Instead of the usual English breakfast today I ate a continental breakfast that consisted of a banana and a croissant. I gave the rest of it away. I'm relieved they had these two items because it saved me from having to eat the banana and croissant I bought. Since I've all ready payed for these meals I might as well eat them, right? Breakfast was decent and after it was over with we messed around for a little while before heading off to our first field trip of the day.
We went to a newsstand called Williams' or something like that over on Tottenham Court Road. The Middle Eastern guy working behind the counter got mad at our group because we were standing around flipping through magazines and not buying them. He claimed we were not putting magazines back in their proper place, but Dr. Martin basically told the guy what the score is. So, he left us alone. It was pretty boring, frankly.
We continued down Tottenham Court Road towards Leicester Square to check out some of the bookstores on Charing Cross Road. We were supposed to be looking at the various forms of advertising that go on in the UK. It's not something I'm particularly interested in, so I really didn't do too much looking. Instead, I did make a stop by Denmark Street where all of the best guitar shops in town are. I stopped in one "independent" shop at the corner of Denmark Street and Charing Cross Road and looked around. They had a nice selection and really their prices weren't bad at all. I'm sure I'll stop back by Denmark Street soon.
The looked around a few of the bookstores and aside from the fact that Foyle's was very well organized, I found myself quite bored and rather disappointed that I was spending my morning this way rather than looking around at something I was interested in. Not to mention, it has been cold all day. The weather on our trip thus far has been pretty miserable. It makes me wonder how these people stand it. We ended up eating lunch at a place called Montagu Pyke. I had a burger, chips (fries), and some water. There was a Heinz sauce there called "Mint Sauce" and one called "Brown Sauce". I should have tried them. The burger was 100% from UK beef, and one could certainly tell the difference. I guess the only beef I could compare it to is Black Angus, although U.S. Black Angus is much, much better. Overall though, the hamburger wasn't bad.
After all of that we went on down to Baker Street to go to our final field trip of the day: Publicis. It's the fourth largest advertising firm in the world. I won't go into all of the details, but it was a pretty cool trip. Besides having to wait an hour until 2:30 for our trip to start (we got there very early), everything was pretty cool. We tried to find shelter from the wind by going into what we thought was the library, but what ended up being the City Council building for the city of Westminster. Silly us, I mean, with the sign saying "LIBRARY" being posted on the gate outside.
The tour was interesting and we got to see how an advertising agency functions in basics. The lady that showed us around was named Iliara, and she was one very good looking Italian who spoke with a British accent. Wow. But, I digress. We ended the tour and took the tube back to Euston Square Station and walked on back to the school. Right now I'm about to eat a bit for dinner (a sandwich from the Tesco) and who knows, I may do something of interest. I'm going to try and get to sleep a little early tonight because I haven't been sleeping too much at night. Last night some guys down the hall were making an outrageous amount of noise up until about 1 in the morning. Maybe if I fall asleep early tonight I won't have to listen to it.
Photos of last night's adventure at The Court and today's toodling around London can be found here:
http://flickr.com/photos/8494714@N03/sets/72157600501457279/
Oh, and by the way, Flickr is apparently holding some of my earlier photos hostage until I upgrade to a Pro Account. I have no intentions of doing that, so they'll just have to stay in photo limbo.
