Ah, London. It’s no Paris, but it does the best it can.
I just got back to France from London and let me just say, trying to see an entire city in two days is kind of insane. It is especially insane when you try to save money by not buying a metro (or tube) ticket for one of the days to save money. When I think back to London, I will remember a lot of exercise.
In all seriousness though, London is pretty cool. It’s a lot more chill than Paris; people are not as dressy, the parks are big and sprawling and you can sit on the grass (or on chairs if you pay the equivalent of $5), and the food is nice and “common.”
I’ll start by talking about the Eurostar train, which goes under the Manche, or English Channel. The ride is quick and easy and I wasn’t even too scared while under the water, since it really is only for 15 minutes or so. It is strange to think that all that separates England from continental Europe is a 15 minute train ride under water, when in history it was such an important divide.
We nearly missed our train to London on Friday morning because the metro line that runs most directly to the station was out of service. So, in our sleepy states, at 5:30 a.m., we ended up running through Gard du Nord and blitzing through customs. The British actually care who you are and what you’re doing in their country. Unlike the return, the agent asked me why I was going to London, what I was doing there and when I would leave. The French border guard this morning glanced at my picture while joking around with his colleague. Hmm.
Anyway, like I said, the train ride was pretty quick and easy and we made it to our hostel with no trouble. Changing money into pounds was the saddest part of the arrival. It was really sad. Even from Euros, you just barely get anything to work with. This made the trip an adventure in cost cutting.
Now to our hostel. Can you say “eww” ? I know that staying in hostels is supposed to be some kind of young person, life-changing, exciting and adventurous event… but really, eww. We had to leave our stuff locked in a room until we could come back to check in later in the day, but to stay on topic I will tell you now what my overall impression was. When I walked through the bathrooms with unidentified liquid all over the floors and into the room smelling of feet and heard a group of kids discussing their latest use of cocaine… I knew instantly that the “hostel experience” was not my thing. It wasn’t even that bad either, I don’t think I got a disease and nothing was stolen and we weren’t overcharged. But just… not for me.
Our first day consisted of a walk through Hyde Park (really beautiful, with people ridding horses and boating) then a tube ride over to the London Tower and a long walk to see St. Paul’s Cathedral, the London Bridge, the London Museum, the British Museum, and finally, a jaunt along the Thames to the London Eye, where we spent more on dinner than the rest of the whole trip. (Note: when I say “see” something, I mean we saw it, we didn’t go inside, because, well because the British like to charge the equivalent $30 to see a national monument. Umm… I don’t think so. We did actually go into all the museums though, they were free.)
Some notes about London:
-The museums are great! They are also much more user-friendly than France. They are also free, which is sweet and good since if they weren’t, Carolyn and I would have had little to do in the city.
-It is freezing there (not all the time, but it was that day). Rainy and windy.
-Food is so expensive. I mean, I guess everything is expensive. Unlike the Euro, where after a while you can just get it out of your mind that you converted dollars and lost a lot, it is impossible to stop thinking of what you spend in dollars when in England, because it is so damn much. The tube pass for one day was 7 pounds, which is like 15 dollars. That is just insane.
-You can never get used to people driving on the wrong side of the road, in the wrong side of the car. Maybe it’s possible if you’re there for a long time, but I could not figure out which way to look when crossing the street. I lived in constant fear of getting hit by a big red bus or funky black taxi. Crossing the street in general is a mess because the crosswalks don’t go straight across, they have these islands you have to navigate in the middle. It’s hard to explain, but just trust me, it’s weird.
-The tube, or underground, is frightening. First of all, it’s really, really far underground. Second of all, the platforms are itsy-bitsy. Third of all, the inside of the trains are hideously ugly with terrible lighting. Lastly, the voice that tells you to “mind the gap” actually sounds like Big Brother. It’s so creepy.
-London is just not classically beautiful. Granted, we spent our first day in the both oldest and most modern parts of the city, which are not as pretty as around Westminster Abbey and the parks. But really, a walk along the Thames is nothing compared to a walk along the Seine.
Now back to my narrative of events:
Day two began bright and early with another long walk through Hyde Park to get over to Buckingham Palace. Once there, we were initially underwhelmed, until we got to watch the changing of the guard, which was pretty sweet.
Then we continued to walk over to Westminster Abbey and to the Parliament and a nice park there on the river. We took a break there to eat our American breakfast bars and avoid paying for lunch. Then we walked back into the heart of town, past 10 Downing Street and back toward Green Park (my favorite!). We watched some sort of military procession down the street in front of the palace, which was brilliant (very cool).
We then proceeded to sit for about an hour in Green Park, where Amanda apparently looked for us forever but didn’t find us. (I’m so sorry!!) It was so nice to sit in the sun, I can’t convey the nice-ness of it. It lost a little something when some guy with a uniform came over and asked us each for two pounds (the cost for sitting in chairs). This was ridiculous.
Our sit in the sun was followed by afternoon tea on Piccadilly Street and a jaunt through the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery. I saw quite a few paintings here that I had been shown in history classes, so that was super cool.
We finished the day by walking back to the Knightsbridge shopping area, snapping pictures of Harrods, eating a fish and chips dinner in a nice pub with a refreshing pint of beer, and then walking past Kensington Palace and through what I think was Notting Hill until we had some ice cream and went back.
Further notes about London:
-The part of the city around the palace and the Parliament is so much more fun and so much nicer than the east end of the city– near the Tower of London. The city is kind of laid out strangely in that all the big parks are right next to each other. It would kind of suck to live across the city from them, but living next to them would be fabulous.
-Parks. I loved the parks in London. They are big and super green, with lakes in them. Unlike in Paris, where there are ornate fountains and guards telling you where you can and can’t sit, in London, you can do whatever you please. The only thing that diminished this for me was having to pay to sit in the lawn chairs and seeing some kid pee in the grass.
-It is so cool to be in an English-speaking European country. It’s Europe without half the challenge because you can still understand everything. To be honest, it loses some coolness by being anglo-phone. It’s also pretty sweet though to be somewhere that is a lot like America, only cooler (aka, a lot older, with classy people, and accents, of course.)
-It is very simplistic. The British Empire was the greatest of them all back in the day, but the architecture and such just doesn’t betray a hint of it. I feel like when you go to Versailles, you think, wow, this is sweet. But in London, the palaces and such just looked like over-sized plain mansions. I guess it’s kind of cool, less opulent.
-I like being an American in England. You feel like you have some kind of connection. On a side note, some guys asked us for directions and when we said we weren’t from London, they guessed we were American. Not hard to guess, but then they guessed we were from Tennessee. When we laughed and said no, they insisted then that we were from somewhere in the south. Do we look like we’re southern? I mean, I don’t think so.
Conclusion: A successful trip to London. I am back in France legally, with a new appreciation for the beauty of Paris and the value of the Euro (although it may be really high to the dollar, it’s not as bad as the pound). It was really, really nice to speak English for a weekend– see it on TV, read it on signs. I’d like to go back, but I’m also really happy to be where I am.
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