I just got home from the best trip! It was 2 weeks long and we visited London, Amsterdam, and Edinburgh.

The impetus for the trip was that Mr_Reliable was going to be tattooing at the London Tattoo Convention with Spider Murphy's. Also, we'd promised his son that we'd take him to London after he graduated college and that was 2 years ago ! So we brought him too.

The first few days Matt was busy with the convention so Travis and I tried to ward off jet lag and wandered around London. We were staying near the Tower of London, which is also near some other interesting sights.

Here's a picture of the view from our hotel:



We saw Big Ben, the Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, The Golden Hinde (Sir Francis Drake's ship), the Millennium Bridge, the Globe theatre, and lots and lots and lots of old buildings and pubs. I won't bore you with all the touristy photos as everyone who's ever been to London has taken similar ones.

On Saturday Travis went up north to visit some college friends and I met up with former SG member Vanexxa. I was still kind of jet-lagged, and sort of exhausted from not knowing where anything is, so it wasn't as fun as it could have been. Still, we saw Oxford Street and Carnaby Street and did a little shopping. Vanexxa introduced me to ultra-high-end British department store Liberty London and I had a little anyeurism of joy in their perfume department.

I wanted to buy everything.


Sunday I wandered around some more by myself and went to the Tate Modern. I missed the Damien Hirst exhibit by a few weeks and didn't feel like paying to get into Edvard Munch, so I just gazed at the beautiful interior of the building, which is a decommissioned power plant. I walked through an exhibit of installations that was pretty interesting as well. Then as I was getting ready to leave a performance piece began in the main hall. It was people sitting in random-seeming order around the main hall, singing seemingly unconnected single notes that when you moved around the space it sounded more or less like music. It was neat.

Here's me at the Tate Modern bathroom.


After that I walked around the East End. I loved it. It was my favorite part of London, to be honest. I got off the tube at Mile End and walked through Mile End Park, trying to find the hospital where the Elephant Man had lived (I couldn't find it). Then I took the tube back to the Whitechapel district and walked through Brick Lane, where they have a big street flea market thing on weekends. I found a leather motorcycle jacket:



We partied pretty hard with the Spider Murphy's and Salon Serpent people that night at the Ibis hotel. The hotel bar was just crawling with tattooers. Luckily there are no photos of that as it was quite a shit show.



Next day we visited Frith St tattoo and did some more Soho shopping and walking around. Matt bought a really beautiful hand-made hat at this hundreds-year-old haberdasher. They used to have a cat that lived at the store and when he died they had him stuffed:



That was our last day in London. Next we flew to Amsterdam, which I loved to pieces. It's such a beautiful sweet city. We drank a LOT, even more than in London, and on the second day we got to have a tattoo party at Salon Serpent, Angelique Houtkamp's tattoo shop.

I got this little sweetie:


Matt traded tattoos with Job DeQuay and got to tattoo Angelique herself!

Matt working on Angelique's leg





And here's the tattoo Job did on Matt:



I didn't get a pic of Matt's tattoo on Job.

Dutch food is really excellent and Amsterdam has a lot of canals.

Next up: Edinburgh! It was beautiful. Here we did the most touristy thing of the whole trip, which was touring Edinburgh Castle. We got to see the Scottish crown jewels and Matt got to look at super old canons. Castles are one of my favorite things about the old country - I love how the whole structure is so huge yet there are all these tiny rooms.

We took a train from Edinburgh to London and that was delighftul. Highly recommend.

I was definitely ready to not be travelling anymore by the time we landed yesterday at SFO, but at the same time I can't wait to go back. I'm hoping we'll go again for next year's London convention.