Mind the Gap

For those of you that had little to no preface for this trip: I left home March 24th, I return June 22nd. I am traveling with Laura Jackson, a friend from Business School who I have been to South Africa and Panama with. We are going to: England, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and France. We each have one back pack and one day pack, and we are planning on CouchSurfing our way through the next 13 weeks!! If you don't know what CS is, check it out at www.couchsurfing.org (it's amazing).

I love public transportation. Love, love, love it. It is like a key to a city's heart, and I take pride in figuring it out as quickly as possible.

Laura was feeling sick this morning so I ventured into London on my own for a few hours. It was quite peaceful. Luckily, London weather was kind to us today and it was sunny and the perfect temperature to comfortably walk around without getting too hot. This made for lots of gorgeous views and pictures throughout the day. It was wonderful to aimlessly wander solo for a bit; it was good "me" time which I feel is important when traveling (and also in "real life").

Aimlessly wandering is maybe misleading. There was a museum I really wanted to see called the Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garden which goes over the history of old fashioned medicine and surgery pre-anesthesia. I was mostly interested in the herb garden, mostly due to my romance novels. Laura wasn't that interested so her staying in allowed me the perfect opportunity to check it out. I found the place rather easily, but OF COURSE they only took cash. So I couldn't get in. Then I wandered aimlessly.

I was in the Southbank neighborhood at this point. I stumbled into the Borough Market which was fantastic! I hope to find these kinds of markets everywhere we go, they are just so fun and so European. It had fresh, organic, homemade everything. Not just fruits and veggies, but meats, fish, juices, ciders, cheese, olives, olive oil, bread, salsas etc. At every turn there was something new, and it was huge, it just kept going and going and going. I sampled butter and bread, apple and strawberry juice, compte cheese (amazing!), wild boar saucisson, gluten free brownies, chips and chipotle salsa, bread and olive oil, and olives. Oh......the olives! (More on that later.) I also learned what a "bubble bap" is. "Bubble" means a mixture of potatoes and cabbage; "Bap" means a bun.

After the Borough Market I made my way to the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge which are in the (Suit) City neighborhood (more on this later). The Tower of London seems like an expensive tourist trap, so I didn't go inside, but boy is it beautiful from the outside!! One of the coolest things I saw here was an original peice of the London Wall that protected the old city of London.

I walked along the Thames River toward the Monument (built to commemorate the Great Fire in London and the rebuilding of the city), but the Monument cost 2 pounds to walk up. Again, no cash. Bummer. Thank goodness walking across the London Bridge was free! Also - really unimpressed with London Bridge. It's cool because of it's history but especially within eyesight of the gorgeous Tower Bridge it looks like a peice of bridge garbage. Upon crossing the bridge, I found that I had done a GIANT circle and was at the street corner that I had started off at in the Southbank neighborhood first thing in the morning. FYI: Laura and I have decided that circles are our representative shape of our trip. We've walked in a lot of them so far, and it's day two.

By now it was about 1 PM so I went to go see if Laura was up and feeling better. She was still sound asleep so I thought I may as well take a 20 minute power nap too. Well...turned that alarm off and woke up two hours later. Woops. But, by that time Laura was feeling better and we headed back down to Southbank. I showed her Borough Market - which is where I spend 2.9 pounds on a bucket of DELICIOUS olives of all sorts. I carried it around as a luscious salty snack for the rest of the day. Miraculously, I didn't eat the whole bucket so I have some for tomorrow too!

Laura and I crossed London Bridge back to the City neighborhood - which is like London's Wall Street area. Just men. Men in suits. Everywhere. We stopped at an Irish bar that served Guinness battered fish and chips (which obviously is what I got for dinner) and as it was around 5 PM on a Friday, we were the only females in the bar. We were surrounded by quite a lot of men. Men in suits. Side note: I got carded. You can't drink unless you are OVER 18 IN LONDON. Awesome.

After dinner we meandered back to Southbank and spent the evening in the Tate Modern, a collection of post-1900 art. It's a free museum and one of London's "must sees". It was a very cool museum, although something about museums automatically make my feet start to hurt...I saw artists that everybody likes (Warhol, Matisse, Picasso, Lichtenstein, Rodin) and also found some new names that I very much enjoyed (Jackson, Boetti, Ruscha).

Tate Modern is right at the edge of the Millennium Bridge, a futuristic structure built at the turn of the millennium. We walked across that and had clear, gorgeous, city-lit night views of St. Paul's Cathedral (majestic), London Bridge, and Tower Bridge. Many photos were taken. After saying Hi to St. Paul's we tubed it back to our hostel and found all 6 of our German roommates milling around and getting ready for the night to begin (it was 11 PM).

Quotes:
Upon inquiring where they were going, our German friend Jan said, "The Ministry".
Me: Oh. What's the Ministry?
Jan + 5 other Germans: (stares at us)
Me: I mean, duh, who Doesn't know what the Ministry is?!
Jan: The Ministry is only this pub that has been around for decades. It's huge, and probably the most famous in London...or England...or Great Britain...or all of Europe maybe.

Ah. Well, now we know. At the expense of looking like uneducated-about-London-nightlife-American-tourists.

Accomplishments:
I understand those t-shirts that say "mind the gap" on them with an image of what I now recognize to be the London Underground Tube symbol. Go me!! Has everybody known about this forever? ("Please mind the gap between the train, and the platform.")

Traveling Tip:
Always, ALWAYS carry toilet paper with you! I was rewarded for doing this today.

Today I thought of:
Jon - saw a fixi.
Sam - saw so much wine!
Derrick Nation - saw an entire wall full of whiskey.
Mommy - saw a REAL orange juicer with entire oranges in it that you could see getting peeled and mashed as you put OJ into your glass.

Overall, London has been great so far. It is strange to me how many people actually do not speak English, there are so many other languages that I am surrounded by. I feel like there's a 50/50 chance I won't be understood when I speak to someone. It's nice being back in the land of small cars and cobble stone streets. It's fun seeing their cleverness (i.e. at crosswalks, they have "Look Left" and "Look Right" painted onto the streets-very useful for someone like me). It is bizarre to see old train stations and amazing cathedrals with Justin Bieber and Jason DeRulo posters across the street. The contrast is startling in terms of modernity, beauty, quality, deserved impact on society, and in every other way possible. But, yes, I very much like this city.