Sarah's London Recap

Because I admire my best friend Sarah's writing style and ability to concisely yet artfully convey meaningful events, I'm going to copy her recap of London to here. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed living it!

For those of you who don't know, Kylie Edmond has been my best friend since third grade. And this week I was reminded of how grateful I am for her. This past week was both of our Spring Break weeks, and as we were both spending the semester "across the pond" we thought it would be a good idea to get together. So she and another friend from America, Andrew, came to London for six days. Though I have been living in London for the last two months, Kylie and Andrew's fresh perspectives helped me to see it again in a whole new and exciting way.
They arrived Friday, and we spent that day, getting settled with groceries and other necessities. Actually, a lot of our adventures together revolve around food. I think I mentioned last week, that we had kabobs as our first meal together. After which we took a bus tour (by which I mean we rode a city bus) around some of the city and saw some of the famous sites, like Westminster Hall and abbey and Big Ben and the Thames. Part of the new light in which Kylie and Andrew let me see that city was that of a tourist. Before when I saw these great buildings, I was also preoccupied with learning about their history and taking notes for class. I was also secretly scorning all those people who were tourists, taking pictures and blocking the flow of sidewalk traffic, while I tried to look like a native Londoner. But after seeing them again and really looking at them, they became more real for me. They were not just places that I visited once, they were solid features in the landscape. It's strange that Londoners are surrounded by this mighty architecture every day. It must affect how they see the world, mustn't it? That night we cooked dinner together of baked lemon garlic chicken.
Saturday was an interesting day. It started out with a little bit of a fiasco. Andrew's debit card had stopped working, so he had to call his bank in America to find out what the problem was. This was made more difficult because I don't have a phone in London, and calling long distance to America is complicated anyway. In the end he ended up buying a phone card and using one of the famous red London telephone booths to make the call. Meanwhile, Kylie and I sat outside a nearby coffee shop in the cold, waiting. Just as I got so cold I had to order a hot tea to drink, Andrew finished his call. I made them sit with me while I finished my tea anyway. (Side note: I've discovered that I really enjoy English style tea with milk and sugar. It was almost like hot chocolate the first time I had it, sweet and creamy, and I've started taking all my tea that way.) After that business had been sorted out, we took a bus to the other side of the central city of London, that is to the Tower of London and Tower Bridge. The weather while we were there was extremely variable. First it misted at us (that is it rained, but not real rain, just a kind of fine mist) then is was bright and sunny and almost warm as we were crossing the bridge to the southbank of the river. Then, just as we got off the bridge, it started whipping wind and there was even hail blowing hard at us and forcing us to seek the cover of the lee side of a building for ten or so minutes. After that we made our way along the bank of the river, thoroughly exploring the South Bank. We saw the Globe Theater, Tate Modern Art Museum, various cafes, shopping districts and entertainment venues. However, all this time in the cold led us to desire some place warm to spend the evening, so we made our way to a pub in the center of town, The Porcupine, I think it was called, and we had our first real English meal. Meat and Potatoes, that's what the English are about, but the best meat and potatoes I've ever tasted, spicy and warm, and huge servings. You don't go away hungry after a traditional English meal.
Sunday was Easter, and after a leisurely homemade breakfast of French toast and homefries, we went to the church service at Westminster Abbey. This was the second time I'd been to a service there, and at first I felt kind of like a fraud. I was mostly going to see the building and hear the choir, not for any reason to to with God. But then what the minister said during his sermon, somewhat cleared my conscience. He said that no matter your faith or personal beliefs, something had drawn us there that day, and that was special, if for no other reason than that we were all there together. And it was true. Though, my beliefs about God and Church are unclear even to me, I was there to celebrate Easter (whatever that holiday may mean) at Westminster Abbey with my friends and with at least a hundred others. I think it was that night too, when the three of us made our way to the Hootanany Bar in the south of London to listen to this great live Latin Jazz show. After a few drinks and meeting some interesting characters and a little bit of dancing, we made our way home on the last Underground train of the night.
Apparently the British take Monday as well as an Easter holiday. I hadn't realized this, and the place where I wanted to have English Breakfast that morning was closed. This put a bit of a damper on my morning, and was one of the first indications of the week that I let little things bother me a lot. It was just one of the things I came to realize about myself. However, Kylie and Andrew rallied and we set off in search of another place to have breakfast. The breakfast we finally ended up having was superb! An English Breakfast consists of sausage, thick-sliced bacon, beans, two fried eggs, roasted tomato, mushrooms, toast, fresh squeezed orange juice and tea or coffee. Once again the servings were large and left nothing to be desired. As food usually tends to do, I felt much better after eating and realized that the day was going to be wonderful after all. We explored a few parts of the British Museum. That place is too big to look at all at once, so we picked the African, Islamic, and part of the Chinese exhibit to look at. Then we made our way down to a modern art exhibit that we had tried to find before. It was called Electric Blue and was a collection of pieces that used light and sound and motion and movement along with other more typical media to present different works of art and science too. For example, one display was in a dark room where there were blocks of ice, that as they melted drop by drop, the water fell into kind of speaker dishes, that gave off a tone and also caused a light bulb to flash. For a long time, since the room was dark, it was hard to tell what was going on. Part of the fun of the exhibit was figuring out how it worked. That night we made dinner again at my flat, spaghetti or was it curry that night. Anyway, they were larger meals than I was used to having myself, but more fun because we were cooking together.
Tuesday, we decided to get out of the city and so we took a train ride to Canterbury, that famous town of many religious and secular pilgrimages. Kylie's and my personal pilgrimages were in the name of Chaucer and his Canterbury Tales. We went to the town museum, and I finally learned why Thomas a Beckett is a saint and how he was martyred, the legends surrounding him, etc. There was some kind of intrigue with the King and he had the top of his head chopped off. We also went into the Roman museum in town where they had excavated the original mosaic tile floor from the Roman era of the town. At this point we were kind of museum-ed out. There is only so much quiet education that one can take in their vacation, so we walked along the central street where there were lots of shops and activity. We saw a group of Superheroes including Superman, Robin, Buzz Lightyear, the Flash and even a Storm Trooper. No I don't know what they were doing in Canterbury, but they did help direct traffic at one point. We had an early dinner (Chicken and Leek Pie with chips (potato fries) plus raspberry cheesecake for desert) and made our way back to London on the train. That night we caught the end of an Indie pop singer and band and had pastries from the 24 hour bagel shop.
Wednesday was the day that we did everything we hadn't done yet. We saw Buckingham Palace. We walked through a bunch of the city parks, we tried to find a hot dog street vendor but were foiled that day, and we saw Abbey Road Studios in honor of the Beatles. We bought pizza to cook at home for dinner and vegged out with Dorito's and soda.
Thursday was our last day together in London. The one thing big thing I felt we had left to do was to see a show in the West End. We had again been foiled in earlier attempts to see various Shakespeare productions (it only seemed appropriate since we were in London) as they were sold out, or not showing on the day we wanted to see them. So we spent Thursday morning calling around to various theaters to see what seats they had available. At this point none of us were really gung-ho about any production. Also we had a budget of 20 pounds per person or under for seats. By chance, we ended up getting three seats for exactly 20 pounds a piece for Wicked that night. We spent the day wandering around the city again. It was finally sunny out. We succeeded that day in our mission to find the hot dog vendor, and oh boy was it worth it. These were not just any hot dogs, these were foot long, spicy sausage with onions and ketchup hot dogs. Absolutely delicious. It was at this point that we started getting excited about going to see Wicked. I mean a highly acclaimed Broadway Musical, it had to be good. We walked through the Camden Town Markets which are stalls and stalls of people selling anything and everything, lots of artists and clothes and food too. Kind of the hipster part of town. We had dinner at a Tai restaurant, and then made our way to the theater. As soon as we walked in to sit down, I felt affirmed in our luck and choice of theater. The Apollo Victoria was a bigger theater than I had been to yet in London. The stage was canopied by a huge dragon puppet, and as soon as the pit began the opening music I was sucked heart and soul into watching the stage. We were kind of far away, but that didn't matter with this production. The great colorful costumes and elaborate sets and carrying voices of the actors made it feel as though I was in the front row. I was amazed at the special effects that they managed on the stage! It was seemless, and moving, and GREAT! The music was really good, too! I had read the book on which the show was based and I had heard some of the music courtesy of Sister Beky, but put all together in this production was something that I could never imagine. (I'm sorry that I'm gushing about the show, put it was really good, and it's been on my mind ever since.) Anyway, it was the perfect last thing for Andrew, Kylie, and I to do together.
Friday morning we all woke up bright and early at 4AM so that Kylie and Andrew could catch a train and then a plane back to Denmark. After seeing them off, I went directly back to bed and stayed there for a day and a half. I learned a lot about myself this week and one of those things was that non-stop tourist-ing makes me exhausted. The last two low key days reading and sleeping have been a great end to a great vacation for me. Because that's what this week was. I've been thinking that the whole semester is a vacation, but this week definitely topped it all off. Today I've started thinking about school again, and the projects that are going to finish off my semester and my undergraduate career. I'm sure I'll tell you more about those in later e-mails. This is my reflection on all those great things that happened this week. I was a tourist and a real Londoner at the same time. I was with my best friend seeing a great city. I feel completely fulfilled without having to go too far out of what has become my temporary home. Certainly, there are still places that I would like to visit, but this week has let me truly see London and what it has to offer. I don't think the city will ever get old. And I think after this week it will always hold a very sentimental place in my memory.
I hope this recounting has given you some idea of the fun I've had this week, and I'm sorry if it has gone on a little too long. But I hope you all are doing well and having everyday adventures too. Until next week I remain yours truly,
Sarah