London: not just in Ontario anymore

Finally able to post again! Hip hip! Cheerio! Bloke!

I am two weeks behind in blog posts, which is like ancient history given current circumstances. I kind of forget where I live sometimes because the last few weeks have been so full of travel and seedy hotels and fancy apartments and OH MY GOODNESS so much food. And there's no en in sight: tomorrow I leave for Stockholm, and then Paris, and then Amsterdam, for possibly the best holiday ever.... but I'm trying to keep my enthusiasm under control, since too much enthusiasm makes me forget certain important details, like where I put my keys and whether or not I've eaten breakfast already.

I have to start somewhere, so I'll start IN LONDON! I was there for a weekend recently, and the weather was beautiful and the beer was cheap and I got to pretend I was in a novel for a little while.

So excited to ride on the "tube" that I got all blurry:

I arrived in London late Friday afternoon and had a couple of hours to kill before Sam, my friend & generous host for the weekend, was off from work. I wandered towards the river and suddenly found myself at the foot of this giant clock tower, thinking I was completely lost and hopeless and wondering if this what one of those situations where I should just stay in one place and wait to be found... then I realized! This was no run-of-the-mill, dime-a-dozen, small potatoes clock tower!!!

It seems so incredible to me that you can just walk up and touch something like Big Ben, something that you've heard about for ages and ages, something so culturally iconic and endlessly eulogized and photographed and recreated in miniature. You don't need a magic school bus or a VIP invitation or a secret password or a cousin's friend's sister-in-law who knows the guy in charge. It's just there, doing normal clocky things, not giving a damn about the writers and painters and filmmakers and millions of tourists. (I feel the same way about celebrities: it's amazing to imagine that Clive Owen is not a superhuman clone locked in a top-secret building, but is an ordinary dude who lives somewhere, who has a house and a grocery list and cavities and bellybutton fluff, and that if you go to the right place you could see him walking down the street, doing Clive Oweny things.)

Go to the right place and you can see double-decker buses and charming British stereotypes and all those historical places that you thought only existed in Woolf novels!

I spent all of Saturday wandering the city with my trusty tour guide Sam. See that Ferris Wheel in the distance?
We went on that!

The thing is so massive that you don't just sit in a dinky little carriage with your feet hanging down! No way! Londoners take their midway attractions seriously. You have to get into one of these futuristic glass pods, and it's a good thing too, because that thing goes VERY VERY RIDICULOUSLY HIGH.

It surprised me that everything I absolutely wanted to see in London was all clustered together in the same general area. It's almost as though they planned it so that all of us lazy North American tourists could see the city's top five attractions in an easy afternoon. Almost.

The abbey, which is two and a half steps away from Big Ben:

And St. James' Park, only a ten minutes' walk further:

Swan blanacing in the ice that still coated the river in St. James Park. I have no idea why this picture came out all pukey-coloured, but I actually kind of like it! It looks artistic. Or something.

View of a very gnarled old tree and, in the distance, Buckingham Palace:

Unfortunately the Queen wasn't at home so I couldn't give her a what's up from Canada. Didn't get William's number either. Unfulfilled quests are bad for the ego!!

Guard with a fuzzy hat!

Copper on a horse!


Next two pictures by special request for a certain ginger-coloured beast:


These helpful warnings on the pavement saved my life about a hundred times over the course of the weekend:

Camden Market, aka Punksville:


There are two things that slayed me while I was in London: hearing little tiny kids saying "mummy!" in little tiny British accents, and seeing how London bookstores categorized their particularly melodramatic fiction:

And finally, three Chileans and an Ecuadorian, with the best South American meal to ever fill this belly: