In Which We See Many Awesome Sights, but the Most Awesome Sight Ends Up Being on the Bus

Hi everyone,

This'll have to be short because it's already 11 am here and we haven't done anything, and we kind of want to do stuff before it starts raining, which it probably will in like five minutes. 

So yesterday we went to London. My first impression can be summed up in three words: London is awesome. I would totally live here if I had money. Which of course brings me to my second, unsurprising impression: London is expensive. But it was okay for one day. 

Things We Saw Which Were Great but Which You Should Really Just Google Because They are Huge Tourist Attractions (TWSWWGBWYSRJGBTAHTA):

1. Harrod's shopping area (super posh department store which was ginormous but closed, because it was Sunday and apparently stores can only sell for six hours on Sundays, so they open at 11:30). The glam of the glam.

2. 11:30-12:15: Changing of the Guard. Basically, the guard changes. It was still neat, though. Ashley keeps calling the groups of guards "the fleet of guards," so I will borrow her jargon temporarily, and then go back to making fun of it again later. We got there around 11:25 and the place was PACKED. Policemen on horses patrolled the roped-off areas, and hordes of tourists swarmed around the Buckingham Palace grounds. Then a bunch of soldiers marched out playing instruments, and we were like, "Huh, that's weird, they look Malaysian," and sure enough, they were Malaysian. We still are not quite sure why Malay soldiers preceded the guard yesterday, although I have a theory it is related to the recent diplomatic scandal that broke out between Malaysia and Britain over the Royal Army recruitment video. No idea, though.

There were these really long pauses so we thought maybe we would go; Mahalia was really certain that the fuzzy-hat guys didnt' actually come out of the gates, which would make it pointless for us to keep hovering outside of them. But luckily we dallied a while, taking pictures, and suddenly fleets of fuzzy-hat guys came marching out of the gates! So we got some extremely close-up pictures (they marched right past us...we keep lucking out), and then we left. So, if you go and really want to see the changing of the guard, be patient. It takes them like twenty-five mins/half hour to march out (they march out to the Wellington Barracks across the street and play music for a while. I don't know what they do afterwards since we left at that point). So, fuzzy-hat guys: check.

3. St. James Park. BEAUTIFUL park. Probably my favorite "sight" yesterday...I'm a sucker for parks. They had all this exotic waterfowl. A huge crabby pelican came right up to me and flapped his wings really hard...I think he thought I was trying to steal his mate. I don't want your mate, pelican! I was extremely impressed by his wingspan, though. There were also magpies and finches and pigeons (there are pigeons EVERYWHERE, but this is okay since they crack me up...have you ever noticed that a pigeon uses flying only as a last resort? 9/10 times they are convinced they can get away by running, and since every pace they take means one bob of their heads, they look like hilarious when they start sprinting away from you. "You'll never catch me now! I'm running!") There were also white swans and black swans, and their adorable cygnets. Also some birds I didn't recognize. Oh yeah, some collared doves, ducks, etc. Anyway. I would recommend picnic here.

4. Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey. Big Ben was a cool big clock. That's all I can say about that. Westminster Abbey we couldn't enter because it was closed on Sundays, but it was a very nice church. House of Parliament was an extremely impressive building (Ashley in particular loved it). We sat on a stone thingy outside of it and ate our lunch by the statue of Oliver Cromwell. I took some cool pictures of this structure; I would definitely recommend stopping by.

5. Other things we passed by: Wellington's Arch (very cool), Wellington Barracks, Imperial War Museum, various War Memorials

6. Tate Modern (Millennium Bridge leads up to it; London Eye, Shakespeare Globe Theatre, close by). Extremely cool modern art museum, although we didn't see much of it other than Level 3 due to time constraints. The wing of level 3 we saw was "Dreams and Poetry" which was dedicated to Surrealism--artists I noted: Joan Miro, Francis Bacon, Juan Munoz, Max Ernst, Cy Twombly, Picasso. Pieces I really liked: Hanging Figures (Munoz), Three Figures and Portrait (Bacon), Forest and Dove (Ernst). Met Sarah V. (housemate next year) at the Tate and headed to dinner together. So glad we got to meet up!

7. Chinatown. This is near Leicester Square for those of you following a map...luckily, we had Sarah for a guide, who goes to the LSE and knows the area fairly well. Ate at the Golden Dragon: we all shared half a Peking duck to begin with, and I had some hong shao pork and rice. Everything was delicious. Got to chat with Sarah about the upcoming year, shared some thoughts...it was a good time.

8. Woman. As M., A., and I were walking back to Victoria station (the bus station we needed), we saw a woman lying on her side on the ground, with several people around her. We walked over to see whether we could help, and asked if someone had called the ambulance (they had). Turns out she was a diabetic, we think she probably collapsed due to low blood sugar. Ashley got to try out her budding nursing skills, although the woman was breathing, so no need for CPR (plus, Ash didn't have the CPR mouth-cover thing, so it was a good thing she was conscious). She'd hit her head pretty badly, there was blood all over. We held a newspaper clamped to the back of her head to try and staunch the flow, and we checked her pulse and looked at her insulin pump. Luckily, the ambulance came pretty quickly. It turns out she's American, and she was completely disoriented--did not know where she was or what happened, did not want to get into the ambulance and get help. We thought our accents might soothe her, but they didn't, so we finally left because we didn't want to be in the way. That was pretty scary, actually--she did not look good, but like I said, help came quickly.

9. THE BUS. We finally arrive at the best part of the night. We board the bus at 8:30 pm to go back to Cambridge, and all three of us need to go to the bathroom, but we let Ashley go first, so she clambers out of her seat and goes to the back of the bus. Mahalia and I talk for about ten minutes, and during a lull in our conversation, I think, wow, Ashley's still not back? Is she really constipated or something? So I look back, and Ashley is standing outside of the bathroom, with this extremely sheepish air about her, looking really out of her element. She waves frantically at me to go back and join her, so I do, and it turns out the following had happened: she'd gone into the bathroom, and there was no light, but she really had to go. Also, there was a little bit of water on the floor and it generally looked kind of gross, so she'd done the public-bathroom-squat and been quite proud. She'd "peed forever," in her words. Then she'd fumbled around the teeny bathroom looking for the flush button, and found it. She'd pressed it. Nothing. Pressed it again. Still nothing. She tries the sink to wash her hands. Nothing. The beginnings of panic. Then she'd thought, maybe the bus needs to be in motion, so she stands up and kind of waits there, in the dark, for the bus to start. Then, all of a sudden, a dude opens the door and sees her there, just standing, scrunched in between the toilet and sink, in the darkness. "Oh! I'm sorry!" he exclaims. She explains, and he sits back down. Finally the bus starts moving again, and she tries to flush. Still nothing, only this time it RISES a little. She gives up. 

So the whole two hour ride, Mahalia and I really had to go, and we kept watching these guys get up, disappear for an abnormally long time, and then emerge looking extremely uncomfortable, as if to say, "That did NOT as planned." Turns out the stuff had sloshed all around, and Ash spent the whole ride hoping no one had seen her come out in the beginning.

All right, time to jet. More Cambridge today, and then fly to Ireland tomorrow! Peace out.

XW