Ice, Ice Baby

Howdy!

Well, I'm finally making good on the other half of my dual posting. I had to split these up because there were so many pictures and things to talk about. You've already seen the photos from Stonehenge and Salisbury, and now you get to see what we did later that night.

One of my groovy roomies had heard about this icebar called "Below Zero" from a friend of hers who had been here and we decided that it sounded like a sweet once in a lifetime opportunity. I mean dude...a bar...made completely out of ice!! Like that scene from the James Bond movie!

And indeed it was incredible.We went to the bar and had to actually sit in a regular bar outside the ice one and wait for our turn to go in. You can only go in for 40 mins. at a time, since the icebar is maintained at -5 degrees c. When it was our turn to go, we got in the queue and attendants at the door outfitted us with parkas and gloves...then we headed inside.

It was awesome. Cover was outrageous (about $30) but it included your first vodka drink in a glass made out of ice. So, after filling up my groovy ice glass with some cranberry Absolut thing that was really good, I started snapping photos of the bar. As you can see, there were ice statues and structures everywhere and no shortage of people in their sweet parkas. Even the barmaids had parkas and little furry hats!

So, we spent the next 40 mins. chilling out (literally) in the Absolut Icebar, then headed down to the regular warm bar below that to defrost ourselves. I indulged myself a bit and had an excellent glass of champagne while we were there, so I was a happy camper.

After finishing our drinks, we headed out to the legendary London club, Fabric. Fabric is a four story dance club that is like nothing I've ever seen before in my life. It's a freakin' four story rave -- you know, one of those places with laser lights and the bass so deep it shakes your ribcage...rock. It was packed, but we grabbed some drinks and danced for a couple of hours to the blasting house music. At some point, Greg, Mariah (another cool student we met while we were here from Oregon), and I ended up dancing on this balcony overlooking one of the dancefloors below. I swear, it made you feel like you were in a movie scene...like it wasn't even real! (or maybe that was just the Jager ;-) j/k ).

Our only issue of the evening came when it was time to go home. The original group of us was six people, but when we hit Fabric we split in half. Greg and Mariah and I were in one group and my other two roomies and another guy from Oregon named Colin were in the other. Greg and Mariah and I got tired earlier and decided we'd head home. That was cool until we decided that we didn't really need a cab and were smart enough to navigate the night bus system. Wrong. We spent a couple of hours running around London in the cold, both on bus and on foot, until we got relatively close to where we lived and gave up and hailed a cab. That whole night was an adventure. Oy. Wonderfully though, we were all good sports and I give my companions a lot of credit for their patience and perseverance through the whole ordeal. The incident was really faultless, as we all contributed to the mess. I bought a round of shots for us last night and there was much cheers-ing to our directionally challenged-ness.

Well, enough babble. Have a look at my really cool (no seriously..-5 degrees cool ;-) ) photos and lemme know what you think!

Cheers!