Lazy in London

These pastel apartments line Portobello Road.
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After a reallllllllllly late start on Friday, we decided to visit the Tate Modern Art Museum, since it was open until 10. On our way to the tube, we stopped to eat a local cafe. Christina had a cheese sandwich. My meal was a delicious tuna and corn sanwhich. Yes, you read that right- tuna and corn. Loved it.

We took the tube to London Bridge Stop. Chris and I are getting quite acclamated to the Underground Subway System here in London. I don't know if this is due to the system's simplicity or our superior intelligence and logical brilliance, but either way we've had no problems getting around.

The view across the Thames River from the Tate Modern.
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When we got out of the station we found ourselves in the outskirts of downtown London. Before setting off to the Tate Modern, we went up onto London Bridge, which when you look to the east, lends a fantastic view of the Tower Bridge, one of the city's most famous icons. We took in the scenery and promised ourselves we'd come back later that night to check out the Tower Bridge all lit up.

After a local pointed us in the direction of the Tate, we made our way through a maze of narrow, uneven brick roads and past many loud pubs and an old pirate ship. Unfortunately, there were no pirates on it at the time. We reached the museum around 8 pm which left us 2 full hours to explore the exhibits. I was most interested in seeing the more well known works by Picasso, Duchamp, and Warhol, but we had highly underestimated the size of the collection. Ten o'clock came quickly and although we did get to view some fantastic art, we missed seeing Picasso's "Two Dancers," Duchamp's "Fountain," and anything by Warhol. On the bright side though, unlike the last art museum we went to, there was no elderly woman emitting audible tooty-toot-toots through the crowds.

The Tower Bridge lit up.
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When we left the museum, the sun was just setting and there were still many people mulling about. We began walking back towards the view of the Tower Bridge. On our way, we enjoyed a little acoustic guitar in front of the Shakespeare Globe and some drunk conversations in front of the packed pubs. We took some great photos,along with a dozen other tourists, of the Tower Bridge in all its night time glory. At this point we were getting hungry so our new mission became to finding some food.

The pastel apatments all have brightly colored doors.
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Due to some delays caused by a fire alarm set earlier that afternoon, the circle line (the line that ran through Bayswater) was running about a half an hour behind schedule, so we didn't arrive back in our neighborhood until just before midnight. As far as food went, our options at this hour were Pizza Hut, McDonalds, and Burger King. We promised ourselves that we would not have a meal at any American fast food chains and we weren't about to break that promise now. We walked further down the street in hopes of finding food that would not eventually lead to a heart attack or adult onset diabetes. We found nothing. Bowing our heads in shame, we approached McDonalds only to have the doors locked in our face. We immediately glanced over to Pizza Hut, which was also closing. Sadly, our only choice was Burger King, a "restaurant" in which neither Christina or I could recall the last time we ate at. We ordered our meals-a cheeseburger, hold the burger, and chicken bites, both with sides of potato wedges. We trudged back to our hotel with our embarassing Burger King bags. Suffice it to say that it was easily the worst meal we've had in the past week and a half. As we ate, we watched some "South Park" and were asleep by 2am.

We were awake by 8am, the earliest we've been up since our flight out of Amsterdam. After breakfast we walked a few blocks to Portobello Road. Every morning this road hosts a huge street market. Saturday is especially busy with vendors selling everything from commonplace souveniers, antique cameras and heaps of jewelry to edible candy thongs and "Dicky Dips," penis shaped biscuits, complete with a warning not to dunk them too long or "your dicky will get soft." After about half an hour, we had the pleasure of experiencing classic London weather, rain. Unlike the rain we had in Amsterdam, however, it did not let up. Luckily we had our umbrellas, as did most of the other hundreds of people at the market. Unluckily, I had chosen this as the first day to wear sandals. 2 hours later, my feet were cold and slippery, and Christina's shoes soaked and her pants wet to the knee.

We walked back to our hotel and as the weather stayed consistently wet, we declared it laundry day and spent the rest of the afternoon watching American sitcoms and running down the halls with our pants halfway off our bums. We would like to take this opportunity to say that "Scrubs" is a hilarious show, and we are quite disappointed in ourselves for not having discovered it earlier.

Tomorrow, we've got alot planned, to help catch up from our lazy day. We'll tell you all about it and hopefully have some photos to share (perhaps some of our bums).

Love you all!

Jess & Chris