Elementary, My Dear Watson

Hello all!

It's been a fun few days, as usual. The sun has been out a bit more, which is nice, though its still cool temperature wise.

Yesterday I began my day by visiting the beautiful National Portrait Gallery. This enormous art museum in Trafalgar square contained everything from pictures of Tudor-era British monarchs (of course) to contemporary photographs of such important people as Judy Dench, Mick Jagger, Tim Curry, and of course, J.K. Rowling. But for the truly dedicated, the digital video piece of legendary footballer David Beckham sleeping for 67 mins. was not to be missed. There was also plenty of Andy Warhol, lots of interesting busts and a whole host of other unique British art.

Despite feeling a little museumed-out, that was pretty cool. From there, my friend Greg and I decided to return to one of our favorite places for lunch -- Leister Square's China town. After some yummy egg fried rice and a whole pot of real green tea (like, really fragrant with leaves in the bottom of the cup), we headed back to our respective homestays. I dragged myself down to the laundrette and did my final load of laundry then headed home for a bit.

Finding ourselves bored and starving later that evening, we met up again to find some dinner and wander around. The wandering strategy has worked remarkably well for me since I've been here. I think the only real way to see London is on foot. Once you learn how to get to the various segments of London via tube, walking is great. You see so many interesting things! Parks, palaces, stores, restaurants...so much fun!

So last night, after dinner we had planned to return home, however, we found a delay on the tube line that would have taken us back to our stop, so we opted to go exploring for a bit. We hopped the Bakerloo tube line and headed down to Baker Street -- home of legendary ficticious detective, Sherlock Holmes. Baker Street is in Westminster, or Royal London. It took us some time to actually find Baker street, even though we managed to walk right by it several times. However, we finally did find it and 221B, Sherlock's address. So, the black door you see in the picture is just that -- 221B Baker street.

After several very obvious tourist photographs, we took a walk through St. Mary's gardens. These gardens are absolutely beautiful and full of all sorts of ducks and geese, and as you can tell from the photograph, swans! After a brief trip through there, we hopped back on the tube and headed home. A long day, but fun.

This morning (at this writing it was 9:40am), I discovered why commuters are so crabby all the time. Public transit sucks. I hopped on my usual tube line, the Piccadilly, from my station to head out to the University of London, but heard an announcement that someone had taken ill on the train in front of the one I was on and it would be remaining on the platform for a while. I jumped off immediately and headed for one of the other lines that would get me near where I needed to go, the Victoria line. I took the Victoria down a couple of stops, intending to circumvent the delay and get back on the Piccadilly at King's Cross Station (a major intersection). The Victoria train was PACKED...like struggling to breathe packed. Oy. That was fun. So, I got off at King's Cross and hoofed it over to the westbound Piccadilly line train. I didn't even make it onto the train it was so freakin packed. About that time, the London Underground decided that since so many people needed to get Westbound on the Piccadilly line, that they'd just turn the Picadilly train on the eastbound platform around and take it west to cope with demand. I got on that one and finally got out of there, but not before they'd confused the crap out of everyone in the station. There was a lot of cursing and grumbling, but I made it here ok. Whew. What a morning.

Well, I must be off now, its the Museum of London this morning, followed by the Tower of London (the crown jewels!!) this afternoon.

Cheers!