Rollerblading in the London Silence

Hyde Park has a section where people rollerblade. Central Park in New York also has a section where people rollerblade, but there is a crucial difference. The people in New York are jammin. The music is blasting and the rollerbladers are dancing.

There's no music in London. It's weird. The entire time I was in London and Oxford, I don't recall a single store with music blaring out. I came across one vehicle in Oxford that was politely blaring the car stereo (just loud enough for it to seep out the car windows).

Coming from Miami, where everything is done to a soundtrack of blasting stereos, it seems bizarre to me. Life without music just isn't life.

Following Orders Under Big Brother's Watchful London Eyes

If you are going to visit London, get used to being told to "mind the gap." This is usually being told to you over a loud speaker, repetitively. It does not, that I can recall, come accompanied with a "please" or "thank you." It is most definitely an order.

The other thing to get used to in London is the feeling that you are being watched. Sometimes a sign will advise you that you are on camera and being monitored. Sometimes you just see the camera. It feels a little creepy, but I better get used to it. Washington DC is now following their lead.

Deceit at Buckingham Palace in London

Buckingham Palace is a rather homely building. The gates are topped with silly unicorns. There is tacky gold paint everywhere. Nevertheless, I was very excited about going.

Mainly I wanted to participate in the tradition of trying to make the guards flinch. I had a choreographed jig all planned out. There was no way they were going to keep a straight face.

Then I arrived and discovered that, not only were the guards far, far away from the gate - they were fake! How can they use dummy guards? I know finances are tight right now, but we're talking about the queen of England for Pete's sake. Surely she can shell out a few bucks an hour for someone to stand there. Aren't there some jewels she can sell?

Very disappointing.

Harrods Foodie Mecca in London

My second favorite thing in London (after seeing A Midsummer Nights Dream) was the food court in Harrods department store. Those are the food court fishmongers.

In addition to being a gourmet market, it also has several counters where you can order food - including a caviar counter. Chris and I ate at the deli. The matzo ball soup was just like my mothers, seriously. The lox was perfect. My turkey sandwich was great.

Of course, the whole lunch cost like $70, which is ridiculous. In fact, everything was incredibly expensive. The uncooked lobsters cost about $80 each. At those prices, Chris and I figure we ate about $400 worth of lobster on our trip to Maine. Woo Hoo.

The best were the chocolate and pastry counters. They were mobbed, but we elbowed our way in for our fix. I was in sugar heaven. We bought a strawberry tart and a big giant coffee cream filled puff (which we ate later). We also bought some apple pie, truffles, and fudge (most of which I stupidly forgot at the hotel).

If you ever go to London, do not miss gorging at Harrods. But skip the rest of the tourist filled mecca of materialism that is the rest of the department store. I could barely make it through there.

Obamamania in London

These are the turnstiles at Paddington Train Station in London. Note the photo of Barack Obama on the third turnstile from the left. Obama's photo was everywhere in London.

The Times Newspaper in London put these ads up. There were enormous photos of Obama down in the subway stations. They have no words on them. The only way I knew it was The Times was by looking it up when I got home.

Nobody is quite sure why The Times put these ads up. They say it is to make people think. Since they put a "10" next to Obama (for 10 Downing Street, the home of the Prime Minister), I'm assuming they want to think about Obama moving on to Britain once he's served his eight years here.

I heard quite a few Obama conversations as well. When people weren't talking about Obama, they were talking about the financial crisis. It was pretty much like home, except that the Brits kept saying they were going to be "sensible" - unlike us. I think being sensible is highly overrated.

London's Sci Fi Architecture

This photo really sums up London for me. To the left is the Tower Bridge. It was built in 1894 and crosses the Thames River right next to the Tower of London (circa 1078). It is, in short, the London you imagine from literature and high school history.

The kooky toppled over egg to the right is the London City Hall (circa 2002). It is like something out of Gattaca. These incongruous pairings are found all over the city. It feels a bit like Londoners are screaming out, "Look! We're modern, we're hip! It's not just Dickens and Jack the Ripper you know!"

Me thinks Londoners doth protest too much. Unlike Mexico City, where the different eras somehow work together, in London it is startling. In London's defense, I must point out that much of the city was destroyed during The Blitz and so it isn't as though they knocked down gorgeous old historic buildings to put up their (often egg shaped) futuristic experiments.

I was expecting to be transported back into a Dickens novel and ended up in a 1950s sci fi television show. Beam me up Scotty.

London's Tourist Trail

Naturally, Chris and I did all the usual touristy bits of London. The highlight was definitely seeing A Midsummer Nights Dream at the Globe Theatre. (It isn't the original Globe of Shakespeare's time, but it is an exact replica - right down to the wooden pegs holding it together.)

I was expecting the play to be a bit kitchy and touristy, but it was an incredible performance. It was funny and bawdy and kept the hundreds of kids in the audience in rapt attention for three hours. The actors were phenomenal. Anyone who gets a chance should go.

We also, of course, hit Westminster Abbey. Personally, I was a bit disappointed. It's old (about a thousand years), but nowhere near as fun as the churches in Latin America. I mean where are the decaying bodies of small children or blood-soaked effigies of Jesus? Also, they have a pattern worked out that you must use to get around the church. I saw the pattern on the brochure, but thought it was merely a suggestion. When we tried to go out through the wrong door, a very stern headmistress-like woman told us we needed to follow the route out. Londoners are very keen on rules.

Next to the Abbey is Parliament (which we only looked at from the outside) and Big Ben. We took hundreds of pictures in the area. After about an hour, Chris looked at me and said "I wonder what time it is?" I looked at him, looked at Big Ben, looked at him, pointed to Big Ben and said...."uh, you just spent an hour taking pictures of what is, arguably, the most famous clock in the world." We immediately headed to the Red Lion pub as Chris was obviously much too sober.

Space Age Accomodations in London

There is a Yotel at the London airport. A Yotel is a hotel with very small rooms that can be rented for as little as 4 hours. Unlike most hourly rate hotel rooms, these are quite respectable.

When I say the rooms are small, I mean they are small. As you can see in the pic, Chris is in a little cubby. Below him is the bed for the next room (which, of course, we could not see). In front of him on the wall is a flat screen t.v. which he is sleepily trying to work the remote for.

Next to the sleep cubby is a narrow passageway just big enough for a couple bags and for getting in and out the door. Next to that is another narrow hall that serves as the bathroom, with a shower on one end, a toilet on the other, and a sink in the middle. The whole thing is cordoned off by a shower curtain.

The lighting in the photo is the normal lighting for the hotel. The entire thing is done in soft neon. The hallways look like something out of Star Trek. You check in on a machine, but there is one staff person there to help you if you are a moron or just very, very tired travellers. I'm going to say I was in the latter category.

Since we arrived at Heathrow too early to check into our hotel, we were able to use the Yotel to catch an extra hours sleep and to take quick showers. It was a lifesaver for me and worth every penny of the $60 or so we paid for 4 hours. I think it probably helped Chris a little too, although he didn't sleep much on the flight over - or the night before - so he was a zombie by the time it hit about 7:00 p.m.

So that was the beginning of our trip to London.