The Institute of Contemporary Art (where are classes will be held) is right on the Mall, so we decided the first thing we'd do is walk along side it through St. James's Park. We saw awkward birds, which was decidedly the second-most ornithologically-fascinating event of the day because they looked funny.
We reached Buckingham Palace shortly afterwards to see the Queen. Unfortunately, Lizzy was out, so we couldn't come over to play. We debated storming the palace, but then we realized that the two royal guards with rifles were there with a large handful of police officers, armed with machine guns. We decided against storming the palace.
We walked through the other end of St. James' Park to have our single-most ornithologically-fascinating event of the day: seeing giant pelicans. Apparently, the Queen owns pelicans...GIANT pelicans. They were pretty far away on their little island, but we could see that they were bigger than turkeys. We walked passed Winston Churchill's cabinet war rooms, where he said "This is the room from which I will direct the war". For anyone who doesn't quite fully understand history, he was talking about WWII. For anyone who doesn't quite fully understand anagrams, I am talking about World War 2.
We made our way into the city of Westminster and into Parliament Square, where we saw both the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey.
We were all somewhat disappointed in Joel when he asked us what time it was. Just to clear up certain American misunderstandings, this is not a picture of Tommy and Joel with Big Ben in the background. What you are looking at is the clocktower of Parliament. Big Ben is the bell within the clocktower. If this was a video, you would probably hear Big Ben in the background because this photo was taken very close to a chiming point at 3:30pm.
Westminster Abbey: the final resting place of Elizabeth I, Henry V, Edward I a.k.a. Longshanks, Henry VII, Elizabeth I, James I, "Bloody" Mary I, Edward III, King St. Edward the Confessor, Charles Darwin, Ben Jonson, Sir Isaac Newton, Robert Browning, Geoffrey Chaucer, Charles Dickens, George Frederick Handel, Rudyard Kipling, Lord Laurence Olivier, Edmund Spenser, Alfred Tennyson, and many others. Their caskets, along with hundreds of burial commemoration plaques and the British Coronation Throne, fill the interior of this beautiful Gothic church.
It was closed when we got there, so we saw none of the above mentioned stuff. Last admittance on a Friday is at 3:30pm, and we probably would have made it inside if we didn't stop for gimmick photos of Parliament. No one was very disappointed, though, as we were sure that the tours cost money.
We decided to cross the River Thames over the Westminster Bridge and head back to Nido on the other side. Halfway over the bridge, we realized something...
Really good photo opportunity. We were getting a little tired at this point, so we stopped off to rest a bit in a little place by the London Eye, the Dali Universe, and the London Aquarium.
We found an arcade/bowling alley/pub/casino. Things were good...until the zombie hordes overran Joel and Nathaniel. I am so proud of the timing on this photo; it's at the exact moment the machine said "GAME OVER". The utter defeat on Joel and Nathaniel's face, the utter fascination on Jarret's.
It got dark pretty fast, as Tommy triumphantly demonstrates here, so we needed to head home. We needed to walk the entire vertical length of my map to get back to Nido, but we survived. How did we celebrate this miraculous feat without a death from exhaustion, a mugging, a pickpocketing, or a rape?
Pints at the Rocket, of course. Met up with some friends who came with us, met up with friends who didn't, met some new friends from NYU who were also staying at Nido...
...and this guy. For the life of me, I can't remember his name. No one seemed to either. I don't remember a lot of the things he said. All I know is that he's a Liverpool fan from Manchester who has two friends that he brought with him from Spain. An extraordinary social-butterfly. I think he hung out with us for a good 4 hours at the pub.
Some of us were slightly terrified of this man, but he loved us...for God knows what reason. We left the pub when the bartenders did, headed back to Nido, and the majority of us slept passed noon. All and all, a great night. The single greatest moment for me, however, was when we just stepped off the Blackfriar's Bridge and walked passed Fleet Street. We saw this on that famous stretch of road:
This is not a product of Photoshop or MSPaint. This is 100% real. There is a barber shop...above an eating establishment...on Fleet Street, London. When I saw this, I shat bricks. If you don't understand the significance of this, you have never seen the musical "Sweeney Todd"...and you should do so ASAP.
Wait...what's this? A picture of me? On my own blog? Absurd! Anyhoo, that's all I have for today. I'll keep the updates coming once I get them in my life.
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