Churches?

Last night I went out to a fantastically swanky club with a couple of friends - we'd been contacted by a promoter and were promised free entry and free drinks. Free entry, yes; free drinks, not so much. However, three of us were female, so it worked out. The place was called Aura Mayfair and it had fantastic lights and funky chandeliers and mirrors on the ceiling. It seemed like an old (and rich) crowd at first, but as the night went on more people came in, and many of them were closer to our age. We didn't want to buy drinks (as I expect they were absurdly expensive), so we just started dancing, and pretty much did not stop until the club was about to close. One of us, however, managed to meet a gaggle of investment bankers, one of which looked rather a lot like Hugh Grant but was not, who kept buying round after round of expensive drinks... It was a good night for all, until we had to figure out how to get home. We ended up walking to Picadilly Circus to take a night bus to Waterloo, but we still had a twenty minute walk back to Wolfson. Oh well, it was worth it.

Today I woke up late, having been out all night (by which I mean until 5am - there were birds singing on our walk home), but it was sunny so I had to do something. I decided to follow a walking tour from my guidebook of central London churches. I went from All-Hallows at the Tower to St. Paul's Cathedral with about ten churches in between. I suppose this is where I start posting pictures.

I walked across Tower Bridge, which I hadn't yet done - note that the Thames really is the colour of tea when it's sunny out:

And took a couple of pictures of the Tower of London from the other side:

Here's All-Hallows-by-the-Tower, right by the Tower of London (strangely enough):

And here is a quote said by Samuel Pepys, the fellow whose burial place I was going to see:

I went by The Monument (the purpose of which I still do not entirely understand):

Here's the second church on the path, St. Magnus the Martyr:

And here's St. Clement's, "of nursery rhyme fame," according to my guidebook... This one was actually quite hard to find and I walked by it a few times before going in:

Then, along Eastcheap, I found St. Margaret Pattens:

And St. Olave, where Samuel Pepys was buried (is buried? I hope he's still buried...):

Here's St. Katharine Cree, which I went into mainly because I was freezing:

And here is the Gherkin, which is apparently called the Swiss Re Tower, or 30 St. Mary Axe, but I find the Gherkin much more appropriate:

Then I reached St. Helen's Bishopsgate, of which there seemed to be two:

I couldn't resist. Would someone from the UK actually ride this?:

 (This one was on another street...):

And I walked along Cheapside (which is ironically a rather expensive shopping area) to get to Mansion House:

(That's not Mansion House, it's just a street view on my way there)

 Here's the Royal Exchange:

And a statue of Wellington:

 And, finally, Mansion House:

(impressive, I know)

And St. Stephen Walbrook, which wasn't open to the public:

I also spotted this sign, which I found interesting:

And this one:

Then I passed by St. Mary-Le-Bow:

...on my way to St. Paul's Cathedral, which I'd already seen but not from this side, and which was the final destination of the walking tour:

Then I made my way back to London Bridge and home to Wolfson, totally freezing but glad to have done something with my day. It's not as if I'm particularly interested in churches, but the tour was in my guidebook and it was something to do, since the markets I want to see aren't good until the weekend. In any case, I hope this post didn't bore you.

Most likely there will be more tomorrow, as I plan to do some wandering, or at least stop by Borough Market, where apparently the Leaky Cauldron scenes from Harry Potter were shot. Yeah, I know you're all jealous that you can't go see the Leaky Cauldron. More later - cheerio!

Quite a Weekend!

Hello everyone, I expect you will all be extremely impressed with my weekend activities. I have begun doing the thing that I did in Paris, where I do loads of things in the space of a few days and then have to put up an extraordinarily massive blog post that is probably longer than is worth reading, but I will include plenty of pictures and try to keep the writing to a minimum, because who wants to read my writing really?

In any case, at the moment I am procrastinating about some articles I have to read for a philosophy course (or "module," which is what they call classes here) and so naturally I figured I would put up a blog post. Besides going to Camden on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday (once to get shown around, once to buy decent boots I can walk in, once to watch my friend shop in exceptionally shitty weather) the end of last week was not particularly exciting. But this weekend I was determined to wander around incessantly, which is what I did.

On Saturday I decided to go to Portobello Road for the antiques market, because it's open on Saturdays (although apparently it is also open on Sundays). So there was my destination, but of course I wasn't going to take the tube - that costs money, even with an Oyster card. So I started walking. I actually just took the way I walk to Strand campus, but instead of turning at Waterloo Bridge I walked down York Road and crossed Westminster Bridge. So of course I was able to see Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and Westminster Cathedral during the day, regardless of how gray the day was, which is almost always is here. Here are some pictures:

Also, there was a statue of Abraham Lincoln, which mystified me:

Then I wandered through St. James' Park just to take a look. I'm sure it's lovely when it's sunnier, but I liked it anyway:

And, of course, just beyond the park is Buckingham Palace, which I also took obligatory pictures of:

Also, I liked this gate:

And then I stopped in Hyde Park to sit and write for a moment, and again, I bet it's lovely on sunny days, but those are so hard to come by here that I am more than willing to settle for gray ones:

(yes, that last one is insufferably artsy, but I just had to take it)

So then I assume that I'm pretty close to Portobello Road, as the map I have seems to suggest it (regardless of the fact that my map sort of stops before getting to the area indicated by the Portobello Road Market website), but it turns out that I'm not. I'm just about to Marble Arch, which is at the end of Oxford Street, and I've been walking about two hours now. I happened to run into a King's graduate who told me that I still have about a half hour to walk, and that I need to get all the way to Notting Hill. Honestly, after two hours of walking I didn't really mind. So I did it, and it was about a half hour more. But when I got there I was sort of underwhelmed (as an aside, is anyone ever "whelmed"? you can be "overwhelmed" and "underwhelmed," but "whelmed"? Oh, English...) that it wasn't particularly large or impressive, and was really just a line of shops that I presumed were open every day. Maybe I ought to have gone on a Sunday... Here are some pictures of the street and some of the shop displays:

To be fair, some of the antiques were pretty cool; I just couldn't afford them. Anyway I did find a lovely dress for £15, and then meandered in and out of shops until it got dark, at which point I headed back towards Marble Arch Station to go home. It was closed, for some reason or other, so I had to continue on to Bond Street Station, and I got sort of distracted at Primark... but I did eventually get on the Jubilee Line to London Bridge and get home tired but satisfied.

And that was not all that was in store for the evening. At about ten that night my floor held a punch party, which is a notorious event in which everyone pays a few quid to get in and an enormous bowl of punch is made and everyone gets quite sloshed (have I mentioned that I love the drinking laws here? Well I do.) and doesn't remember much. Unfortunately, after quite a few glasses of punch, I had to use the bathroom, and the bathroom was just temptingly close to my room, and I felt like lying down for a bit, and then I woke up at 4am. I am terrible at this.

Needless to say, I woke up yesterday morning with an incredible hangover, but the sun of all things was shining in through my window so I got up at 10am, took two Excedrin, and made some tea and toast before heading out towards what I expected would be a park. I did not take an umbrella, as I'd carried one around all day yesterday and it hadn't rained, and it just looked so seductively sunny before I left... But, as a new friend here has informed me, the weather in London is sentient, and it will fuck with you mercilessly. It started to drizzle just as I was far enough away not to want to go back for the umbrella, so I ended up at the Tate Modern, which is actually quite close to where I live. I went up to the third floor, which is entitled "Poetry and Dream," basically a lot of surrealism. Not really a good plan for the hangover... In fact, just being indoors was terrible, so after taking a few pictures I sat down on a chair someplace and wrote a bit. Here are the pictures anyway:

Now at some point in my writing an alarm went off in the museum. It went of for a minute maybe, and then turned off. A few minutes later it went off again, then stopped. This happened three or four times before it became clear that we all ought to leave the museum, and so we did. So I have seen the Tate Modern, through a sort of mental haze, for about a half hour. I'll have to go again.

At this point it had stopped raining, so I wandered through a cute little garden:

 And walked along the Thames to sit a bit at Gabriel's Wharf, inhaling some relatively (for London) fresh air. Here's a picture of the wharf:

And decided I'd just go to Covent Garden. It was sort of crowded, as it was Sunday, but I looked around for quite a while, tasting samples of tea and taking pictures in several of the quirky shops. Here are a few highlights:

A miraculous little toy shop:

 (yes, that was an Edward Gorey toy theatre. I wanted to buy it so badly.)

And fresh-made soap from Lush that looked to pretty to use:

And a shop called Octopus that sold really weird household items:

After that, I bought a bite to eat and stopped in a weird little garden to eat it. It may be less strange and gloomy in the sunshine, but somehow I doubt it. Anyway I liked it. Here are some pictures of the spot:

After that it was sort of drizzling again, so I headed towards the National Gallery which, like the Tate, is free to go into, and is also indoors. It's right by Trafalgar Square, which I hadn't photographed in (relative) daylight yet, so here are a few shots:

And then I went into the museum, where you are apparently not allowed to take photographs, so I won't post any of the ones I took before I discovered that fact, for fear of highly unlikely legal retribution. Anyway here's the outside:

To be honest, I found much of it quite boring - loads of religious art from Spain and Italy and the Netherlands, but eventually I found the Impressionism section, saw some Monet and Pissarro that I hadn't before, as well as one of Van Gogh's Sunflowers series and one of Degas' Dancers series. At this point I was satisfied and, after a peek at some Cézanne, I started to walk towards Baker Street Station, where I was supposed to meet a friend from the area. I walked up Regent Street, which is actually quite impressive at night, and took these two pictures because, as I have said before, I am actually a prepubescent boy:

I apparently overshot my turn, and ended up wandering around near Regent's Park, which was already closed. Luckily I ran into three Americans studying at Regent's College, and Baker Street Station was apparently one of the only places they knew how to find. So after some looking at a map, I got there and realized that it was very close to the Sherlock Holmes Museum (which I am planning to visit), as indicated by this statue:

The rest of the night was uneventful, dinner at a little pub, tea that I was told insistently was "proper English tea," but seemed pretty commonplace to me, and now here I am on Monday afternoon having to actually do reading - to think! I am expected to do coursework! Oh well, there's my update for now. Expect more wandering next weekend.

Cheerio!