Christmas in the land of her majesty the queen

LONDON~!!!!!!




My buddy inside the Tower of London outside the door for the crown jewels. I tried staring this guy down for like five minutes before I gave up. He didn't smile or budge, but every once and a while he would blow up the fur from his hat so it wouldn't cover his eyes. Then on second thought I'm glad I didn't push him further... it is never wise to piss people off who have automatic weapons.


Tower of London


Leicester Square


Piccadilly Circus

Christmas at the Hostel



Christmas at the Hostel Pic nombre deux


Cat guy outside of Ripley's Believe it or not! See link: http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?Man_turned_cat_is_worlds_%91most_modified_man%92&in_article_id=291749&in_page_id=34




Oxford street... I think???





Me and Ben





Me at the Buckingham Palace Gate.


Monument outside Buckingham Palace




Me waiting for her majesty to invite me in for tea. And maybe crumpets. mmmmmm crumpets.




Buckingham Palace



Self Explanatory




Big Ben





Me at the Tower of London in front of a rack of pistols at the old armory in the white tower. I asked an Italian girl to take my picture and I think that might be her dad staring at me, wondering how the white Irish looking guy speaks Italian.




Tower Bridge



China Town!



British colonialism may have failed, but American cultural colonialism is alive and kicking.

Instead of Christmas in Paris I eventually decided on Christmas in London. In the end, perhaps, I chose London because of stories like Dicken’s A Christmas Carol that have firmly planted in my consciousness a more Christmasy feel to London than Paris, or more likely, after a week of writing papers and final exams I NEEDED to go to a place where English was spoken, it was a matter of sanity. I spent Christmas in London and left the day after for Dublin. In sum it was four nights each place, ten days, two hostels with four bunked beds, and a lot of travel.

I left my house at noon and arrived in London at midnight.

Traveling by air involves annoying security checks where my contact solution gets dumped out by irate security personal who tell me that I need to read the rules better because you can’t have containers of liquid over 100mL in a carryon bag. Air travel at its core is a game of hurry up and wait, you hurry to the ticket counter only to stand in line, you try to hurry to your gate only to have a man with a metal detector wave it around your periphery while you’re standing in a vertical spread eagle after a good old fashioned pat down….

But in the end your at your destination. I got my carryon out of the overhead compartment and stepped of the plane with this great feeling that I am in the land of Her Magesty!

After an hour long shuttle ride I was finally in London and took the subway, what Londoners call “the tube,” to Russell Square and from here, very slowly and wearily made it to my hostel which without a map or any sense of direction proved to be a tad difficult to find.

This was my first experience with a hostel and it was great. The reality that I was staying with some new people generally similar in age was refreshing and fun and allowed for single serving friends to laugh with, drink with, explore with, and eat and celebrate Christmas with. Traveling alone can sometimes get lonely and it was nice to have familiar faces around.

When I finally got to the hostel it was past 1:00am, I checked in and made my way to another building where my bed awaited me. Not wanting to wake up the two other people sleeping on the bottom bunks of the two bunk beds I didn’t turn the light on and instead got ready for bed in darkness and what I hoped would pass for silence. Of course that silence was soon interrupted when the metal from my belt buckle tumbled down from atop the cabinet where I had put my stuff and came crashing on the metal post of the bed sending an alarm-clock like ringing through the room. Ohh well.

The next day brought me to the Tower of London, the British crown jewels, and a plate of fajitas at a restaurant called, “Purgatory.” Eating food that wasn’t Italian was a welcome repose, even if the fajitas were below the standard of those which I could get back in Santa Fe. The tour of the Tower of London was fascinating and the gems and gold of the British crown opulent and incredible. Aside from the scepter with the largest, flawless cut diamond in existence, a diamond the size of my fist, one piece of regalia particularly striking was a large wine container about the size of a small bathtub made entirely of gold with a serving ladle of a conch shell with an intricate pattern of gold woven around it and extending up to a long handle. The queen’s coronation gown was a mesh of spun gold. I had only heard of spun gold in fairy tales and stories of treasure and almost didn’t believe it existed in real life.

After the Tower of London which took most of my day I took the tube to Parliament and from there walked past Westminster Abby to Buckingham Palace to see the queens official residence. By the end of it I coveted a position in the royal family and was crafting my future take over of Great Britain. I sauntered up to Trafalgar square to take the tube back to the hostel.

The next day my roommate at the hostel and I went to the business district and toured the museum of the mint where we got to hold a gold brick worth 300,000 pounds—that’s about $450,000 dollars. So much about London is designed to exhibit the wealth and power of the state. Next we toured the Buckingham palace museum. More priceless works of art, shields made out of silver and dripping with emeralds and rubies, swords made from silver with diamond encrusted hilts. Yet more diamond tiaras and impossibly elaborate stuff encrusted with…you guessed it…gold and diamonds and gems of all shapes, qualities and sizes. By the end of it you’re almost not really impressed anymore because everything seems so surreal, all the objects so distinctly outside the everyday for us plebeians.

Next we went to Harrods of Knightsbridge for lunch in the nicest food court I have ever set foot in. They were having a Christmas Eve sale and I was able to get one of those thanksgiving dinner sandwiches: turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, packed between two halves of a baguette for less than two pounds. Next was Piccadilly Circus, which is far more time square like advertising and retail shops and far less circus. Next a quick jaunt to Leicester square which strangely enough had a fair going on with amusement rides, carnies, and the like and was far more circus-like than I could ever imagine Piccadilly to be. Next nap time. Finally came the search to find an open restaurant on Christmas Eve for which we didn’t need reservations. Now don’t tell any of my Italian friends but we ended up eating at, “Pasta Hut,” a dining establishment that, like its Pizza Hut predecessor specializes in palatable, decent, economical, but far from good food.

The next day was Christmas and nothing was open so I spent my day eating and drinking and watching movies with the folks from the hostel. That day I watched, “Happy Gilmore,” most of “Gone in 60 Seconds,” before finally falling asleep to, “The Bourne Ultimatum.” This was certainly my most social day in London and it was fun but doesn’t give much to blog about.

The next day I was sure to have fish and chips, a meal that I had yet to have in London but had promised myself that I would. I ate it in a small pub near Victoria Station and then set out to Dublin…. You’ll hear about that adventure in the coming days.