C'mon England!

Building that reminded us of Q-bert (an old computer game)
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After our morning Eurostar fiasco, we arrived in London: the land of the football (soccer) crazed fans, C’mon England! I became an England fan in 2002 during my first trip to Europe and we were in London during that World Cup (held that year in Korea, but Leicester Square was insane). We didn't have any problems adjusting and it was great that finally everyone spoke English! Sometimes it was hard to understand exactly what they are saying but as long as they don't use too much slang, it's all good! We took the tube and found our hostel. It's a pretty cool place however we were semi-traumatized that it reminded us of rez at the U of A (Lister Hall....YIKES!).

British Museum
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After settling in to “Lister” we decided to get the show on the road, ate lunch at a place called Jenny Lo’s Teahouse (cuz of the name) and headed down to the Tower of London. It used to be a prison and a palace and had a very bloody history. A couple executed prisoners were buried here and many were tortured here using various torture devices. The crown jewels were the biggest attraction and we saw lots of crowns, sceptres and beating sticks (umm, I mean maces) and the biggest diamond in the world. You had to look at them via conveyor belt so there was no prolonged gawking. I think we rode the conveyor belt around about 5 times! Hehe. Steph wants Andrew to buy her some jewels now! After this tourist attraction, we went to see The Omen at one of about 5 movie theatres in Leicester Square. Yes, it was a horror movie and yes, I closed my eyes at the scary parts! I must mention that we ate at my favorite noodle house of all time, Wagamama and it was just as good as I remember. That night we stayed up ‘til 3 or 4 am watching Game 5 of the Stanley Cup finals which was miraculously playing at the hostel and we were stuck with people cheering for the Oilers! Go 'Canes Go! There was lots of trash talking going on but the Oilers fans were just dumb. The Hurricanes did end up winning the Cup – Oilers suck! I was very excited to see something from back home and watch Edmonton suck as usual.

Another treasure we found was Topshop which had a whole floor dedicated to the “Shoe Lounge”

British Museum egyptian artifact
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Sluggish, as was always the case, from lack of sleep, we woke up semi-early and went to the TKTS booth in Leicester Square and bought tickets for Queen, the Musical. We heard it was good, but the other reason was cuz the other shows at the top of our list were sold out or only had really crappy seats. Our next stop was Westminster Abbey where lots of royalty types were entombed and where the coronations took place. Lunch consisted of a take out place recommended by Rick Steves and we ate the goods at a park just outside St. Paul’s Cathedral built by Christopher Wren. The cathedral was nothing too special and as per our norm, we climbed the 450 steps to the top. Yes, we paid to suffer yet again. We did get to make a stop at the Whispering Gallery where we got yelled at by a Cathedral Nazi for standing on a bench but did manage to harass some unknowing people across the room using the acoustics of the dome to carry our voices! We rushed back to the hostel to change and get ready for our Queen night. Londoners were huge into their theatre scene here and we got to sing along and “stomp stomp clap” to a bunch of Queen songs (and they played a short clip of “Bicycle” so we were both happy). That night we decided to spend it in our hostel and checked out the bar where it was so conveniently karaoke night. We danced a bit, drank a bit and I got to cheer on Steph while she played some guys in pool.

British Museum egyptian artifact
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What would our last day in London be without a day at the shops?! But we did our due diligence first and made a visit to the (free!) British Museum to see all the treasures that the British stole from the Greeks and Romans which we heard so much about at the beginning of our trip. This museum was so big, but by this time I could give a rat’s ass about museums so it was tough to drag myself through. However it was pretty cool to see some mummies and the Reading Room (huge!). And then the real fun began. The first stop was Portobello Road market. There were so many kitschy antique, clothing and jewellery stores. We even had a storeowner try to make us go on a date with one of his coworkers. The next stop was Harrod’s, the craziest and most expensive store ever. We wandered around and looked at lots of stuff we couldn’t afford by all the coolest designers. Definitely neat to have been there but we HAD to get to places where we could actually BUY things. The last shopping stop was Oxford Street where I somehow spent 80% of my time and money at my favorite all-purpose store, H&M. Another treasure we found was Topshop which had a whole floor dedicated to the “Shoe Lounge” and funkier clothes. I wished we had more time here but we did close it down. On our last night we had to try some good Indian food which Britain is supposed to have tons of. Thanks to Rick once again, we had a great meal and surprisingly there weren’t too many fellow Rick fans at this place (that’s a good thing). We attempted to find a Canadian pub called “The Maple Leaf” and were detoured along the way with other pubs. We arrived at the Leaf around 1:30 am and it had just closed. Could you believe on Friday night pubs close this early?! Anyway, foiled plan led us back to the hostel for some more beers.

British Museum Reading Room
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Our flight back home went off without any transportation fiascos for the first time in Europe. But it was so sad to leave and being away for this long and seeing so many places made it even harder to want to go back. We blew the rest of our pounds at the airport on random things and reminisced about the fun times we had and interesting people we met. We were glad we got along well and didn’t want to kill each other too many times on the trip however we only said about 10 words to each other on the flight home. The realization that we were THAT tired hit us and we mostly slept and were barely coherent on the flight home.

Back home at the Calgary Airport!
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This is my last Europe post. So sad! I hope you enjoyed traveling with me. For those of you who think you want to do a little backpacking trip, DO IT because you don't want to regret it for the rest of your life (and you will). We had the time of our lives!