Poor Man's High Tea

Last day in London. Can't believe we've already been gone a week!

Usually, Laura and I coordinate what time to set our alarms for and get up. Last night, we didn't. The result is that both of our alarms went off at 8, and both of us shut them off, and both of us didn't actually roll out of bed until 11! I'm just slightly ashamed of this, but honestly, it was an amazing night's sleep for both of us so I figured it was much needed.

Our first stop today was the British Library. Library? Library. So cool. You'll all be jealous by the end of this post. Here is a list of some of the things we saw:
The Beowolf manuscript (~1,000 years old)
A Jane Eyre manuscript
Jane Austen's writing desk
Virginia Woolf's notebook
Mozart's concerto and marriage contract
Beethoven's tuning fork and sonata
Mendelssohn's wedding march
The Beatles' lyrics for the following songs: Help!, Yesterday, Ticket to Ride, A hard Day's Night, Michelle, and I Want to Hold your Hand
The Magna Carta (the "Great charter" document that subjected the king, as well as his people, to the law and set limits on royal authorities)
The Macclesfield Alphabet Book (I don't expect you to know this one, it was just a really cool old book with interesting letters drawn out in it)
The Derling Roll (not expecting you to know this either, but it's the oldest surviving English roll of arms, which are like family crests I think)
Shakespeare's sonnets
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet draft and book
Leonardo DaVinci's manuscript notebook with drawings
and probably my personal favorite text out of all these old famous things,
Dodgson's (i.e. Lewis Carroll's) ORIGINAL ALICE IN WONDERLAND MANUSCRIPT!

Listening to the audio recordings of the Beatles while looking at the scrawled lyrics (written on scrap pieces of papers, envelopes, backs of birthday cards, etc) was one of the coolest things I've done. It was such an amazing feeling. That's the only time I've ever danced in a museum, that's for sure.

The Magna Carta, and all other sacred documents, had a thermometer in every glass case to maintain the careful preservation environment for the ancient works. The Magna Carta was impossible for me to actually read because it's written in 13th century Latin script with abbreviated words (because parchment was so expensive).

The Alice in Wonderland exhibit was too cool; seeing the very first hand written version of it along with an original sketch, and also seeing Dodgson's diaries and the many version of Alice that followed was so exciting. My favorite version was the Guinness version, written by Arthur Guinness. I believe that parody is where the slogan "Guinness is Good For You" comes from. Anyway, the two pages open under the glass were hysterical. They also had some pages from the costume designer of Tim Burton's Alice movie, but sadly no pictures of Johnny Depp :(

So, yes...not your typical library.

After the Library we went to the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. We really are museumed out, but you can get high tea there so I really wanted to check it out. Unfortunately, the guidebook from 2008 that I read said high tea was 12 pounds, and in 2010 that number is actually 14.5 pounds. Apparently that makes a difference for me, so we did a "Poor Man's High Tea" in which I bought a cup of Earl Grey tea and a scone with clotted cream and jam for about 4 pounds. What a steal. Then, since we were in the National Gallery, which is of course, free, we sucked it up to look at some beautiful old paintings by famous people. We sped through in about an hour, hitting only the big familiar names. I really did enjoy the Van Gogh and Monet paintings a lot though.

It's really interesting to me how interactive and high tech museums have become. In every museum, there is an internet-cafe-esque set up where you can take virtual tours, etc. In this museum, you can pick paintings you want to see and it will route a path for you. You can also email yourself favorite pictures and learn about the artists. We learned about how crazy Van Gogh was, and man that guy was a huge screwball. Such a bummer that so many good artists are straight up crazy (he really did spend time in an asylum...he also shot himself, but didn't die, and then just laid in bed smoking his pipe until he did die...seriously, Van Gogh?!)

With the last of our daylight, we wandered around Rob's neighborhood by the Spitalfields Market. We also found "Banglatown" on a road called Brick Lane. Banglatown is a hilarious row of restaurants where middle eastern / Indian / Bangladeshi men stand outside their restaurants and try to entice you in with specials and free bottles of wine. Quite amusing.

We waited for Rob to get off work, and in the downtime I was surprisingly productive! I borrowed Rob's exercise ball and did a self-made circuit twice that worked on all different parts of my body. I think it took about half an hour and I checked my heart rate throughout and it was in the good zone (22-28 beats per 10 seconds) that I learned about in my kickboxing classes a while ago. I felt great after that! Then I read an entire British newspaper...well, skimmed the interesting looking articles. A tip I got on Semester at Sea was to try to find a newspaper in every country (in English, which here, obviously wasn't an issue) and read it so you know what's going on in the country you're visiting. Sage advice, really. I felt like a very good tourist reading that paper. It's cool because at rush hour in London, there are people everywhere at all the Tube stops handing out free copies of this evening newspaper. I think that's such a cool idea!

When Rob got back, he had to run out again briefly but recommended a Bangladeshi restaurant for us. We had a delicious meal there partially due to their kind and confusing upselling tricks! They did treat us very well though, pulling out our chairs and bringing us warm little wash cloths at the end of the meal. I've never had Bangladeshi food before (it's similar to Indian food though) so it was a cool culinary experience.

After that I was stuffed. But Rob met up with us and wanted to take us to a bar. I told Rob and Laura that I could probably only stomach a half pint because there was no room in my tummy, even for beer. But Rob is from America, so that would have looked wussy (which is why Laura and I decided America doesn't typically serve half pints in the first place). So I had a whole beer. And I felt like I was about to pop. And then Rob wanted another round, and we all know Laura's always down for round 2. I didn't want to be the only one, so pathetically I also signed myself up. WORST IDEA EVER. I'm really quite ashamed of this, it's not typical for me to cave like that. Also, I know my body and it's punished me enough for not listening to it in the past. Really, you'd think I'd learn...Anyway I felt absolutely terrible trying to finish that beer and in the end started to feel like my stomach really didn't have any other space and it would soon be filling my esophagus. Tragically, this wasn't far off, and as soon as we walked outside my mouth started to water that bad, terrible, incessant way it waters right before it's about to bring something up from down below. I ended up spitting/burping up pure beer foam in sad, disgusting little spurts on the walk home (Laura and Rob were in front, so I was only privately embarrassed about this). After that though I felt much better. I'm writing this down so that I will remember it, and along with the experience remember how important it is to listen to your body and how stupid peer pressure is! Ugh, I feel so silly.

Ok moving on to my happy wrap up... :)

Quotes:
"Beethoven messed up a lot." Laura, looking at his sonata

At the National Gallery:
Tourist Grandma to Tourist Grandson (Age ~6): "I wonder what you'd like to paint. Maybe ladies..."
Tourist Grandson: "Naked people."

"Are you Hillary Clinton?" - Grocery store clerk, looking at my passport (apparently that 'joke' is still funny...?)

Accomplishments:
We ticked off the last things on our London to-do list; pretty impressive!
I found Kiri cheese - haven't seen it since Egypt and so excited that I'm in Europe because it's here and I love it.
I successfully got ID'd AGAIN buying a bottle of wine for Rob. Lame. Really, I don't look over 18 yet!?
"Poor Man's High Tea" was a win.
Pretty proud of my work out.

Today I thought of:
Shawn Moore - I thought of you looking at the Guinness version of Alice in Wonderland because you have that Guinness is Good For You poster.
Katherine Zagone - I think you'd be so proud of my spontaneous work out!!
Erica Matson - I think you would have loved this library, naturally. But even funnier today, I read an article about the new Dr. Who getting stuck at Heathrow airport because of his new screwdriver tool that he's apparently really into. He had to explain to the security guards who he was and what the weird toy was using Dr. Who promo material he had with him...so funny.
Ms. Schmidt / Mrs. Boxleitner - Remember my Transfer of Knowledge Paper? Too bad I couldn't have used the British Library as a reference. They had so much old paper and stuff there!
Jenna Haerr - I saw this suuuuper cute boutique that you would have liked I think; it's called A-142, maybe you can Google them?
Jon La France - you would have loved the Beatles exhibit at the British Library! Also a button came off my shirt and I don't know how to sew it back on. Also there was a spider IN the bed and I had to get it off myself. It was tiny though so I survived.

Travel Tip:
1) Sleep is Not overrated - sleeping in until 11 just this once (after typically getting up between 8 and 9) was glorious.
2) Peer pressure is stupid; listen to your body and your travels will be happier.


So that's about it for London. I loved the music being played in the Tube stations, that makes me so happy!! I know that's not unique to London but I still love it. I really enjoyed all the markets that dot the city. I learned that people in London are gold medalists at the game "Chicken". That's the game where two people are moving towards each other, and whoever steps aside first is "Chicken". Londoners DO NOT move, they walk on a war path 24/7. A little intense. Their vocabulary is very fun, some favourites (pun) are: brilliant, fancy, quite like, mate, darling, love, pop in (to a store, for example), take away (instead of to-go or carry-out), and my #1: baddies (bad people; villains). London was also pretty crowded, and the dirtiest city I've been in since Beijing (black stuff comes out of my nose, yum!). Nearly everybody in the service industry here is pretty mean. Way less English is spoken here than I expected. At any rate, London was a great jumping off point: English was useful of course, tons of stuff was free, and our CouchSurfing hosts were great! And now, I'm ready for Brussels and excited to bust out my old French. See you on the other side of the channel.