A weekend so eventful it gets two posts!

As most of you know, I am trying – slowly but surely – to get familiar enough with the city to be able to walk people around in an informal tour-guide type style. I am nowhere near being good at it, but I’ve got a two-day route down. Most of it focuses on the center of the city; I’ll expand on it when people have the chance to stay longer than two days. The only problem is that I don't yet know nearly enough history or anecdotes about the city to be a tour guide. Right now, it's more like following someone around that just knows where they're going than really learning anything. I'm working on it (and some of this weekend helped - Kenz and I actually went on a guided tour - I've included that at the end of this post).

The first day starts in Trafalgar Square, visits the National Gallery (or National Portrait Gallery), ambles up through Soho, China town, takes a break at the British Museum, and finishes with a stroll through Piccadilly Circus.

Day two starts with a river walk along the south bank, visits the Tate Modern, traverses the Millennium Bridge, gawks at St. Paul’s Cathedral, then finishes with an extended walk down Fleet Street.

There are several major problems with the current visitation route/guide. Tough decisions have to be made, however, when your guests are only here for two or three days (keep that in mind when booking your flight). 

After I posted on the blog this past Friday, Will, Kira, and I went out into town on day two of their visit. We followed the current "day two" route, starting on the south bank of the Thames, near Waterloo Station:

We found out that there was a sweet food market happening this Friday afternoon (and good weather to boot!)

Whoopie pies! 

Mr. Chorizo got my money.

Bun, chorizo, rocket, bell peppers, and olive oil.

Yummy

Right along the south side of the river are the National Theatre, the BFI, and some art galleries. We dipped into the National Theatre because it looked extra-populated. It turned out that there was a series of art exhibits there for the weekend. They all focused on mortality, but the atmosphere was not grim, thankfully.

Ghanian caskets 

There were a bunch of these, but I only took these two pictures. 

Downstairs was a neat participation-based exhibit about the beginning and ending of life. The text of the picture below:

By the time you've read this sentence three people have been born into the world. 

By the time you've read this sentence two people have passed away. 

By the time you've lived through this twelve-hour day there will be 100,000 more children on the planet. And in the same twelve hours 70,000 people will have died. 

Artist Sam Winston's represents and commemorates each of the 170,000 lives which are born and end in the space of 12 hours around the world. 

Join us and draw a circle with the artist to remember and celebrate your own loved ones and register their names in writing to record a memory of the event. 

Text above for those who can't read the fine print. 

People adding their circles. 

Close-up

The names of those symbolized by the circles. 

I got in on the action.

There was another installation which I had seen making the rounds on the Internet. A young woman in New Orleans had covered the side of her house in chalkboard after Katrina, with lines for people to complete the sentence, "Before I die I want to _______." People have replicated her chalkboard all over the world.

Some were inspiring, others not so much...

We continued along the river and found this man getting attacked by pigeons.

Juxtaposition between old and new London.

 Sand sculptor!

Will and I stopping for a Kodak moment.

There were four guys set up around the Millenium Bridge doing the old-school-three-cups-one-ball-switcheroo-trick. This isn't legal, and Will noted the lookouts on either end of the walkway. This guy was not happy with me taking the picture. 

"No pictures, boss!"

Will, Kira, and I wound up walking all over hidden alleys around Fleet Street before making it back home in order to rest before the concert. Kenz joined us for dinner, then we were off to the show!

Excited concertgoers. 

If you're interested (and didn't watch any of the videos I embedded as links in the last post), someone filmed the entire show and put it on youtube (I love the Internet); you can watch the last three songs here. The show was fantastic.

After a full English breakfast with our visitors, Kenz and I split off to do our own thing. Will and Kira had tickets to see Wicked and Kenz and I assumed they would like a day in the city to explore on their own. 

She and I had big plans to go on a free guided tour of "London's hidden alleyways and courtyards." The walk started at 10:30am, and we were suffering from being up so late the night before. We wound up arriving at St. Paul's Cathedral ten minutes late. The group was nowhere to be found. It was just us and the leftover Occupy tent campers. 

I was pissed! I had been so excited to get to go on my first guided tour - I was ready to memorize the route, the talk, everything about it so that I could give the tour myself - and we show up ten minutes late. And they're gone. Devastated. 

Kenz tried to cheer me up to no avail. I wasn't having it. She got some coffee as I pouted. Then I called the tour guide people and they told me there'd be another tour at 1:30. Phew! Crisis averted. We wound up paying the exorbitant entree fee to St. Paul's Cathedral, spent two hours touring it, and only covered one third of it. 

Lunch. 

Then some touring! Yay! 

Cold, but ready to learn!

As it turns out, it was a good thing we missed the first tour. Over seventy people showed up for the first tour which was almost too much for one tour guide. So, for the 1:30 tour, they had two guides. And still over seventy people showed up. I think people swarm to free stuff in this city the same way flies do to ... well, you know.

Our tour guide had a flag for us. And we all wore stickers. 

And he had a little amp hanging around his neck so he didn't have to yell. A real pro. 

These are chimneys for an underground power plant. 

I must not have paid too close attention, because I've already forgotten the name of this little thing. Apparently it's Christopher Wren's smallest building - right next to St. Paul's (he built that too).

Along our walk: Man feeding a squirrel nuts as a metaphor for life.

On the south side of St. Paul's: a working water fountain (that thing on the left). And our tour guide's unamused face.

An example of the first buildings after the great fire of London. No more timber allowed!

(this was a "hidden courtyard" which used to be the site of the King's wardrobe (until it burned down))

The oldest pub in London. Dickens wrote here, as well as countless others. (the sign reads: Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, Rebuilt 1667)

Dr. Samuel Johnson's cat, directly across from his house which is open 6 days a week for tours. Those are clams to the left of the cat. Apparently clams used to be street food. 

Gives new meaning to the term "tree house"

Riding an old, 1960's era Routemaster after our tour. 

I didn't do well to include a lot of info on the tour (sorry about that). It's not as cool in the pictures as it was to walk. You'll have to come experience it the way we did!



As we were walking home over the river, there was cloud cover over the financial district but the sun was shining through on the area we had just toured. I snapped the following picture (on the phone - doesn't do it justice, but whatevs).

OK, back to packing! See you on Friday. Have a good week! And thanks for reading!

We've got some visitors!

Owen, to me on the phone last night: You have more visitors? I've never known so many adventurous Americans!


In 2004, I took a miniature road trip with a friend of mine from Villanova. We spent about 6 hours in the car and one of the highlights of it was sharing music. He introduced me to the band Explosions in the Sky, and they blew my mind. Their entirely instrumental sound that blended orchestral, poignant, and in-my-face elements seemed perfect for the trip.

The night we got back from that trip I went to see the theatrical release of the movie, Friday Night Lights. I went by myself, sat in a historical and uncharacteristically sparse theatre, and was pleasantly surprised to hear that very same band as the soundtrack to the movie (the trailer for the movie doesn't have their music on it, but that's Hollywood I guess). The movie was surprisingly good; it played against the feel-good-sports-movie-formula. And I love when genre movies play against the expectations of audiences. I bought and read the book it was based on.

The foundation was strong - I was going to love this band forever.

Then the television show came out. If you haven't watched it, I give it my full recommendation (well, forgive some of the story lines from season two). It suffered the same fate most all other critically-acclaimed-yet-under-watched television shows experience. But it had Explosions in the Sky on the soundtrack again. And it was awesome. The only drawback was that the studio didn't pay for the rights to have the band's songs on the DVDs, so they got some chameleon band to produce their style of music for the DVDs. However, if you were watching it live, you got to hear the real business.

So, since 2004, I've been listening to this band. It's one of those bands that you can go back to time and time again and never get tired of. Each of their albums has its own feel, its own story that you write in your own head as you're listening to it.

When I saw that they were going to be playing in London, I didn't hesitate to get tickets. I got four because I knew Kenz and I would easily get two other people to come along with us.

I wound up e-mailing one of my BFFs from Villanova. I had told Will to listen to the band in 2006, and after the first listen he went out and bought all of their albums. It was a shot in the dark. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio - not exactly just down the road from London. But, he nerds out on the band as much as I do, so I had to give him first dibs on the tickets.

And he did it - he and his girlfriend booked a flight arriving Thursday, leaving Sunday. They got in yesterday morning and I dragged them all over the city.

Will and Kira upon arrival. Excited, full of energy, and ready to go out on the town!

They're still smiling despite the blisters on their feet. 

This is the first time I've met his girlfriend, Kira. She's a blast - the two of them together are a real joy to be around (which is great, considering they're staying with us for three nights! Ha!). She teaches at a special needs high school in south Philadelphia - the three of us had lots of Philly-talk all day.

We went around Trafalgar square, Covent Garden, Soho, the National Gallery, the British Museum, and a finishing walk through Westminister.

Will noted that this was a periscope for the driver. 10 minutes in the city and he's already noticing things I've been oblivious to for months. 

It was a beautiful day.

Some street performers were out. 

The linguist in me has to go say "hi" to the Rosetta Stone every time I'm in the British Museum.

I downloaded a free audio tour podcast and did my own self-guided tour while they strolled around. 

More Covent Garden performances.

They've about had it with my talking at this point. 

 Kenz cooked some yummy pasghetti as we were headed back. Afterwards, we taught them how to play "May I," which is a card game (for money) that my mom taught us two years ago. Mom and Tom gave us our own set of rules and 4 decks of cards for Christmas so that we could bring the game overseas.

Will was ready for bed and unhappy that he wasn't winning. 

We had Explosions in the Sky playing in the background. 

We're going to the show tonight. We're prepared for a face-meltingly good time.

It's a shame that Will and Kira got here a week before we move to our new place. They're forced to sleep on these ratty, uncomfortable couches in the meantime. Bad timing. On top of that, can you imagine 3 days in a time zone that is 6 hours ahead of you, then going back to the original time zone? They're going to be wrecked when they get home. But that's what youth is for, right?

"Ah well." - Tom Sanders, all the time.

We're going out on the town again today, and they're going to see Wicked tomorrow. I'll take some more pictures along the way, but probably won't include them till next Friday.

Shout out to Nancy Rucker for sending me an email last night:


friendly reminder that your friends, family and or stalkers are hoping for a post tomorrow


We'll be spending a lot of this week packing and getting ready for the move next Thursday. I imagine next week's post will be about our new place (considering I have Internet connectivity). Fingers crossed!

Thanks for reading!