Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Goodbye, London.. (and Moscow) Hello, Copenhagen!

I've been back almost a week and have to admit I am not fully unpacked so.. shame on me. As you can surmise from my blog posts (if you've been diligently following along.. thank you!), I had a great time in London. It gave me exactly what I needed and I am so grateful. I want to live there but.. I can't afford it - everything is so expensive!

Aside from the dude I witnessed digging into his nose, scrutinizing his findings, and then tasting the fruits of his labor (this is a true story.. I wondered if my eyes deceived me but then he repeated the cycle and I wanted to dry heave), my return trip was bittersweet - I was eager to go home.. mostly to wash my clothes and Clarisonic my face, but I didn't want to wish London goodbye.  (Maybe I should've stayed and asked mom and dad to UPS my Clarisonic instead.)
The evening view from Heathrow's observatory deck.
I spent hours in front of the window at Sheremetyevo, watching them prep planes. I love airports, but not enough to enjoy being stuck for eight hours.

I definitely have a case of wanderlust, as this morning, I made arrangements for the next trip in February.  I'm going to.......

It's going to be cold but I think I'll be able to withstand the temperature (famous last words).

Friday, October 3, 2014

Nine.. To Go Home!

This one will be pretty short. After packing up this morning (no easy feat, considering the souvenirs I bought), I had a great breakfast. 
Then, I made my way to the Charles Dickens Museum.
His kitchen
On my way to the British Museum, I saw an ice cream truck.. I think you can guess what happened next.

(A downside of traveling alone.. no one to be the Royal Guard to my Paddington.)
........

BOY, he saw me coming. Easiest sale ever.. I had no chance.

After that, I went to the British Museum, which was interesting, but didn't pique my interest as much as other museums I visited previously.
Two selfie sticks at once
Can't get away from accounting!
In the Africa exhibit, there was this chair made of weapons. Reminds me of Game of Thrones
Also in the Africa exhibit. This is entirely made of the paper wrapping on bottles, like beer bottles near the cap. How resourceful!
Now I'm resting at the hostel until my flight this evening.

Thursday, October 2, 2014

On the Eighth Day of London..

Man, I slept about 12 hours last night. I guess I was making up for being sleep deprived these last few days. I was hoping to pass out on my 11 hour flight from Moscow to LA.. not looking forward to that ride back.
I didn't really have an itinerary for today, since I've done pretty much everything on my to do list. I googled Changing of the Guard and I don't know wtf I watched on Tuesday, but as I suspected, that wasn't it. I was wondering why it looked a little weak.
Anyway, so I made it to Changing of the Guards today, but I didn't have a great view. I got there about an hour early so I wanted to find a trash can to throw away my coffee cup. I walked up and down the streets for a while and asked someone working in a museum if there was one in there. This is how you know London doesn't have very many trash cans.. she directed me to the exact closest trash can. In LA, they'd probably say, "I don't know.. look outside somewhere."  I also wandered into the Buckingham Palace Gift Shop, where I saw a special limited edition teddy bear on sale... for £250, which is more than $400. Wow.
Anyway, that took about 30 minutes (seriously).  I don't know if the span of time I spent for Changing of the Guards was worth it, considering my poor view, but at least I went.  
The Buck!

On another note, I'm getting better/more comfortable with taking selfies, but I noticed a lot of selfie sticks at Buckingham Palace.. I don't know if I'll ever be that shameless. Meanwhile, those people probably have great pictures of themselves, so maybe I'm missing out.
The good thing about taking pics in a heavily populated space is that people don't realize you're actually taking pics of them.


Then, I went to Camden Market, which kinda reminds me of a less ghetto version of Olvera Street. There was an Asian dude working at a restaurant yelling "Where you from?" to passersby, but he was silent when I strolled along. Rude.. he ain't know where I'm from!
These cool scooter/motorcycle seats
Anyway, then I went to Marble Arch to take a few pictures.
I saw this lady feeding the birds and it reminded me of Home Alone 2 or Mary Poppins.
This lady in the tube station had TEN boxes of Krispy Kremes. I HAD to take a pic but on the first attempt, my autoflash went off. Embarrassing fail! 
Finally, I went to the Kings Cross station to look for the 9 3/4 platform, from Harry Potter. Although I'm not a fan, it's pretty close to my hostel, so I thought I might as well go. Now I'm wondering if they have this at the Harry Potter World at Universal Studios in Hollywood or Orlando. 
I didn't pay to have my pic taken because I prefer taking a free pic with something I ACTUALLY love. See last pic below..
Today is the last day of my one week Oyster Card pass in Zones 1&2 so I can't go too many places tomorrow. I think I'll go to the British Museum and the Charles Dickens Museum, which are both within walking distance.  Speaking of walking, I'm sad because I know my vacation habits won't carry over when I go home. For instance, I find myself only eating two meals a day, and one is always breakfast (or brekkie, as they call it here).  Also, I walk a ton! Here's some of my FitBit stats below.
I'll miss taking the tube everywhere - it makes me feel street savvy :) I need to get home to my precious Clarisonic, though. The gross air from the tube and the prevalent cigarette smoke is freaking out my skin.  I've had to get used to other things too.. like I usually change my pillow case on a daily basis and that has def not happened here. There's also a lot of random B.O., as well as streets that unexpectedly smell like pee. It also grosses me out that there's a bandaid stuck to one post of my bunk bed, really close to my towel. And let's not even talk about the things left behind in the communal bathroom.  Traveling is not good for a germaphobe but you deal with it.. and complain later :) I've smelled a combo of B.O. and too much (stanky) cologne on my flights to and from Moscow so.. I have that to look forward to tomorrow.

Lest I become inconsistent, I enjoyed dessert today. However, I decided to mix it up and have frozen custard instead of ice cream.
For one of these, I could've had four McDonald's dipped cones. Oh well, when in London..

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Seven of Nine.. Days in London

(Props to you if you know the reference in the title.. I know my brother Ben does.)
It's almost seven and I am dead tired. I was going to see another show tonight but in the cheap seats but I decided not to. Maybe tomorrow afternoon.  I got a late start today because three of us were talking until 2 last night - going to an evening show throws everything off.  I wanted to sleep in but I will have tons of time to do that on my flights home.  I've already done most of what's on my list and wanted to get the last few bits taken care of. 
Today, I went to Tower Bridge. I did see it earlier in the trip, when I went to Tate Modern, but I wanted a closer look.
Then, I got lost in my way to Shakespeare's Globe, so that was tiring.  I finally found it and watched The Comedy of Errors. It was a really funny show, but I paid for the standing area. This was great because I was extremely close to the stage, and the ticket was only £5, about $8-9 (Les Mis was kinda expensive yesterday.)  My feet already hurt before the show began, so I could barely walk after it was over. 
Then, I went to check out Harrods, but I don't get what the fuss is about. Then, went to find out about the shows for tonight and ate dinner. Food here is expensive but I refuse to eat at restaurants they have in the US, like McDonalds or Burger King. 
I'm probably tired because I went up a ton of stairs today. The steep up escalator at Leicester Square wasn't working so people had to just walk it. I was super tired but felt bad for a lot of the old people who were struggling.  Also, the closest tube station to the hostel, Russell Square, is terrible because you can only get up and down with elevators. But there's almost always a hoard of people so they shove you on and out. Since there's only two elevators, you have to wait a while. There also stairs, but there's a sign warning you that there's 175 stairs and they should only be used as an emergency exit. I took the stairs down once and was scared I was going to fall. Today, I was too impatient to wait for the elevator, since I knew I'd probably have to wait for a couple before I could go in, so I took the stairs.. up. I heard, over the PA, that the 175 stairs was equivalent to 13 stories. I used to regularly do that many at work and promised myself a burger from GBK for doing it, so I went. When I was almost finished, I passed by a guy remarking to his friend that taking the stairs down was tough and couldn't help but comment that taking them up also wasn't easy, which made him laugh. (That or the exhausted look on my face.)
Mandatory pointing pic of the day
It's really hard to take a selfie there because the theatre is so tall and the stage is so wide. Plus everyone is standing so close to each other.
This reminds me of the Friends ep when Monica puts a turkey on her head.