I started off the day waking up early. It wasn't intentional, but it happened anyways. After ironing my khakis, dress shirts and ties with a iron that was pouring water like crazy, I went out for a stroll around our area here in London. I got to see a nice area of town called Bedford square with some pretty town houses, then made my way to some great public gardens and walked the streets of London before most of the general population was awake. Besides a few folks, the only people that were really out were the street sweepers. London, in the morning, is a filthy town.
I then got back to the college and went downstairs for my first official "English breakfast". There was nothing really "English" about it. I had some scrambled eggs, a hashbrown, a vegetarian sausage thing, and some toast. Of course, there was also orange juice. The vegetarian sausage was the only English part of the meal that I tried. It sucked. Imagine eating a bad egg roll for breakfast.
A few people and myself them went for a ride on the Tube, which was surprisingly easy to figure out. In fact, I am overwhelmingly impressed with the London public transportation system as far as the Tube goes. I haven't taken a bus yet, but I am sure I will. After making a quick run to Trafalgar Square, we then made our way back to the college and began the college-sanctioned scavenger hunt.
We spent most of the morning seeing the main sites in London. We saw Trafalgar Square, Picadilly Circus, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye, etc. One of my favorite aspects were the street performers that you see when you cross over Hungerford Footbridge Bridge towards the London Eye. They were amazing; except for one street performer who simply grabbed a picture from and held it up like a portrait of himself. How he could expect someone to tip such a lousy attempt is beyond me.
We then continued to ride around the town a bit. We went to Leicester Square (which is pronounced "Lester" because a British lady here was kind enough to correct me) and made our way up to Covent Gardens, seeing the Theater District. There was a lot of great stuff to see and I intend on doing a more thorough tour of the town during my stay. Our group of 11 eventually got broken up when 7 of the people went in one direction to find St. Paul's Cathedral and the other four of us went in the other direction. The four of us located St. Paul's Cathedral while the other group rode on back to the college with no luck. Of course, I'm not really sure if it was worth the walk: I could have saved St. Paul's for another day. My feet are not exhausted.
We came back to the college and ate dinner at a local pizza place called Italiano Coffee Inc., after of course we went into another place called Italiano Uno and looked at the menu and realized it was not the restaurant we were looking for. Nonetheless, the pizza was excellent and only cost 3 pounds (that's about 6 dollars for an 11-inch pizza). We ate down in the lounge here at the dorms and had a good time. Afterwards, my neighbor Donald and I went down to the local grocery store called Tesco (where last night they would not accept my money because it was "old" and said I needed to go change it at a bank) and picked up some groceries. I went ahead and got some snacks and a meal or two for next week.
Right now the rest of the group is out pub crawling while I am typing this. It's been a long day and I plan to be well-rested for tomorrow. The plan is to visit Windsor Castle tomorrow, which I don't doubt will be amazing.
Here's a link to today's photos, there are quite a few:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8494714@N03/sets/72157600453135534/
P.S. Apparently on Friday night, while I was back at the dorms, the group ended up going to a bar called the Crown and Scepter. While there, one of the guys tried to get one of the locals to buy drinks for them, but the local didn't go for it. Another member of the group ended up getting called "Sunshine" by one of the guys in the bar. Low and behold, the Crown and Scepter is a gay bar in London. Two of the group members didn't find that out until Saturday. Another little funny aspect to this story is that they somehow managed to take two glasses from the pub. Care to know the name of the beer company on the glasses? Sleeman's.
