London Day Two

Ok! It's my second to last day in Cork--- and guess what. Pouring rain outside. Go figure. I'll write about my last few days tomorrow before I make my last crawl. But for now, I'll continue on London.

I left last time discussing my little stroll around Soho/Picadilly Circus. I hadn't really spent money on anything and actually considered checking out the Ripley's Believe It or Not museum. Nope. Probably not worth the money. I decided to call it a night early though (around 8) because I had been basically walking for a total of 9 hours that day.

A couple of gin-and-tonics (when in London...) later I was nestled safely in my bed at my accomodation. The place I stayed at was in Paddington, Northern Westminster, and was called The Green Man. It was, essentially, a bona-fide public house. There was a bar downstairs that also served food, and the top two floors were dorms. Pretty cool place.

The second day I woke up, checked out, and took the Tube clear over to the East Side and met up with a tour that would allow me to see London Tower, the Tower Bridge, the financial district and a whole bunch of other stuff. The tour guide was probably the best I've ever had. Very enthusiastic and presented an entertaining and engaging look at the history of Old London. Edu-info-tainment at it's finest.

I saw a lot. Some other stops were at The Bank of England (Rowling's inspiration for Gringott's bank) was one of them. Apparently what I saw was only the tip of the iceberg as the bank supposedly goes down underground about ten stories. Try robbing that son of a gun, Danny Ocean. But that was located, ironically, by where the old Cheapside area was in London. I also found out that the City of London pays a dude to be the "mayor" of Old London, but his primary responsibility is to allow Queen Elizabeth entrance into the city. The tradition is she can't leave Westminster, where all the Royal attractions are located without his permission. So whenever she needs to christen a ship or appear or whatever the Queen does, she has to call this guy for his permission to actually walk across the Thames into London. Great story, right? Moving on.

We saw Millenium Bridge, Tower Bridge, and City Hall. The office apparently, to the tour guide, was shaped like a giant testicle and is referred to by most locals as the "Testicle Building". Funny stuff right there. The Thames, for the record, is THE dirtiest river in the world. Gross. If you drop your foot in that water, don't be surprised when you grow an extra toe or four. We also saw St. Paul's Cathedral. I didn't go in here because it was expensive, and I had seen the Vatican a couple weeks earlier and figured I could live without seeing it. The tour ended on Fleet Street, where the tour guide plopped us down and talked to us about WWII and how it changed London forever, which was a great little schpiel. He talked about how there would be up to 40-50,000 citizens jammed into the tube stations each night to escape the bombing, and how Uncle Winnie took the fight to the Germans at Berlin before they bombarded the East Side, working class civilians of London.

After the tour broke off, I returned to the legal district, which is supposedly used as a movie set quite a bit since it blocks off so much of the noise that comes with walking around London. Apparently Johnny Depp was sighted a couple weeks back, filming his new Sherlock Holmes movie. This place was also the location of the Church of the Knights Templar. These guys went on crusades for God back in the crusade days and were referred to as the Poor Soldiers of Christ, although through trade expansion they became filthy rich, and subsequently hunted down and murdered by Pope Clement and the Catholic Church. Since the Da Vinci Code became popular, thousands of tourists flock to the area, even being so stupid as to break into the church after hours to search for the Holy Grail.

Next I walked down to the Old Bailey, snapped some pictures and took off towards Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. This is where London went from awesome to amazing. I walked up to the concierge standing outside of the theater and asked the gentlemen if there were any tours available. He looked at me and said "Tours? You're in luck my friend. For 5 pounds you can see Romeo and Juliet in the theatre." My response, of course, was basically, "You're kidding me. Really? You have no idea how excited I am right now." I can't believe how lucky I was. I walked in and and missed all the boring stuff. Walking into the place was quite the epic experience. Drums pounded vigorously as Romeo and Tybalt duked it out. The acting was brilliant. I got to stand about 10 feet from the stage, and I could grab a beer and a packet of crisps at intermission for 3 quid. But this incident, overall, was my favorite London experience by a landslide. Of course, the place was just a reconstruction of the theatre, as the original burnt down in the 1500s as a result of one of the several "Great Fires" of London wiped out most of the city. But the reconstruction was great. Thatched rooves, Wooden seating, early Christian art accenting the older design pattern on opposite sides of the stage. Great experience!

I still had about 2 hours of daylight left, and was thinking about what to do when I realized I'm a Beatles fan. More of a Rolling Stones fan actually, but I like the Beatles, and have a couple friends that are goofy obsessed with them, so the only thing I could see myself doing was heading up to St. John's Wood and walking the Abbey Road crosswalk. After finding it, a Chilean couple snapped photo for me while I triumphantly walked it with no shoes or socks on. I don't want to go all fanboy or nerd out or anything, but I skipped showering till Friday after my workout. There could be a strand of Paul's DNA still engrained into my calloused feet. Moving on...

I looked around for a restaurant called St. John, which I saw on the Anthony Bourdain show about a year back. After realizing I was in the wrong part of town, I gave up on that and took another stroll through a park, this time Regent's Park and St. John's Wood. Quite relaxing. Lots of swans. Eat your heart out, Lake LaVerne. After this, headed to Liverpool Street, hopped on the Stansted Express and zonked out at the airport for a few hours before catching my 6 AM flight right in the nick of time.

Not too shabby for only technically being in London for around, what 30 hours? Sorry that blog ran a little lengthy, trust me, I can still elaborate more when I get home if you'd be intersted.

Slán go fóill