London!

Good Morning!

Well, it's official... I've just called my landlord to let him know that I'm moving out on September 15 - that's one month from today! I can't believe I'm in the final stages of my trip. Flying home will be surreal & seeing everyone will be amazing! I still have quite a bit that I want to do before I go - daytrips, and even an unplanned visit to Barcelona.

It's been a while since I last wrote - so much has happened! Meg & Casie are gone :( Right after they left, though, my sister came to visit! She arrived on Thursday - the day that London airports started melting down. Her flight got in about an hour before everything went out of control. We were glued to the TV at the hotel that afternoon, watching BBC. That night, we had a nice night out in Notting Hill - dinner at a very cute Italian place around the corner and drinks at a bar called Mook down the street from me. On Friday, we played 'tourist' and took one of those bus tours around the city, which also included a cruise on the River Thames. Even though I've seen 95% of what I saw on the tours, it was really fun to hang out with her and even to learn more about London. Friday night, we had dinner in Chinatown (!) - which I didn't even know existed about 5 days before. It's one street full of Chinese restaurants just near Soho. While looking for this street, we ended up a bit "lost" or "wandering" too far into Soho, apparently, because a bouncer at a bar pulled us aside to tell us that we were in the area with gay clubs and started directing us to the straight clubs. I looked down one of the little streets and it reminded me of the path to the Red Light District in Amsterdam... but gay! So we just told him we wanted to find dinner and he pointed us to the nearby Chinatown. Haha... His directions were given to us quite urgently. Walking back through Soho after dinner, we saw a bit of a circus full of people who had spent plenty of time at pubs and bars. The "British Reserve" that you see during the day, and on the tube, and in normal interactions is a stark contrast between what you see at night walking the streets.. they are very very animated and loud drunks; I wonder if the "British Reserve" that they were sort-of born into is subconsciously (or consciously) restricting and they feel the need to let it all out, persay, when they drink. It's really quite annoying (when you're sober) if you ask me... But then again, I am only an outsider (still, after 3 months) and it is an aspect of the culture that I will never fully grasp.

On Saturday we did the shopping thing on Oxford Street after getting a late start and having a long, late lunch. It's probably a bad idea to hit Oxford Street on a Saturday afternoon but we pushed through the crowds and managed for a bit. Sunday was the Madonna concert!! The show was at Wembley Arena (right next to the 90,000 seat Wembley Stadium where Live Aid happened 20 years ago and where they play soccer) - it only held 11,000 much to our surprise. Our seats, which looked like nose bleed seats online, were actually quite good! She put on a great show, as always, and made us believe that she's not actually turning 49 this week. The crowd was very enthusiastic (except for when she sang "I Love New York" - a song from her newest album, where she says "Paris and London, baby you can keep!"... everyone was pretty quiet during that song) We also saw her do the controversial crucifixion scene, which actually makes quite a bit of sense if you don't take it out of context.

On Monday, I took my sister to the airport...what a mess it was. She had her little plastic bag for the plane with only a passport and a wallet... and got home safely and on time.

Mary Ellen has the photos up, I'll add a link soon!

posted by Stacy @ 11:58