September 22 - London

Toursity day! I spent the morning down at Camden Markets which was SO awesome; it is a huge outdoor market over Camden Lock (like a river thing) and there were tons of shops with really retro or punk/goth/stupid emo clothes, and lots of nifty stuff. The Lock was pretty. I also met a guy from Afghanistan who offered me his phone number and some cannabis candy. Eh? I declined.

Then I headed over to Buckingham Palace to see the Queen!! Of course, she wasn't there. The Queen opens the State Rooms of the Palace to the public for 8 weeks in the year during summer while she is out in Balmoral Castle or something on holiday, so I got to duck in and have a look around. The Palace was nice. Ridiculously decorated, but nice nonetheless. I also got to walk through some of the roped off rooms because I needed to go to the bathroom halfway through the tour and I had an escort to the bathroom on the other side of the Palace grounds!! That was a way to feel like a VIP, hahaha.


After that I walked through St. James' park where half the population of England seemed obsessed with feeding the squirrels there. They would sit on a bench and let the squirrel come and climb up their legs and eat out of their hands!! Um, squirrels can have rabies. On the other side of the park were the old War Rooms (not that interesting) and the new Bali memorial. I then tried to get into #10 Downing Street but the whole street was blocked off by cops with big guns at both ends. I had to pretend I was lost and asking for directions for a better view. ;) Then I went up to the Horse Guard Palace, through the stone arch and down to the other side of Downing St. where the cops were nicer and there was a big crowd of people (so I thought the Prime minister was going to come out but he didn't).

Further on I saw Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. Pretty impressive stuff. What I would have given for a Guy Fawkes mask and a cape at that time. I was kind of disappointed that Big Ben didn't chime on the hour, because I sat on a big concrete roadblocky thing to get a good video of it and that didn't work, but oh well. Then I went to Westminster Abbey which was really cool. They have updated the statues of famous saints/people they have on their west (I think) entrance and now it includes 20th Century people like MLK and stuff.

After that I wandered (via the Tube) over to Trafalgar Square, which is basically a freaking huge roundabout with the National Gallery. There was an event or something going on there so there were a lot of people, and then I went over to get some dinner and by that time I was done walking around.