Out and About

One of the first things I did in my rare free time was to go on a walking tour of London. I’ve found these New Europe tours all over; They are essentially free tours where the guides make money purely off of tips. I have had great experiences with these tours in Hamburg and Berlin, so why not in London too? The tour was decent, except that I went on the same day as the Queen’s ‘other birthday.’ Buckingham Palace was a complete mess; there must have been at least a million people there waiting to see the queen! Instead of staying near the Palace to see the queen, i decided to stay on the tour. Sadly I neither got a very good tour nor got to see the queen…. I’m not too worried about seeing in the future, since she will probably live another 50 years to the great dismay of Prince Charles.
I have been in London for 5 weeks now, and have still not been to the Tower, The British Museum or many of the other historical tourist sites. In my defense I have been to these on a previous trip, but I do plan on at least visiting the grand brutish Museum sometime this summer, and to make it even more appealing, its free!
One of the best parts of London is the ridiculous markets. One market in the western part of the city , known as the Portobello Street Market, is known for its antiques and fresh farmers market. When we first arrived at Portobello, we were amazed at the sheer “mass of humanity” present and how the market just seemed to go on forever. My personal favorites are the Camden Markets. There is just about everything imaginable here. *Cheap* food (for London), vintage clothes, weird Goth apparel, anime stuff to just name a few. Cutting through Camden are a series of canals and still operational locks that we got to watch a few houseboats cruise through. It was pretty awesome.
Another gem of London is the theatre. London might be super expensive, but there are a ton of good deals for cheap theatre tickets. A friend bought a ticket to go to Chicago but realized she would be unable to go and thus offered them to me. After seeing Chicago I guess I caught the bug, because a buddy and I went to Avenue Q the next night. For those of you who have not seen Ave. Q, I highly recommend it – it is basically Sesame Street for grownups and had me laughing the entire time. I hope to see more plays/musicals and hopefully get the Globe Theatre and see a Shakespeare production from the peanut gallery – that should be a good time.

London has some amazing, beautiful parks. I live within a half a mile of Reagents Park, which gives me no excuse to not go running. Reagents Park is one of the wealthiest areas in London – I pass numerous Bentleys, Maseratis. Porsches and other ridiculous cars while running around there. Reagents Park is also home to the Winfield House, which is the historical residence of the US ambassador and one of the few places in London I have seen armed police (with loaded submachine guns… It’s a little scary in a city where only about 5% of the police force has firearms). I never realized how much Frisbee is an American pastime. In the parks, everyone is playing football, cricket, rugby and even softball, with not a single Frisbee in sight. It’s rather depressing.
The most famous park in London has to be Hyde Park. It has a large manmade (I think) lake crawling with rental pedal boats. On sunny days the park is jam-packed with Londoners enjoying the beautiful park. It was fairly difficult running through the park the other day thanks to the amazing weather, bringing in so many people that the whole run was a “dodge, dip, dive, duck and dodge” experience. The worst though is Oxford Street, which no matter the time, is always full of people. Oxford Street is known as one of the foremost shopping areas in London as well as one of the most tourist-y. Even the locals go to catch a sale at Primark, the ridiculously cheap department store. I almost thought of it as the Wal-Mart of clothes in Britain, but with exponentially higher quality goods. For someone who hates shopping, I almost actually enjoyed myself there.