Mind the Gap!
Finally, yes FINALLY I'm getting around to sharing my European adventures! I was going to attempt to write a blog that covers London, Berlin and Prague but realized quickly that would have been near impossible. So, today you get London and at some point later Berlin and Prague. This is going to be a very picture heavy update, I'll add captions when I can, otherwise enjoy! :-D
Finally, yes FINALLY I'm getting around to sharing my European adventures! I was going to attempt to write a blog that covers London, Berlin and Prague but realized quickly that would have been near impossible. So, today you get London and at some point later Berlin and Prague. This is going to be a very picture heavy update, I'll add captions when I can, otherwise enjoy! :-D
SPOILERS! (Click to view)
The start: walking over the Rainbow bridge from New York State, USA to Canada where I would catch a ride from YYZ to LHR
Not too many photos of the plane ride over, mostly b/c I had my head sunk into my iPad for the entire flight. The flight was so awful, if anyone remembers there were some pretty serious storms on the east coast right after christmas. The morning of my flight most of the NYC area airports had gotten shut down, well we flew right through that crap and it sucked!
But once I arrived, nothing but good times!
The old man
My partner in crime and I, Kirsten
Camden Town:
Of course what would a trip to London be without some serious geeking out over Doctor Who stuffs
The battle for Canary Warf!
DALEK COASTERS!
TARDIS!!!!!!! and DALEKSSSSSSSS!
and then some stuff that was distinctly American, curtesy of the London Film Museum
Food stuffs:
Funny story how we came across this shop that sold Fish and Chips, which by the way were quite tasty. If you noticed above I referenced that I was traveling with an iPad. Well turns out that I was so excited when I got to London I sort of left the iPad on the plane, and didn't realize until after I had already passed through customs, but before I left LHR. When I realized the problem I contacted Air Canada only to find out the plane was already completely de-boarded and locked up for the night and that I would have to call back in the morning to see if anyone had turned in the iPad (fat chance I thought). Later that night I realized I had setup my iPad to be able to located remotely through the find my iDevice feature that apple provides. So I logged in and tried to find the iPad, to no avail. So I set it up to lock remotely if it reconnected to wifi and then pushed a message saying that I wanted it back and provided my email address to be contacted. Later the next time (somewhere around seeing big ben and Westminster Abbey we popped into a Starbucks for some free wifi. When I checked my email I got a message that the iPad had been located and that it was currently connected to wifi. So I promptly pushed another message to it saying I had the location (which was only partially true b/c what I really had was a 2 block radius) and that if they wanted to keep the police not involved they should arrange a way to return it to me.. and amazingly that worked! Whom ever had the iPad sent me an email and we worked out the details. So Kirsten and I went way out into the suburbs to a police station where the iPad had been dropped off to, crazy right!? Anyway we walked around the area for a bit and stumbled on this place and then into a pub where we watched a Manchester United game and drank some pints, it turned out to be a grand evening! All thanks to my forgetting the iPad on the plane! CRAZY.
And back to photos:
Imperial War Museum:
The wall.... Wow. This was the first time I had ever seen a piece of the Berlin wall in person. All I can say was that it was a very intense, emotional experiences for me. I didn't expect it to be. But when I saw this lone solitary section of wall standing outside the IWM I nearly fell to tears.
The museum had a special exhibit, describing how WW2 affect the kids in the UK, most specifically London. Here are a few snaps:
Other IWM stuff:
One thing I found really interesting was all of the WW1 and WW2 era signage promoting composting and recycling. Two things that have become very "in" todays western culture. It is interesting to see how it was once vital to Brittans survival. It is too bad it didn't take hold then, one can only imagine how different our world would be if the 1950s consumer culture didn't develop. Of course then we wouldn't have Mad Men..
There was a special holocaust exhibit at the museum when I visited. I'm going to save most of my holocaust stuff for my Berlin/Germany post. But I had to share this story, which is of a man who was being shipped to Auschwitz by train from a Ghetto in Germany. He was writing to a woman, who may have been his wife, but was certainly the love of his life. The post card reads that he misses her and that he hopes the war will end soon, he knows not where he is being sent but that he hopes to see her in a year after the war is over. He had no way of posting the card, so he says that he plans to slip it through the wooden beams of the box car he is in, hoping that someone will post it for him. He later died in Auschwitz at the hands of the Nazis. I will never forget his story.. writing this I am starting to cry. I am so mad at what they did to these people, for what they did to the human race... but like I said I'll revisit the holocaust during my next blog.
Walking around London at night, St Paul's Cathedral and Tower Bridge
Jump!
Other London stuff:
London Overground Service
I swear some of the tube stations looked like they belonged on the sets of scifi movies
Statue of Charles Darwin at the London Natural History Museum, easily one of the most beautiful buildings I've ever laid my eyes on.
I was going to include a lot more from the LNHM but I'm losing focus, uploading this many photos is hard work!
So my last day in London was meant to be Dec 30, 2010. However I was getting sick, the story of what would turn out to be the worst cold/sinus infection ever. Given that I was sick, jet lagged and loving London I decided staying in London was best. Especially given that traveling with Kirsten means sleeping little and partying very hard. I thought at the time it would be better to rest up so I didn't ruin the rest of the trip. It was a good idea! The down side of course was that I was going to be in London, by myself, for NYE. I had THE WORST NYE ever last year, thanks to some ass holes I met in Seattle on meetup.com. So it was really important to me this year to have a really fun New Years eve. Everything started out a bit slowly, I really wasn't feeling too hot, but I was taking lots of vitamin C and using this stuff that Vicks made that was designed to make your sinuses an unsuitable place for the cold virus to replicate. Then as the day progressed my energy level started returning, only now I was alone in London and really didn't know what to do. I thought it was going to suck, but instead I met up with one of Kirsten's friends who was working at a bar right off the Thames. I hung out with him for a bit and then met these kids from Greece, Germany and Poland who were staying at the hostel above the bar. They were nice enough to share their evening with me. We walked along the Thames, snapped photos, drank champaign and watched the fireworks and celebrated the end of 2010 together. It wasn't the best New Years ever, but it was certainly best I could have hopped for given the situation, I was pretty pleased.
Sorry for the sideways.... I'll see if I can fix that
After New Years I slept in WAY too late and didn't get much done my last day in London. I tried to go to Kew Gardens but the train ride took forever and I didn't get there until they had already stopped selling tickets for the day. Sad. I then went back into the center of London and visited the Palace, which was tres boring in comparison to everything along the Thames. Cool sure, but not so impressive compared to everything else in London. Later that night I visited London Chinatown and walked around Covent Garden. Everything in this area was so beautiful. I really fell in love with London while I was there. I really loved the juxtaposition of the old buildings and beautiful new architecture. Also, mini skirts. Yeah, that's right, I said mini skirts.
The start: walking over the Rainbow bridge from New York State, USA to Canada where I would catch a ride from YYZ to LHR
Not too many photos of the plane ride over, mostly b/c I had my head sunk into my iPad for the entire flight. The flight was so awful, if anyone remembers there were some pretty serious storms on the east coast right after christmas. The morning of my flight most of the NYC area airports had gotten shut down, well we flew right through that crap and it sucked!
But once I arrived, nothing but good times!
The old man
My partner in crime and I, Kirsten
Camden Town:
Of course what would a trip to London be without some serious geeking out over Doctor Who stuffs
The battle for Canary Warf!
DALEK COASTERS!
TARDIS!!!!!!! and DALEKSSSSSSSS!
and then some stuff that was distinctly American, curtesy of the London Film Museum
Food stuffs:
Funny story how we came across this shop that sold Fish and Chips, which by the way were quite tasty. If you noticed above I referenced that I was traveling with an iPad. Well turns out that I was so excited when I got to London I sort of left the iPad on the plane, and didn't realize until after I had already passed through customs, but before I left LHR. When I realized the problem I contacted Air Canada only to find out the plane was already completely de-boarded and locked up for the night and that I would have to call back in the morning to see if anyone had turned in the iPad (fat chance I thought). Later that night I realized I had setup my iPad to be able to located remotely through the find my iDevice feature that apple provides. So I logged in and tried to find the iPad, to no avail. So I set it up to lock remotely if it reconnected to wifi and then pushed a message saying that I wanted it back and provided my email address to be contacted. Later the next time (somewhere around seeing big ben and Westminster Abbey we popped into a Starbucks for some free wifi. When I checked my email I got a message that the iPad had been located and that it was currently connected to wifi. So I promptly pushed another message to it saying I had the location (which was only partially true b/c what I really had was a 2 block radius) and that if they wanted to keep the police not involved they should arrange a way to return it to me.. and amazingly that worked! Whom ever had the iPad sent me an email and we worked out the details. So Kirsten and I went way out into the suburbs to a police station where the iPad had been dropped off to, crazy right!? Anyway we walked around the area for a bit and stumbled on this place and then into a pub where we watched a Manchester United game and drank some pints, it turned out to be a grand evening! All thanks to my forgetting the iPad on the plane! CRAZY.
And back to photos:
Imperial War Museum:
The wall.... Wow. This was the first time I had ever seen a piece of the Berlin wall in person. All I can say was that it was a very intense, emotional experiences for me. I didn't expect it to be. But when I saw this lone solitary section of wall standing outside the IWM I nearly fell to tears.
The museum had a special exhibit, describing how WW2 affect the kids in the UK, most specifically London. Here are a few snaps:
Other IWM stuff:
One thing I found really interesting was all of the WW1 and WW2 era signage promoting composting and recycling. Two things that have become very "in" todays western culture. It is interesting to see how it was once vital to Brittans survival. It is too bad it didn't take hold then, one can only imagine how different our world would be if the 1950s consumer culture didn't develop. Of course then we wouldn't have Mad Men..
There was a special holocaust exhibit at the museum when I visited. I'm going to save most of my holocaust stuff for my Berlin/Germany post. But I had to share this story, which is of a man who was being shipped to Auschwitz by train from a Ghetto in Germany. He was writing to a woman, who may have been his wife, but was certainly the love of his life. The post card reads that he misses her and that he hopes the war will end soon, he knows not where he is being sent but that he hopes to see her in a year after the war is over. He had no way of posting the card, so he says that he plans to slip it through the wooden beams of the box car he is in, hoping that someone will post it for him. He later died in Auschwitz at the hands of the Nazis. I will never forget his story.. writing this I am starting to cry. I am so mad at what they did to these people, for what they did to the human race... but like I said I'll revisit the holocaust during my next blog.
Walking around London at night, St Paul's Cathedral and Tower Bridge
Jump!
Other London stuff:
London Overground Service
I swear some of the tube stations looked like they belonged on the sets of scifi movies
Statue of Charles Darwin at the London Natural History Museum, easily one of the most beautiful buildings I've ever laid my eyes on.
I was going to include a lot more from the LNHM but I'm losing focus, uploading this many photos is hard work!
So my last day in London was meant to be Dec 30, 2010. However I was getting sick, the story of what would turn out to be the worst cold/sinus infection ever. Given that I was sick, jet lagged and loving London I decided staying in London was best. Especially given that traveling with Kirsten means sleeping little and partying very hard. I thought at the time it would be better to rest up so I didn't ruin the rest of the trip. It was a good idea! The down side of course was that I was going to be in London, by myself, for NYE. I had THE WORST NYE ever last year, thanks to some ass holes I met in Seattle on meetup.com. So it was really important to me this year to have a really fun New Years eve. Everything started out a bit slowly, I really wasn't feeling too hot, but I was taking lots of vitamin C and using this stuff that Vicks made that was designed to make your sinuses an unsuitable place for the cold virus to replicate. Then as the day progressed my energy level started returning, only now I was alone in London and really didn't know what to do. I thought it was going to suck, but instead I met up with one of Kirsten's friends who was working at a bar right off the Thames. I hung out with him for a bit and then met these kids from Greece, Germany and Poland who were staying at the hostel above the bar. They were nice enough to share their evening with me. We walked along the Thames, snapped photos, drank champaign and watched the fireworks and celebrated the end of 2010 together. It wasn't the best New Years ever, but it was certainly best I could have hopped for given the situation, I was pretty pleased.
Sorry for the sideways.... I'll see if I can fix that
After New Years I slept in WAY too late and didn't get much done my last day in London. I tried to go to Kew Gardens but the train ride took forever and I didn't get there until they had already stopped selling tickets for the day. Sad. I then went back into the center of London and visited the Palace, which was tres boring in comparison to everything along the Thames. Cool sure, but not so impressive compared to everything else in London. Later that night I visited London Chinatown and walked around Covent Garden. Everything in this area was so beautiful. I really fell in love with London while I was there. I really loved the juxtaposition of the old buildings and beautiful new architecture. Also, mini skirts. Yeah, that's right, I said mini skirts.
Of course I really didn't know what I had in store yet for my trip I was off to Berlin next. This little toaster sticker on an escalator out of the last tube station I would ride in, foreshadowed the things to come in Berlin. So stay tuned!
Oh and one last thing...
I recently hopped down to PDX to hang out with Royal, Lyxzen and Toxic. We got into some serious shenanigans and tasty treats.
But more on that later...
meshell:
you're awesome