Football, pubs, and Buckingham Palace

Woke up rather late this morning and ended up missing Australia v New Zealand in rugby. I decided to grab some breakfast and watch the football match on tv in the local pub. It was amazingly fun, especially when Liverpool beat Chelsea 1-0. Then a friend and I decided to go shopping a little while. It was a pretty cool day, I bought my only souveneir of London-a pretty scarf for £4. Then on a whim we decided to go see Buckingham Palace at night. It was absolutely gorgeous. We took a great walk and some hilarious pictures. I had a great time just hanging out with people in the hostel. Fun times! Although its my last night in London, I'm definitely coming back.

Tomorrow, I'm off to Southampton!

London by day and night

This morning I woke up early, took a shower, and went downstairs just in time to catch the end of breakfast. I ended up making plans with a friend who had just moved back here from Cardiff but we weren't meeting until 12 or 1. I didn't have much time and I wasn't sure where we would end up meeting so I took the tube to sightsee around central London for a little bit. I checked out Piccadilly Circus, which is sort of Times-Squarey, especially with the amount of tourists. I saw that there was a football match on, Tottenham vs Bolton. Tickets were 60£ which was way too rich for my blood but it would have been nice to see anyway. I ended up walking down to Trafalgar Square and that area. There was a beautiful tree-lined avenue leading up to Buckingham Palace, but my friend called and let me know where and when we were meeting. We ended up meeting at the south bank of the Thames for lunch and catch-up. We took a nice walk, browsed some used booksellers. I saw Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, London Bridge, and the London Eye. It was a very long walk. After that we split up and being dead tired, I came back to the hostel to take a nap. I woke up about 8pm, read a bit and then a girl in my room came in and said that she and another girl from the hostel were going out. I tagged along to the other girl's room-she ended up being an Aussie from Sydney. There are more Australians and Spaniards here than I've ever seen. They convinced me to go out and we went to a Fulham pub for drinks. They ended up having £1.50 snakebites which was both amazing and dangerous. We all saw the power of my ability to attract freaks and weirdos. The first was this little guy who was dancing like a chicken. I went to get a drink and he followed me up to the bar. I told him I had a boyfriend and just pointed to the biggest guy I could see and it turns out the big guy was his friend. Great. So, after telling him many times to bugger off, this nice pack of Englishmen made a bit of a half circle around us and told him to shove off. Two more guys ended up trying their luck, a Columbian who tried to say he was Spanish and a very drunk Aussie who looked like he was going to projectile vomit at any moment. Freak magnet. The bar closed earlier than we expected so we headed back home on a very London red double decker bus. Tomorrow might be a chill out day. I expected to go to the Tate Modern to see the Rothko exhibit but Chelsea is playing Liverpool at 1330 and, even though I'll be maimed by Chelsea fans, I have to support my L'Pool. We shall see.

London

As I was on the train coming from Heathrow and I was looking out the window at the rainy, foggy dawn morning and it occured to me that it looked quite a bit like home. It has a very comforting quality about it, where you know that inside those little lighted windows there is someone snuggled warm and cozy inside. I felt immediately at ease. I arrived without any sleep and hours to check in so I went on a mission to find the cheapest cellphone I could find (9£!) and decided to hit up the Tate Britian for the free tour. It ended up being great but I nearly passed out in front of the 19th century narrative paintings. I found my way back to the hostel and crashed. I woke up briefly to talk to a fellow Yank who is an art historian, so we geeked out about languages for awhile. I'm about to go back up to fall back asleep, hopefully for the rest of the night.