No Place Like London (Part 2: Saturday, March 15)

Ahhh, the first day in London! My first chance to get out and about and explore the city! And what a day it was, too. Beautiful, sunny, almost, dare I say (what's that feeling called again?), warm. Not quite; I still needed my coat, but very nice indeed.

Well, after loading our stuff into a locker in the storage room of our hostel (and buying a padlock that could actually fit onto the locker!), Shea and I set out. We had an adventure to attend; a special tour that Shea had discovered, given by a somewhat well known group (supposedly....) called the Blue Badge Tours. Best of all, it was FREE! And, you know, if the price is right.... All we had to do was get to the front steps of the Marylebone Church at 10:00am. And get there we did. After catching the metro to the Baker Street tube station, we had about 45 minutes to find the church and wait for the tour to begin. Which was fine with me; I was gazing around the home-street of the great Sherlock Holmes like the fat kid in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory stared at that beautiful, delicious flowing river of chocolate. Mmmmm.... Baker Street. There was even a statue of Holmes himself, which (darn it!) I didn't get a picture of. But it was great. Better still, in our brief wanderings before the tour started, Shea and I found a wee place that only the two of us would get excited about:

That's right, friends and neighbors! A Beatles Store! And if the stuff in there wasn't as expensive as it was, that would've been the end of me right there.....

Well, the Blue Badge tour, entitled "Great British Music - 250 Years of the Music Scene," proved to be interesting, but probably not quite what Shea and I had been expecting. The focus turned out to be mostly on classical composers and performers, although there were spatterings of more recent (and substantially more famous) performers thrown in to make things interesting. We saw, for instance, the Methodist church where a young Elton John used to play the piano on Sundays, and the apartment of Jane Asher, Paul McCartney's long-time girlfriend during the height of Beatlemania. So that was cool. And the weather held out throught it all!

After lunch, Shea and I took a stroll in Regent's Park, a rather large, somewhat opulent, but certainly very beautiful park just a block north of the Baker Street station. Strolling in a foreign park is always a good time; the trees, plants, and animals that are all around you are lovely and soothing, and though it all feels familiar, you can still retain the impression of exoticism that makes a vacation so intriguing and fun. Anyway....

We had decided to spend a bit of time in the National Gallery, so, after completing our stroll around the park, we departed for the Charing Cross tube station. But can you imagine the scene we were confronted with when we popped out of the station and turned the corner into Trafalgar square? A mass of people, some shouting, most quietly standing or walking, many wielding large picket signs.... Shea and I had stumbled onto the remnants of a massive anti-war rally that had apparently been going on in Trafalgar Square since noon. The protest was over, and all of the people left in the Square were merely the stragglers, the die-hards, and the simply bored, none of whom wanted to go home quite yet.

Wading our way through a sea (well, perhaps, "puddle" would be a more apt description...) of "World's #1 Terrorist" (adorned with a portrait of George W. Bush, of course) and "Free Palestine" signs, we mounted the steps of the National Gallery and got to drown our protestor-inspired indignation at the wrongs of the world in great art. Fun, fun....

Upon leaving the gallery, the weather, which had proven itself so amenable just hours before, had turned against us. With a passion. The wind blew, the rain fell, and the cold... froze? I guess that's the only verb that "cold" can actually do. Anyway, point is, it started pouring. Which meant that shelter had to be taken - in a Costa Coffee shop! Exxxcellent....

After the warmth of a cup of my favorite poison, Shea and I had to brave the rain, return to our hostel to grab our luggage, and take the metro to Kensington, where we were meeting a friend, Chris, who had agreed to let us stay at his flat for the next two days. And a dinner of Chinese food and two hours of Blood Diamond later, we were ready for bed.

We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Eurotrip Post to Bring You....

A wee story, involving a floor of Irishman, two Americans, and a guitar.

They came to me like two shy children asking their "cool" uncle to teach them how to go fishing (or some other equally uncle-esque activity....). Neither wanted to admit how much they each wanted me to do what they wanted me to do.

"Jeremy," David said, pointing, "Ryan is down... you know what would really cheer him up? If you played for him on the guitar."

"Fuck off, David," Ryan quickly chimed in. "It's David, Jeremy, David wants you to play for us... him... on the guitar."

I looked at them both, bemused, and then at Kevin and Barry, who were also lurking in the hallway, waiting for my answer. "You guys want me to play the guitar for you?" I asked, turning back to David and Ryan. They both nodded. "OK." I said. "I'll do it. Get Connor's amp, and we'll play in the kitchen." Off they went, scampering to Connor's room; once again, I couldn't help comparing them to a couple of 10-year-olds. Strangely, the comparison might not be so far off the mark....

We set up in the kitchen, with the whole floor gathered around to listen. It was like a camp-fire sing-along. Inside. Without the camp-fire. But there was singing along. So the characterization is half right! It took a couple goes at some Guns N' Roses songs (played especially for Ryan, who had requested them) before I was warmed up, but then I went on with some Beethoven, Oasis, The Beatles, and, well, a bit of everything in between. I'd like to point out that I'm not a particularly good guitar player; they didn't seem to mind. It seemed like they genuinely enjoyed every minute of it, and you should have seem 'em singing along during "Wonderwall!" Ahh, it was a good time....

Ryan had a go at it, of course. I think he has dreams of being a rock star. At present, he'll have to settle for being in a punk band; he can't play guitar. At all. Didn't stop him. He bashed away on the open strings (occasionally attempting - sometimes with success - to play a fretted note) for quite a while, until David, er, I'll say "politely suggested" that he pass the guitar to somebody else. Which leads us to....

"Play 'Smells Like Teen Spirit!'" This was James, a friend of the guys' who doesn't live on the floor.

"Fuck off!" Barry, guitar in hand, strummed the first chord of the song, "I hate that bloody song. It annoys me."

"Come on..." James said. "I'll sing along!"

"You'll sing along?" Moving his fingers down one string, Barry shifted to the second chord. "You're not singing."

"I will, I will...."

Barry kept playing, but James still wasn't singing. "Stop being a fucking weak poof! 'I'll sing along.' Bah!"

"I don't know the words!" James protested. "I can't bloody understand them." He hummed a few bars. "All I know is 'With the lights out.... It's less dangerous....'"

"Here we are now, entertain us." I finished the lyric for him.

"Yeah!" He said, smiling.

Barry had gone back to the beginning and got to the fourth power chord. "Fuck this!" He said for the third time. "I'm not playing it!"

"Ahhh, no, play on!" Ryan, who had been sitting quietly off to the side since relinquishing the guitar broke in. His admonition got the gang through two verses of "Teen Spirit," no singing. It seems that James wasn't the only one who didn't know the words.....

And, it's 11:00pm and I'm tired from being up late last night playing guitar in the kitchen. So it's off to bed for me. I'll try and get back on those posting re: my Eurotrip. Sorry the blog has been a little sparse lately. Now you stay classy, San Diego (and elsewhere)!

No Place Like London (Part 1: Arrival)

I have sailed the world
Beheld its wonders
From the Dardanelles
To the mountains of Peru,
But there's no place like....

London. The first city I visited on my travels, and, indeed, one that I've dreamed of visiting for as long as I can remember. Ever since the Sherlock Holmes stories as a kid, ever since Disney's The Great Mouse Detective (a movie that I still love), ever since the books I've read and the dreams I've dreamt, London has been this semi-mythical place across the sea. A place where the famous authors, poets, musicians, politicians that I know and love have lived and died and made history. And so it was with great excitement that I rolled into Liverpool Street station on a train from the London Stansted airport; my first glimpses of the city from the train had been less than inspiring - as most of you, no doubt, may expect, the portions of the city immediately around the over-ground train tracks aren't exactly the nicest areas around. But now that I was in the thick of it, I expected things to improve dramatically. And, although it took a tad longer than expected, they did.

After arriving at the station, I had planned on walking to the hostel where I was meeting the one, the only, Ms. Shea Kinser, old friend and crusader for justice extraordinaire. Now, on the map it looked simple enough. Not even a mile away... just a hop, skip, and a jump over London Bridge... a straight shot. Trust me, dear readers, if there's anybody who can screw something like that up, it's yours truly. It's a skill. I rather pride myself in it. So I set out from the station, gunning for a bridge. Didn't exactly seem like it would be the most difficult thing to find. And it probably wouldn't have been - if I had been going in the right direction. About ten minutes later, I had realized my error, tossed my plan to walk, and gotten one of those quaint-looking cabs. Ahhh... a much easier solution. I also had a rather pleasant talk with the cab-driver, who recommended Indian restaurants in Brick Lane, which, he was quick to point out, had been the setting of a rather famous recent British novel. I told him that I had read this very novel (uninspiringly entitled Brick Lane) for a college class, but he insisted on explaining the plot to me anyway. I didn't mind. I also learned from my cab-driving friend that my accent is unexplainable: when I first told him that I had come to London from Belfast, he commented that I didn't sound Irish; when I told him that I was an American studying abroad, he told me I didn't sound American either. It makes me wonder what I sound like.... I suppose I will never quite know. Finally, I got to hear Mr. Cabbie's thoughts on the American presidential election, namely his fervent belief that if Obama gets elected, he's going to end up like JFK (which is to say, dead). Definitely an interesting fellow, but, hey, he got me where I needed to go, and he was a card to talk to.

Having thus arrived, through vehicular means, at the St. Christopher's Orient Espresso hostel, I promptly strolled into the lobby, where I found the ever-patient Shea awaiting my arrival. It's always a pleasure to see an old friend again, and, after apologizing for my late arrival and telling her about my cartographical incompetence, we checked into the hostel, went out to dinner at a nice little Chinese restaurant, and sketched out a plan for the following day. I had been in London for about 2 hours, and already my adventures had begun. And that's the way it should be.

Back in Belfast!!!

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaack!

Please expect about a billion posts about my recent trip. They'll take a while to write, though, so don't worry. They'll probably keep going up until the semester's over....