Touristerrific

Hello Again Everyone!

So last Friday marked the first visit from friends to the lavish land of the United Kingdom. To start the day off right, I played my first video game since I have been gone. I couldn’t exactly focus on anything but the arrival of my friends, so I looked at it as an opportunity buff up on my hand-eye coordination. I must say I have lost the skills…and I had MAD skills (that’s right ABAY, JOCU, SHOCO, C-Nasty, and mIkey, I got all your numbers).. Now, I have yet to decide whether this is a good thing, or an a very bad thing. Only time will tell if the downfall of my skizzies (aka. Skills) will have a heavy effect on my social status in the future. Do to the fact that I was one of the best, I doubt it, so keep practicing you bastards. I’ll see you in a few years.


After an entire day of waiting around, I finally received a phone call from my good buddy David Craig. He had arrived at the Standsted Airport somewhere in London. Now this is the furthest airport from where I live apparently (learning, learning, learning), and neither of us knew this when he booked his flight. He already purchased his tickets to come out to London around this time a while back, just so happened that I ended up moving here. Worked out pretty good for Dave, staying for free is what I look forward to doing a lot of while I enjoy other parts of Europe. After landing, it seemed simple enough to take a train into the main downtown area of London, somewhere where he could jump on the Tube at the Central Line, and make his way eventually down to Shepherds Bush. Too bad. The train decided it wasn’t going to work that day. Guess we all have the same attitudes at certain points in our lives. He ended up having to take a bus, to a train, to a bus, to the tube. Nice huh? When he had finally arrived at the tube station, he phoned me on his mobile (a little local terminology…pronounced mO-bile). I was damn excited to meet up with Dave seeing as it had been over a half a year since I had seen the man. He was already making his way down the ghetto-fied street known us Uxbridge Road when I left the house. We came back to my flat, dropped off all his stuff, and made a B-Line to the liquor store. The sun was setting and the ground was still a little wet from the rain earlier that day. When we got to the little liquor store, we each bought 8 tall boy beers each for 5 pounds.


I had recently discovered this liquor store after being frustrated with the price of beer over here. You see, after doing the math (that’s right, math and reading, I’ve turned into a real scholar) I found that compared to the states beer prices here are far from fair. To put it into perspective, you cannot buy six packs here of cheaper beer, only 4 packs. Now, this beer is all right in terms of taste considering it is the cheapest beer available here, but in contrast to the US, you pay an arm and a leg for the cheapest beer. In a conversion, a six pack of an Ice Beer (such as Natural ICE, Keystone ICE, etc.), would cost about $7.50 US here. You catch that? Over $7.00 US for a six pack of ICE beer?! Yea, so needless to say, there are never any fallen soldiers if I can help it because getting “pissed” here is not as easy as it might seem.


We made it back to the flat after enjoying a beer along the way. A beautiful thing about this place is its lack of concern for drunken people. They tolerate people drinking at all times of the day, anywhere they please. Regrettably, this has a large effect on the urine saturation levels around the city. Mmmm, can’t you just smell it now? After relaxing with Dave for a minute in my room, we decided we were going to figure out a plan for the evening. We decided on going to China town, near Leicester Square, to grab some authentic Chinese food.


When we got off the tube, the energy of all the people around us was invigorating. Just walking around was a time in itself. On the way out of the tube station Dave found himself attempting a 10 point slide down the escalator rail, he was successful. It was perhaps the fastest dismount I have ever seen, flying into the escalator at full speed and sliding down a few steps to gain his composure. Brilliant. We finally decided on one of the many similar looking Chinese food places, all of which were in cahoots somehow…charging the same price for the same meal. As we sat down we ordered a beer, I mean come on, first things first here people. We then ordered the meal deal for 2 people. I would at this point go into detail about the food, but seeing as I don’t know what it was other than meat, rice, veggies, and sauce, your going to have to take a minute to create your own visual of this authentic Chinese meal. Got it? Doesn’t it look good. What are you waiting for, eat it up.


After dinner, we took a stroll up the main part of Leicester Square. Deciding we were going to meet up with my housemates from Virginia and some British mates they have been hangin’ with lately, we made our way to a club in Notting Hill. It was a restaurant on the main floor, with two floors below containing a huge dance floor and many bars. Dave was nice enough to get my cover at the club (thanks buddy!) and we made our way inside, yea, that’s right…in style. When we eventually made it downstairs they were playing American Music, once again. I feel as though I will never escape this, so I am beginning to come to terms with it. After dancing a bit, I ended up talking with this girl from Australia for a minute or two about something unimportant. For some reason, she asked me to hold her cigarettes for a minute, so I put them in my back pocket and forgot all about them. The night went on as Dave and I bantered back and forth with some Brits about accents and slang, which I must say was pretty interesting.




The pleasure was all mine meeting these folks seeing as I have a free, say it with me now, “mAssage”, on Thursday of this week. Apparently you can get anything for free if you just put your mind to it. Now, as we sat with these local night lifers, my phone informed me that I had received text message (the preferred means of communication in the European Realm). It was the Australian lady friend from earlier that evening. Evidently she had forgotten to get her cigarettes back from me, which I had forgotten as well. But the kicker here is that the pack had her coat check ticket and 10 pounds in it. OH YEA! SCORE! Too bad I’m such a nice guy. I went back down to the dance floor/coat check and found her, returning all her belongings to her. She was stoked to say the least, and I then made it clear she wasn’t going anywhere without buying me a shot. She did. It was nice.


Dave, Emily (housemate), and I walked to the bus stop after the club was kind of dyeing down, and took the 94 all the way back to Shepherds Bush. On the bus, I made some comment about Shepherds Bush being the “Ghe-ttoooo” and this crazy old man started giving me a bit of flak for it. According to him, he had lived there for 20 years, and it was the best place in the world. Needless to say, he was wrong.


The next morning Dave and I got up around 10:00 am, took some showers, ate some muffins and bananas, and headed out of the house. We did not realize until later, but we had been running on Germany time, due to Dave’s phone being an hour ahead still. So, we got less sleep than we had thought, and had been out of the house earlier than expected. We made our way onto the Hammersmith Line from the Shepherds Bush tube station (which is less than a minute away from my front door), to the Northern Line, on our way to Camden Town. Now this was the second trip to Camden Town that I have taken since I’ve been here. This place is a trip. It is here that I have been enlightened to the most eclectic view of the local sub-cultures of London. You get a range of looks and styles here: punk, goth, retro, raver, bum, degenerate, hippie, tourist, hardcore. For example, I have officially seen the largest mohawk in the world at Camden Town, and it was a 3-tiered one at that. As you walk around the area, you find a different take on the outdoor market around every corner. Some of the markets are extremely tight and claustrophobic, while others are very open. Some are even on the edge of a canal, you have to take remarkably old walking bridges over the canal to get to them. We walked around, saw all the sights, had a good laugh or two, and at that point it was time to go and pick up Kris and Dax at the train station.


They were to arrive at 2:54 pm at the Waterloo station, just off the Bakerloo and Jubilee Tube lines. This station is everything you picture when you think of a European train station; high glass ceilings, tons of people, tons of trains…and so on. They were coming in on a Eurostar train, but, as things tend to go for me, I had no idea where they were coming from. I knew they were in France, but not knowing if they took just one train, or if they had made connections, made finding the correct place to wait a bit difficult. After walking around with Dave for about a half an hour, we finally found the train platform they were coming in on. We sat and had a beer as we waited, and then finally, Kris and Dax had arrived. WOOOHOOO!


Walking back to the main area of the train station and we made a short visit to the ATM for them to pull out some Pounds. Kris, in here delirious state, did not quite understand the conversion rates after countless explanations, and proceeded to pull 200 pounds from the ATM when she had only wanted to withdraw $50 US (which means she instead pulled $400 US). A mistake she didn’t understand until 2 days later. Good times.


After riding the tube back from the train station, we went to the grocery store near my house and picked up some ingredients to make a stir fry dinner. We came back, had a few beers, cooked up some food, and tried to figure out what were going to do with the rest of out night. Just a little side note, my roommate Ben picked up some candles at the local marketplace recently and they have offered such awesome atmosphere to our otherwise dark, single bulb lit room. That should help you get more of a picture of us chilling in my room. If it doesn’t, well that’s just too bad.


Going to the Ministry of Sound was out first option for the evening, but I could not seem to find the address anywhere, so we decided on another club that I had already been to called Fabric. We had a few more drinks around the house and went out for the night. We took a ride on the Hammersmith line up to Farrington Station in North East London. The club was just a few blocks from the tube station so we hoofed it from there. When we got to the club, we took a look around and scoped out the many rooms and styles of music that it had to offer. In the smallest room, they were playing hip-hop mixed with some progressive house. When we first came into this room they were playing the song “First in Flight” by Blackalicious. The mix to the next track was pretty inclusive, sampling the hook from the last song for quite a while into the next hard techno beat. Nice. The other room was some harder, faster beats with a few stages for people to get up and get their grove on. We checked out most of the stages and got a stellar view of the laser show that dominated the room. This was the most technologically advanced laser show I have ever scene. The laser created 3D geometric forms that floated above the crowd and flexed to the beat of the music. Just plain amazing. Now the third room was bar far the best musically. A DJ named Matthew Johnson ripped it up spinning a type of music that I had never heard. The best way to describe it would be to say 80’s Industrial Progressive Hard House. The sound was so clean most of the time I was just looking over at Kris, Dax, and Dave with astonishment, “Can you believe this shit?” And they are like, “No!” Let me just say, it was TIIIIIIIIGHT! He had covered most of the stage with soundboards, tables, and his 17” Apple Powerbook (the same one that I have). It seem as though he was mixing and creating most of the music live, which I have yet to see done well very often, all the while creating surround sound effects that just blew your mind. I would have to say this was one of the best DJs I have ever seen. Matthew Johnson people, if you ever get the chance. This club was open till 7:00, but at around 4:00 we decided to jet, seeing as we had been dancing for most of the night. Kristen and Dax made their way home a bit earlier at around 3:00 in a taxi, while Dave and I eventually caught a bus home. The buses here run all night. Very nice.


The next day was sleepy time. Kris was still a bit jet lagged, and on top of clubbing the night before, we had all had enough of this “no sleep” thing. When we ultimately got up around 1:00 in the afternoon, we decided to make the day one of the sights and sounds of the London area. Now, this seemed like a good idea to me as well, considering I had yet to really see any of the sights. Our first stop was the London Bridge.


We got off the tube at the London Bridge station and walked around aimlessly for a little while in an attempt to find the notorious bridge that always seems to be falling down. After a little bit of searching, we eventually realized that the signs weren’t kidding around. If you follow them, you will get there. Interesting. We walked out on the bridge, and immediately I decided I would like to see what the bridge actually looked like from the side. Without a second thought, I hopped up onto the edge of the bridge. As I did this, my sunglasses hopped off the neck of my t-shirt careening into the Thames River below. We came up with many theories, but the one that seemed to make the most sense was that they were pissed at me for some reason, and decided to go for a swim. Later sunglasses, hello sun.


From there we went to the main tourist bridge. You see, the London Bridge is kinda lame. The Tower Bridge is where it’s at people, as far as bridges go. This bad boy is stands way above the Thames with two huge towers and a section of the bridge that splits and lifts for boats to cross under. Supposedly in the top of the towers there is a bar and club for VIPs, but I have yet to hear anything about what time to show up. I will keep you informed as to the first time I go. Mark my words.


Next to the Tower Bridge is the Tower of London. This is an enormous castle that used to be the home of Henry VIII. We didn’t have the chance to go inside, but we did try, and seeing as it’s a castle, I have to say that we had no luck. Quite breathtaking though. It looks like a huge city contained within the walls of an enormous military hold. I gather it looks like that because if effect, that is what it is.


I then took them up to get a look at the last standing Roman Wall. Now, you might recall some of the photos in the last photo release having a few shots of this wall. Even though it was the second time seeing it, it still hit me like a ton of bricks. (Get it.) Oh yea, I said it.


We then took a short walk and made it to Big Ben and The House of Parliaments, which I had yet to see. Especially interesting at night. The glow of the clock created a certain ambiance in the area, and being able to see the Millennium Eye from that vantage point was also quite motivating. I will go back and get some shots for sure.


That reminds me, on the day I go out sightseeing with my friends, I had forgotten to bring my camera. I guess its all for the best though, considering I might have dropped it from the edge of the London Bridge instead. And besides, it wasn’t on the checklist of things to bring when we were leaving the room anyway, my bad. Shit, it happens.


After just about enough of Big Ben, we walked along the edge of the Thames (pronounced Tims) until we found a place that had Nachos. You see, Dax is a bit Mexican…and I am not about to fight it out with a Mexican. The restaurant ended up being a sweet place right on the water. Actually, it was on the water. A very BIG boat. (That one is an inside joke for the kids that were here). We got some nachos and a few Guinness, man was it nice to have chips and salsa. I think I miss Mexican food more than I miss my friends. Quite possible, but highly unlikely.


We came back to my flat after enjoying the 8 pound meal on the BIG boat and we were all pretty much spent. Laying around my room for what for seemed like forever as we tried to put back a few more beers and muster up the energy to go out again. After a while of lounging, we went to a place just down the street to lounge around just a bit more. The Blue Jay Jazz Lounge is a modest posh venue in Shepherds Bush where some big name acts come through, but tonight it was a local musician show. You can come in with your instrument, whatever it may be, and jam out with the band that is playing that night. Now, normally this seems like it could be a hell of a time, but tonight, having no energy left, we sat as though we were already asleep. It was a good attempt, but who did we think we were kidding anyway. Stayed for about an hour, then came home and crashed.


The next morning Lt. David Craig left at sometime around 6:30 in the morning. We knew he was leaving, but we didn’t know he wasn’t going to say goodbye. So, Dave, goodbye buddy. See you soon I’m sure. Kris and Dax say later as well. Good times huh? When the rest of us finally arose we started to get ready for the day. We decided to go grab breakfast at Pastry Shop just a few blocks from my flat before we caught a Tube to Tottenham Court Road. When we got off the train and walked up to the main streets, we began our search for the elusive British Museum. I should let you know, when and if any of you reading this come visit me, I hope I have a better feel for directions in this city. The streets make no sense, there are no grids by any means, and its always cloudy so finding your way by use of the sun is nearly impossible. Eventually we stumbled upon a sign leading us in the right direction, just as we were coming to the conclusion of our argument as to who was going to ask for directions. I was loosing as usual. Thank god for signs.


Entering the Museum grabbed you by the stomach and made you feel especially small. The vaulted ceilings were high above our heads, draping the wavy glass fluidly above us. I will include some photos of this place soon, but till then, your just going to have to imagine. Besides, the photos don’t do the feeling it gives you much justice, it definitely has a presence. The British Museum contains a large collection of world artifacts. Originally purchased in the 1700’s for 20,000 pounds, the collection contains pieces from cultures such as Ancient Egypt, Sudan, Asia, Greece, and Rome. I’ll quickly say that my favorite part of the exhibits was the Asian Art section, specifically the Samurai Swords. After seeing Kill Bill a while back, I have more of an idea as to what goes into the creation of each sword. Not just the steal that was crafted with such expertise, but the soul that it embodies.


We left the Museum, again feeling tired from all the walking and standing. Man, is walking and standing tiring. Never would have guessed. Taking our tired asses, and legs back to the tube, we rode over to Marble Arch. I had passed this tube stop a hundred times at this point and never knew the history of the arch. Thanks to Kris and Dax, I now know. This arch was the site of nearly 600 hangings, and most famously, the hanging of William Wallace (Braveheart for the retards of the group).


In accordance with my cousin Rob’s wonderful advice, we initiated the Paris protocol. This protocol involves the distribution of wine, cheese, and bread among friends in a serene, low budget environment. Walking past the arch, we made our way into Hyde park. The wind was blowing with some serious furry as we made our way through the park down near the lake/pond where we sat on a bench. It was on the way there I realized we had no way of opening the bottle of wine! Wankers! The Paris protocol had become ineffective. We decided that sitting near the water might kill us by way of frost bite, so we went back up the hill a bit into the trees. We sat under this gargantuan, beast of a tree and immediately we were surrounded! The squirrels had found their mark, and we were it. Deciding the best course of action was to ignore them, after a while, they left us alone. OR SO WE THOUGHT!


As we sat unsuspecting of the danger that lie ahead, knee deep into the bread and cheese, a hollowed out nut fell from high up in the tree, landing in our bag of trash. The little bastards decided that considering we didn’t dish any food off to them, they were pissed, and they began throwing things at us to show their dissatisfaction with our attitudes towards them. We decided to write a treaty that involved the allocation of a few choice pieces of bread to be left behind for the little bastards. As of yet, the squirrels have not signed the treaty. The bread is nowhere to be found.


Making the arduous trip back to the tube station through the blaring wind and cold couldn’t have been any more fun! We finally made it back to my flat after another long day of touristy happenings. I instantaneously crashed onto my bed when we got up to the third floor, and was out for about an hour I think. When I finally got up, the task at hand was once again to find an exciting nighttime venture for the 3 remaining Boulderites. With a little help from Ben, we settled on playing some snooker at a local pub. Dax and I were going to go outside, get on the internet, look up the rules to snooker, learn to play, then go out and start school some brits. Needless to say, we realized that reeked of effort. We decided to go to the pool hall, get the snooker table, and make up a game we would respectfully call, American Snooker.


We made our way, once again, to the Central Line Tube station to the Notting Hill Gate stop. I proceeded to walk us in the complete wrong direction, eventually realizing this and feeling like a complete jackass. Not like this was the first time I had done this, but considering it was their last night here, I felt an obligation to show them a high-quality last night in London. Well, this didn’t happen. We ended up having to catch a bus back to something I had heard of, once we realized how far south we were (instead of North). After we arrived at what is called Oxford Circus, we got on another bus…this one, hate to say it, was going the wrong way too. Same number as the one going the right way, 207, but this one was NOT going the right way. Well, shit happens. We got off that wrong bus, and got on the right bus.


Eventually we made it home, crashed out, and said goodnight for the last time. Was the room ever so cozy with 5 people in it, how am I ever going to survive without them here? (just kidding you cheeky bastards!)


The following morning we had to go get some of the kid’s money changed over to Euros again, so we walked over to the Post Office. This is where you conveniently mail packages, convert your currency, and get your car insurance. What!? Then we walked over to the Tube station, and I sent them on their way. Tear.


This was by far the longest blog I have ever written. If you are still reading, congratulations you literate bastard. I’m so proud. If your not reading, you can go fuck yourself. J/k, and I love you mom. HAHA. Ok, so, by for now. Who knows when I will muster (second time I’ve used that word, this thing is way too long) up enough gall (that’s a good one too…look, im getting delirious.) to write another blog entry. Considering this one took me nearly 2 days, I don’t know if I have enough words in my vocabulary to get through another one of these. Hope to hear some comments from all of you, that means you! Love you and miss you. I really mean that, I’m not just blowing smoke up your asses.


Love You All I’m Sure,

B-Lake