building from burning to the ground during WWll. Really interesting facts! As we were walking over to the building, Paula shouted “Erika! There’s your beloved Starbucks!” * play heavenly music*. She only said that because I’ve been on a mission to find Starbucks places around Europe since they have special edition cups (that and I’m a total junkie). Now I officially have a Starbucks mug from Amsterdam, Netherlands..Aachen, Germany and now London, England. MINE! After we gorged on some much needed caffeine, we headed on over to check out Saint Paul’s (it’s been there for 1,400 years!).

This is the "Blitz" memorial statue.. it was made to remember the firefighters that sacrificed their lives to save Saint Pauls Cathedral during WWII.

The view from the very top of the Cathedral

Good thing I took pictures of the exterior of the building… once you get inside, you’re not allowed to take any pictures. None. Not even cell phone pictures. This bothered me..alot. For you to get into the place, they charge you roughly $20 per person, then if you want an audio tour, you gotta pay another $6. So, you’re looking at about $26 to walk around a massive, absolutely amazing building…and can’t take pictures. There are ushers all over the place to enforce the rule, so it’s not like I could easily whip out my camera and take any pictures…PLUS..they have CCTV (closed circuit) camera’s everywhere.. so big brother is always watching. VERRRRRYYY annoying! They say that it’s a rule since it’s still a functioning church (which there was a mass or whatever you call it going on at the time we were there), but I kinda find it contradicting that you want the public to respect the church, but you’re gouging us in the process. Hum.. well..anyway…we hiked our way up to the Whispering Room which was up a flight of stairs that consisted of 280ish steps. Talk about a stair master! OMG, my legs were on fire..and that was only the halfway point! Once we reached the whispering room, we rested there for a bit and got to stare up into one of the cathedrals domes. Here’s a quote from my handy dandy brochure, “ The alter and pulpit are beneath the Dome, one of the largest in the world, which was conceived by Sir Christopher Wren as in observatory linking heaven and earth. It’s interior is decorated with paintings depicting scenes from the life of Saint Paul by Sir James Thornhill as well as mosaics depicting Old Testament prophets and the four evangelists”. Sounds pretty, hunh? Well, It was. I wish I could show you..but oh well. Dad and Juliana decided to continue upward to check out the Stone Gallery while Paula and I chilled in the Whispering Room. If you whisper up against the wall, you can hear it up to 32 meters away…kinda freaky when you’re not expecting it, lol. We eventually made our way back downstairs considering I wanted to check out other parts of the place while we were waiting on Dad and Juliana to come back down. As I’m walking through the building, I’m mentally thinking “Man, they would’ve been a great shot. Oh wow, that’s amazing! Oh gee, that would’ve been nice to get a picture of”. Sorry, I’m still a lil bitter… Here’s another quote from the brochure…I might just scan the pictures of the brochure since that’s about as good as it’s gonna get when it comes to showing how pretty the building is; “The Quire, leading to the High Alter, is the focal point for music in the Cathedral. Its mosaics depict the Creation and other Biblical scenes. It also features carvings by Grinling Gibbons, the great organ by Father Schmidt and the wrought iron gates by Jean Tijou. At the east end of the Cathedral, behind the High Alter, is the American Memorial Chapel, dedicated to the memory of US servicemen based in the UK who lost their lives in the Second World War.” …pretty building, pretty sculptures, just all around pretty.

Hey..looks like someone managed to get some pictures of inside of there considering here's some fancy pics I found on Google...

We didn’t have a chance to head down to Nelsons crypt in the basement since we had an appointment with the Duck Ferry at 2:45 and it was already 2p at that time. Once I reached Dad on his cell & they met up with us downstairs, we started making our way over Millenium Bridge. It was nice to get some fresh air, plus I was able to see London Bridge (from afar).

We caught a taxi (they’re so cool!) to the London Eye since that’s where the Duck Ferry place was. On our way there, I was in the process of taking a picture of my Dad in the taxi when Juliana pointed out that my camera lense was scratched. UGGGHHH..It’s not just scratched, it’s royally fucked. Bad. In the process of it being in the purse, my Starbucks mug scratched it up. The only reason why the mug was in my purse was because my Dad told me to stick it in there so I wasn’t carrying around a Starbucks bag everywhere (I bought 3 mugs and two of ‘em where in my bag and one was in his)….lovely. So, my (roughly) $9 cup cost me about $300. Brilliant.

We got to the London Eye with a lil time to spare, so we scrambled around the corner to get some food to go since we figured we could eat on the tour. Wrong. No food on the tour. Fine, I can hold onto my food till the tour was over, which lasts 75 minutes. Then as we’re loading up onto the aqua vehicle, there’s a baby (under 2 years of age) screaming her lungs out while her mother isn’t doing anything about it. Great. THEN, they over booked the damn vehicle, so they were trying to shoe-horn people into seats that were already taken. Those seats NORMALLY fit 2 people each, but they were trying to cram 3. Dad and I were sitting in the very very back where it specifically says “2 people” and the coordinator was asking another person to squeeze onto our seat. I was getting more and more irritated as well as Dad considering *THIS* isn’t what we paid for. I mean, really. It was going to be an uncomfortable 75 minute tour with people elbowing one another, trying to take pictures, the kid wasn’t chilling out..in fact, she was screaming harder. Sounds like a barrel of monkeys, right? Dad finally got fed up and he got out of the Duck boat, I followed as did Juliana and Paula. The coordinator insisted that 30 people fit on those “boats” normally but they overbooked and wanted to please everyone. Hi. I’m not cattle. Please don’t force more people on there than space allows. Then they told us we could come back in 4+ hours for a different tour since they don’t issue refunds. By 6pm, it was getting dusky and you wouldn’t be able to see most of the sites you were supposed to see on the tour. The guy kept saying over and over again (just to get the point across) that there’s no refunds. Keep in mind, for four people to go on this tour, it comes to (roughly) $125. Yeah. No refund? Really? Thanks for nothing. Enjoy my money…it’s not like I wanted it or anything….

Juliana felt terrible considering the Duck tour was her idea. I was planning on getting tickets for the London Eye, but she suggested the Duck tour and said it was more fun. It’s not her fault that the company has shitty rules, but in the back of my mind, I should’ve just gone ahead with the London Eye since you’re able to see all of London in it. Oh well…lesson learned..

After that lovely fiasco, we parked ourselves infront of the restraunte that Paula and I grabbed our lunches from (since we bought from them, we can use their tables) and figured out our next plan… I was pretty angry so it took me a bit to calm down without being a total pain in the ass. Although, it was pretty apparent that I was pissed. After about 20 minutes, we ventured on over to Big Ben and we could check out Parliment. I tried to get some decent pictures of the place, but now that I’m reviewing and editing pictures..I see lil color differences in certain parts of the screen. Thanks to the gouges on my lense. Yay.

Throughout the course of the day, we managed to walk atleast 4 miles (hey, it helped me burn off some of the Fish and Chips I’ve had here), checked out Big Ben, saw the Horse Guards (the horses were SO well behaved despite some of the tourists being complete shits to ‘em), walked on down to Trafalgar Square and got to see Nelsons statue (I think the Brits have him on a high pedestal, they hold him very high, lol), and checked out the National Museum (it’s free! Shocker! No camera’s allowed, though..no shocker there). Although I have to admit, they had a nifty souvenier shop in there in which they sold stuffed toy pigeons. Yes, I know it sounds silly…but once you’re in England, especially London, you’ll see why those lil buggers are a staple for the city. They’re MASSIVE. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them could fly off with Izzy (my dachshund) or possibly a small child. FAT BIRDS!

On our way back to Liverpool train station, we walked through an outdoor market where people were selling homemade items and such. I found a photographer who had some pretty nice pictures of around London. I actually have a picture of the Eiffel Tower back at our house, so I thought it’d be cool to get a picture of another place we’ve visited. So, 20 pounds later, two of her pictures are now officially mine and will be finding a nice home on my wall. After that, we continued on our lil adventure to the train station, hopped on and off we went back to Saxmundham, minus Juliana since she wanted to stick in London a lil longer to meet up with some of her friends. While taking the train back, I got to see the location where they were building the stadium for the Olympics (London 2012)..took some pics of that since I can atleast say that I saw it, lol.  ( Update...of course when I'm going to upload the London Olympic construction pics, they're unloadable. Perfect).

Sorry for a very long winded post, but I think you can tell I was rather…uhhh…flustered with how the day went. I’m definitely going to go back there again at some point, but now I know what to keep in mind whenever I DO attempt London again. I guess…just…learn from my mistakes? LOL