low down lon don, pt. 1

did you know that big ben is not the name of the infamous clock tower at the houses of parliament in london? or the iconic victorian gothic bridge that crosses the thames near the tower of london is not the london bridge? or that st. paul's cathedral was the tallest building in all of london from 1710 until 1962 by order of law? well if you had jamie o'brien showing you around london you certainly would. for all of his many terrible faults, i will allow that he knows his town (in comparison, when asked by some of his friends to name something of note from cincinnati i replied, "uhhhh?").

my flight across the atlantic was not great. it was through iberian airlines, which is apparently ran by american airlines, so it was actually an american airlines flight. enough said? there was also a large group of tweens traveling with the indianapolis childrens choir that happened to be seated in the same section. i may have slept for about 10 minutes the entire flight. i arrived in london around 9 a.m. and jamie was kind enough to meet me at the airport to show me the way back to his place (heathrow to wood green, not exactly a short ride but luckily all one line). i took a short half an hour nap at jamie's and i'm thankful for that because i don't think i would have made it through the rest of the day otherwise. we set off on a whirldwind tour of london that made me feel sorry for what i put my family through in seoul. here's a quick bullet list of sites:

• tower of london
• the tower bridge
• the london eye
• houses of parliament
• westminster abbey
• tralfagar square
• buckingham palace

there's not much to be said about all these places that most people don't already know, except for maybe the questions introduced in the very first paragraph. for example, big ben is not the clock tower but the largest bell in the clock tower. the clock tower was recently renamed elizabeth tower (after the queen) and was previously just called "the clock tower." and what everyone thinks of as "london bridge" is actually "tower bridge," with london bridge being a much more boring, utilitarian looking bridge a little ways down the thames. also, of note, you can drink in public which is nice.

after the tour we briefly returned to jamie's and then hopped over to finsbury park for a game of football with some of his friends. quick background on my experience with soccer: . if you didn't get the joke there's nothing between that colon and period because i've never actually played the game. so yes, it was embarrassing and it didn't help that i am fairly out of shape. also i was wearing some slip on vans of jamie's because i didn't have proper running shoes. also the ground was muddy from raining earlier. also why couldn't we have played a real sport like baseball, am i right guys?? so i ended up pulling my hamstring (or something like that) and sitting out the last 1/3 of the game. which was probably fine because the teams were uneven anyway. i guess its worth mentioning half the guys were our age but the other half were probably 50+ and holding their own. at least afterward we were able to go have a few pints. i do think i could get into the ritual of weekly football followed by beer, but i don't think i'd ever be good at it.

we eventually made our way back to jamie's, met his girlfriend and a flatmate, and sat down for some beers. and that was just the first day.

day two, right back at it. we walked along southbank for awhile, which is a really nice outdoor park with various venues and theaters and all sorts of touristy things that spans a good length of the southside of the thames. jamie's girlfriend works for a place called the london dungeon, where jamie was also working until recently, and one of the benefits is they get these things called magic passes which grants them free access to many of london's more touristy things, such as the london eye. so, using his girlfriend's pass, we were able to get free access to the massive ferris wheel on the thames. many of the photos below are from this experience. after the eye we hopped around soho and picadilly circus and then me and jamie parted ways. he was meeting his girlfriend and i was meeting up with good ole abigail carlin.

the first thing i did was give her a hug to start things off as awkwardly as possible. success! then we walked through west london, back into soho and to a little mexican place for dinner. as we're eating and chatting i notice abi's face shift - eyes wide, mouth agape - and she let's out a little whimper. i turn and see a scruff bespeckled man and his miniature replica getting the table behind us. i didn't realize it, obviously abi did, but this was jarvis cocker of the band pulp. while not "huge" in the states (although not insignificant either), pulp was pretty enormous in england back in the 90's and even through the aughts. the rest of the meal was dominated by celebrity anxiety (should i say hello? can i get a picture? his kid looks exactly like him!). eventually, noticing they both were drinking lime jarritos, i suggested that she buy them another round. and she did. she bought jarvis cocker and his son a round of mexican sodas. afterward they came over and he said rather matter-of-factly, "you bought me sodas." to which she replied, "i did, i bought you sodas." and then, kind of awkwardly, they both thanked each other - jarvis for the sodas, abi for the entire experience. after dinner we went to a local haunt of abi's called bob bob ricard, a pretty posh cocktail bar and restaurant in soho. we received a free round from the owner which says a great deal about abi i think. after a couple more drinks abi wanted to show me a nearby hotel that had an extensive whiskey selection however we were promptly thrown out by staff because i violated dress code by wearing shorts. i don't mind being told to leave somewhere but i wish i had done something more to deserve it than a fashion faux-paux. a few drinks later we split ways and i somehow found my way back to jamie's alone (which, not insignificant by the way - i had no phone and this was my first time wandering london's crooked streets with rows of identical houses. small miracle i found the place).

day 3 was spent at thorpe park, an amusement park on the outskirts of london. it took 2 and half hours to get there but it was free, thanks again to ashley's magic pass. thanks ashley! we went out later for jamie's birthday but we were all pretty beat so we just went for dinner at a local pub and had a few drinks to celebrate. festivities would continue the next day anyways.

day 4, and i'm thinking this should be a 3 parter rather than a 2 parter but i'm already this far i probably shouldn't slow down. this was the first day on my own as jamie was moving stuff to his father's house on the other side of town. i used this opportunity to check out the tate modern and the national galleries. this afforded me the chance to see the new installation in tralfagar square (there are four podiums around the square, three of which have permanent statues and the fourth has rotating artwork), a giant blue rooster. i also used this time to get a better look at westminster abbey and the backside of the houses of parliament.

later i went back to jamie's where we were all meeting up so i could get my luggage and transport it over to abi's. luckily abi's place was surprisingly close to jamie's, only a short bus ride north. we took a few minutes to rest and get ready and then we headed to chinatown to meet jamie and his friends at a place called waxy o'connor's to celebrate his birthday. we arrived kind of late - around 10 p.m. - and it seemed a good number of people were already properly tore-up-from-the-floor-up. odd thing about london is that their bars/pubs close fairly early and you have to transition to a club if you want to keep drinking after that, which is what jamie and co.'s plans were, which is not exactly something abi-friendly. we instead tried our luck at getting into the bar at the w hotel. there were bouncers at the door with a clipboard and list turning people away. still we took our chances. maybe it was because abi sweet-talked them into it, or maybe it was because i said i was from out of town and just looking for a nice place for a drink, or maybe it was just because i was wearing jeans and not shorts again, but we made the cut (this was, mind you, having just turned away a group of dudes). the bar at the w is probably what you would expect - nice, expensive - however they call rose´ "pink champagne" which...i don't even know. after the w we stopped briefly in a tiny casino so abi could lose all my money trying to win cheap watches and keychains. that was fun. not fun was realizing the tube stops running around midnight (being the oldest subway in the world they require a lot of time for maintenance and cleaning). not fun was realizing abi had no idea how the night buses work. not fun was paying £40+ for a taxi back to abi's place. but at least we made it back and didn't have to sleep on the streets. it was a good lesson for the both of us but probably more so for her in case she's ever showing other guests around town (seriously, 10 minutes online, that's about all it takes. let's step up the game a bit abs).

and with that i'll end part one of this two part post on london. that's actually a bit misleading as part two will mostly cover areas outside of london, but i consider it all part of the "london leg" of my trip. enjoy the photos!

not london, bridge

not (exactly) big ben

the mall down toward buckingham palace (no pictures of the palace yet as it started to rain soon after)

i did however get this bank of reporters around the palace covering the royal birth

i think this is called jubilee bridge

st. paul's cathedral with the dome

hey its a blue cock, not be confused with a very serious medical condition called blue balls

and the view from abi's "balcony"

they shoot kangaroos, dont they?

raise of hands: who all thought the late 60's movie they shoot horses, dont they? was a gritty western? well i know i did. the title has all the trappings – horses, guns, direct rhetorical questions...but here i come to find out its a dance drama about the great depression. you see, it was my intention to suggest that there is a perception of australia as being a rugged frontier not completely unlike the wild west. but unfortunately my delightful play on words in the title doesn't really make sense, not that it really did in the first place. and, much like my ignorance of the film's content, there seems to be a lot of international ignorance about the land down under. bam, tied it all together. relevance +1.

oh, by the way, not that anyone reading this would be struck unaware, but i'm off on my next "big adventure," this time to australia. hence the title and introductory paragraph up there. and i do think its somewhat true that not many people know very much about australia. i think everyone assumes its familiarity and that it has nice beaches and that's kind of it. or maybe i'm just projecting my own feelings about australia onto my reading audience. some people, i imagine, will be familiar with the morbid deadliness of australia's fauna. some people might be aware of the troubled race relations between australia's european settlers and its deeply indigenous peoples, the aboriginals. but these things still have a kind of other-worldly fascination about them. even the outback, with it's red dusty nothingness has a martian quality to it. but, did you know for instance, that aboriginal australians probably split off from their euro/asian ancestors some 60-70,000 years ago? and no one quite knows how they managed the trek to australia (probably by boat, but sea faring boats that long ago??)? and they have one of, if not the longest, sustained cultures in the world? that's some nifty shit. australia was a peopled country some 40,000 years before north america and yet to most people it is the land of crocodile dundee.

that's kind of what i'm talking about. the australia we know. the australia we don't. i confided in my dad shortly before leaving (i'm still leaving! i'm in the chicago airport!) that i was worried that i wouldn't quite like this trip as much as my last one. there is, to be fair, a lot stacked up against it: korea was my first trip abroad, i did it mostly alone, and it ushered in a lot of self and worldly discovery. also i love those damn asians, no lie. and even though korea was so new and different there was a foundation in place. i could squirm and flounder but that the end of the day i still had a job, a social network practically built in, and a lot of people doing the same exact thing. here i feel we are more by the seat of our pants. which is fine. we're smart young pups and i have no doubt we'll figure it out. but i also, for a lack of words and i know this term is probably degrading and awful, worry about the lack of "the other." there's something totally satisfying flying into a place and not knowing the language and kind of floating about in dazed wonder. but here i am contradicting what i said above and its that juxtaposition that i find really compelling: the australia we know, the australia we don't.

so i find myself without a lot of expectations for this trip. i still don't really feel like i'm traveling on my way to a distant land for another year, which i guess is a good sign. less anxieties, more confidence, etc. for those not in the know i will be making a 3 week pit stop in the u.k. because 1) i've never been and 2) to meet my travel buddy, a guy named jamie i met while teaching in korea. that's another thing i'm slightly worried about - traveling with someone. i've been living by myself for over 2 years now so it will be interesting to see how i adapt to the new situation. so expect photos, updates, hopefully analysis of local popular music (didgeridoo pop??).

so...first stop, london.