Yeah, about that. Turns out that blogging is harder than you'd think. Especially when there are trips to plan, hay bales to play tag on (that's for another post, sorry!), fireplaces to sit by, and bike rides in the rain. So clearly, I'm not agonizing over my blog-fail too much. Eh well.
October 2-8.
Today's all about England. Specifically, London. We had two different stops in the trip: this and Totnes, a town in Devon.
So. England. We flew out of Copenhagen's airport pretty early, meeting there around 8:30. We flew to Gatwick, the smaller, cheaper airport, on EasyJet. I'm told it's much better than RyanAir, but I haven't got much to compare that to. Either way, it was a decent flight.
So. We took a hired bus from the airport to our hotel, the Royal National, got all settled in, and left -- we had a bike tour scheduled!
ENGLISH PHONEBOOTH!
This is near the beginning of the bike tour, it's Hyde Park!
A theater, I think? I'm not really sure, it was so long ago. Either way, it was pretty attractive.
Riding down the commuter-ish bike/walk trail along the linear park near Hyde. Our tour tried to stay off the road where possible -- it's rough conditions out there.
Some old gate-looking things. Most of the gates/walls in the city were never actually functional, oddly enough. They're mostly ornamental.
Here's some lovely London traffic! We're approaching Charing's cross, and traffic starts to pick up. We're sitting in the middle of a scary-looking three-way intersection, wondering how we made it so far, and how we could possibly cross the rest of the way. London traffic is scary.
This gate has, like a lot of the gates around here, never been useful. It was built to commemorate some famous dude, and was funded by another famous dude. As a condition for the funding, he apparently insisted that his son feature in the piece. So there's an angry dude on a rearing horse, and a 5 year old kid crouching behind, just kinda tossed in there. That's pretty neat.
This is Nelson's Column. Totally awesome story behind it, too -- you should look it up on Wikipedia, Admiral Nelson was pretty intense.
Look! A lion! Like Nelson's column right behind it, this is in Trafalgar Square. We're still on the bike tour, just kinda left them in a median somewhere.
I'm told this is the above-ground location of the main military bunker during WWII! Churchill and his friends gathered here, they say, to plot heroic deeds.
Double-special bus at night! Also note the traffic-calming aspects of the built environment.
The
subway stati-Tube.
Also the Tube?
We went to a great little restaurant for lunch. I forgot to take pictures of the other courses, but this was dessert. Strawberry frozen yogurt on the bottom, a caramelized, dense marshmallow on top, drizzled with raspberry sauce. Amazing.
After lunch, we went to a "Green Gym". These are small plots of urban land, usually along rail or highway corridors, that are rehabilitated and cared for by residents who can gain nothing from a conventional gym; this is generally overweight people, those with disabilities, and the elderly. They've got a non-profit organization working with them to train them in outdoors skills, to try to break the barrier to participation in outdoorsy activities.
Saint Pancras Station! It's a pretty magnificent place, to be sure.
The modern inside of St. Pancras.
From the ground floor.
I realized that it was our last night in the city, and I hadn't had fish and chips yet! So I got some. They were kind of horrible, actually. Too near the train station, too touristy, I think.
The side of King's Cross! The two stations are actually right next to each other. I'm not really sure what the reason for that is, but King's Cross is under construction. I went in of course, trying to find Platform 9 3/4.
Getting close!
...Damn. Construction.
That night, we went to see Priscilla! Queen of the Desert. It's a fantastic musical, really well acted and performed. I'd be careful about going to it if you're queasy about homosexuality and not willing to reconsider -- though I would recommend reconsidering.
Went to a museum! This is the British Museum, hosting all sorts of things they stole on their conquests back in the days when the sun never set.
Some nifty-colored cup.
Oh yeah, and the Rosetta Stone. For some reason I always imagined it was round. It was still really amazing to see though.
Paddington Station! Yay! I checked; the Danes
do know Paddington Bear.
Some sort of Beer! I think it was Old Speckled Hen, but I'm not really certain. We got this at a pub across the street while waiting for the train platform to be announced. We got back just in time, and headed off to find our seats.
And then we were on our way to Totnes!
Thus concluded the first half of the trip!
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