Jonathan - Tea Time in England!

Sorry this blog is (and probably will perpetually be) behind. It turns out internet access is hard to come by here. Granted, we have wireless at the house where we’re staying. However, it’s slower than molasses. To load Gmail, for instance... the basic HTML version (not the fancy full-fledged version) has taken me 15 minutes to load just my inbox before. The slow connection combined with a minimally functional laptop is a deadly combo. And it turns out that of the eight of us in the group, Libby and I are the only ones to bring a computer, so sharing has limited our access...

Anyway, that being said, let’s start from the beginning. We flew out a week ago! It seems like ages ago! We left DTW on an overnight flight to London. It was super cool. My first trans-Atlantic flight - very exciting! They served food! Drinks plus snacks plus DINNER AND BREAKFAST! And not only that, but there were on-demand movies with the little screens in the seat in front of you! Super fancy! They even passed out free newspapers.

So, this was a dilemma, because we were supposed to be sleeping so that we would be well rested when we arrived in London. But who could sleep with such excitement happening? I watched one movie, though, ate dinner, and resigned myself to sleeping. I didn’t sleep amazingly well or long, and I think I woke Libby up more than she wanted, but we were awake enough when we arrived.

The three of us (Libby, me, and Neil) went through customs, not really realizing there was any other alternative, and next thing we knew, we were outside of the secure area. We went to check in for our next flight (which was leaving in fourteen hours), which required a ride on the underground to another terminal. By the time we got there, the small journey had taken about an hour... and after all that, you know what we found? A closed South African Airlines ticket counter. They didn’t open until 2pm, and it was only 9:30am.

We weren’t about to wait around for that, though, so we headed back to the underground, and made our way downtown. We got off near where a couple of tour bus lines ran, since we figured that would be a good way to see a lot in a relatively short period of time. As part of the tour, you could go see the changing of the guard at 10am, and we were going to do that, but apparently they don’t do the big ceremony when it rains... and it was raining.

We wandered to Trafalgar Square. Well, we went to what we thought was Trafalgar Square, but we later saw the REAL Trafalgar Square from the bus. After the fake square, we found the tour bus line and hopped on. It was pretty cool - double-decker open top bus, and we could see quite a bit from the roof. But it WAS open-topped. And as I mentioned, it WAS raining. Still a lot of fun, though.

We saw a lot. We got off the bus at Big Ben and wandered around there for a bit. We saw the London Eye (a huge Ferris Wheel with cars made out of glass that are big enough for people to stand up in. It moves really slowly and doesn’t stop. Apparently there are really good views from the top.

Also, right next door, there’s Westminster Abbey. It was really pretty... from the outside. It costs 12 pounds to go inside! Can you believe that? That was a lot of money, so we decided to pass. We hopped back on the bus and got to see some more of the buildings around the city.

We saw London Bridge, the Tower Bridge (the big fancy one that you see on movies and stuff), and the Tower of London. I didn’t really know much about the Tower, but Neil was a big fan (because he had been there before), so we stopped to check it out. You had to pay 14 pounds or something to get in (as a student)... again, London’s not super cheap. We decided that it would probably be worth it, but not on an empty stomach, so we wanted to eat first.

It was 11:30am, and I guess that’s insanely early for lunch. We went to a lot of restaurants before we found one that was open. It was a nice pub, and it had Fish ‘N Chips, so we were set. The food was delicious! I now understand why fish ‘n chips are such a British thing - they do it well.

We went back to the Tower. For those of you as uninformed as I was, it served as a prison, most famously for people who were to be executed by the English kings. We got a tour by one of the Yeomen. The Yeomen are these guys who served at least 22 years in the English armed forces, applied, and were accepted. Once accepted, they live on-site with their families. At 10pm every night, there’s a ceremony, and they lock themselves inside. This is a tradition that they’ve held every night for 700 years. According to our guide, it’s a great place to raise a teenage daughter.

The guide was really good. Very enthusiastic, telling us about the history, and particularly the gruesome details of executions. I can share more if you want, but for the sake of public sensitivity, I will hold off for now.

Anne Bolyn was the most famous person executed at the Tower. Royalty who were executed, though, unlike the lay public, were executed behind the walls of the Tower, rather than on top of the hill outside. Anne Bolyn was actually beheaded by a French swordsman rather than a British axe-wielding executioner. Just a bit of trivia for you.

We explored a couple of the buildings at the Tower, but we passed on the Crown Jewels (which are housed there) because there was a super-long line.

From there, we hopped back on the bus. We figured we’d have time for one more stop, in addition to our tour bus observations. We chose Herrod’s. Herrod’s is a very ritzy department store where the royal family either shops or used to shop (no one I talked to was really sure). The reason we chose that site was that I was told they had a produce department. And not just any produce department, but one that imported all sorts of fruits and veggies from all over the world. If I had any chance of guanabana in London, it was at Herrod’s.

On the way, we went by Buckingham Palace, but we didn’t get a good view. Apparently it’s against the law for commercial vehicles to drive in front of the Palace. We didn’t have time to get out, though. Guanabana was calling.

It was raining pretty hard, at this point, so we went downstairs on our bus. It was very crowded, too, so the only seats available were at the very front. This wouldn’t have been bad, because the view was decent. However, the bus driver was very, very, very friendly. He was the chattiest person we met in England. He was also completely oblivious to the fact that we were tourists, actually interested in the recorded tour guide on the PA and interested in seeing the sights. Instead, he turned down the volume of the recording and told us about taking a night off with his wife who was also a driver and asked us about real estate prices in Saginaw so that he could compare to London.

It was all part of the adventure, though. Also part of the adventure was that the bus route had been diverted for awhile because of some protest that was happening. Our bus happened to be the first one after the diversion was lifted. But that meant that they altered the route slightly to stay closer to the center of town - translation: it would only get within a 15 minute walk of Herrod’s.

We cut through Hyde Park (a really pretty Central Park-ish sort of place) to get there. The only good word to describe it is Palacial. It looked so fancy! There were guards at all the doors. They made us take off our backpacks and carry them, lest we might bump something. Throughout our time there, I only saw a few price tags. The first was a purse that was just sitting out on a counter somewhere. The price tag: 3000 pounds. I forget the conversion, but that’s something like $4,500. For a purse!

We went to the food section, and it was delightful. To spare you the suspense, though, no guanabana. It seemed to be about the only fruit they didn’t have. It was fun to see all the fun teas and fruits and chocolates, though. They even had chocolate Easter egss that were probably about 4 feet tall. Price tag: 600 pounds.

It was a fun last stop, but we had to get back to the airport. So, we hopped on the underground and headed back. We got there with plenty of time to spare, ate dinner in the airport (so that we wouldn’t feel obligated to stay awake on the plane and eat), and boarded. Uneventful! Yay! We started to get used to normal airline travel, again.

But I should stop writing now so that the computer can be shared. I will post about our intro to Africa soon...

Cheerio!

PS: the one lousy computer we have doesn’t have functional USB ports, so uploading pictures will be a rare occurrence.