London, Day 2

Day 2:

My plan was to get up and go to Cardiff for a day. Mostly to visit the Doctor Who Museum, because well, because I'm a nerd. But when I got up that morning to take the tube to Victoria station, it stopped half way. The whole line was closed. And it didn't even stop at a station where I could transfer. I was stuck. They announced that a bus would be taking people the rest of the way, but by the time I got up it was totally full. I tried walking to the next station with a transferring line, but by the time I made it my bus had already left.

Not a bad thing, though. I rode back to my hostel (on a double decker bus!), got another night at my hostel (for twice the price) and headed out again. I first made my way to Portobello Road. If you like antiques, this is the market for you. It's only open on Saturdays, but the shops on PR are also antique stores, so you'll still be able to find things. I got a cute dress (on sale! I love Jan/Feb in Europe) and some exotic food (Sudanese lamb sausages).

After the market I traveled to Foyle's Bookstore, a must for book-lovers. It's massive, and since the books were in English, I spent about 2 hours browsing. I got a couple of books for my private lesson students, all of which seemed to hit the mark! It was a completely worthwhile trip.

Part of the fun of London is just walking down the streets. It's a city unlike others I've been to. The ancient stone of Spain and Portugal and Italy are amazing, but London, because of the great fire, is mostly not that old (although you can find Roman walls) so it's a really neat city for architecture. And it's full of charming little pubs, with names like The Porcupine. 

After Foyle's it was getting late, and I managed to sort of... stumble to the National Gallery. Go there, it's free! I spent several hours here, looking at Renoir and Monet, Manet and DaVinci. Currently they have Van Gogh's Sunflowers, which was worth the queue. 

I decided to end the evening with a film in Leicester Square. But while waiting, I wandered around a bit. It's a really neat place, so there's lots to see. Chinatown is right there, and as I'm on my way down the street towards the hanging lanterns, I run into a church. It's a Catholic Church, and that evening they were doing Taize prayer. I decided to stop by, because, why not? It's was a lovely little church, but the coolest thing was that it was a French Catholic Church. The chant was in French, they have mass in French, the priests are French speaking. Most of the parishioners seemed to be French speaking African immigrants. It was really cool, even though I had no idea what they were saying.

Finally, I went back to the movie theater. Funny thing about movie theaters here- you have assigned seats. It was the same somewhere else I went, though I can't recall where. Other than that, it's just as expensive in London as it is in the States. But, they had less movies in general, and fewer movies late at night.

Thus ended my second day. It was a good one, and I wasn't upset about my plans being ruined. I think this is a good moment for a warning, however. If you are American and going to London, use cash. It's amazing to me sometimes how little cards are used. Cash is king in the UK and the EU. Finally, if you have an American card, you will probably not be able to use the automatic ticket machines. A number of them are chip based, so if you go just with a card, it's a gamble. Europe uses these cards with a tiny chip at the bottom which you can scan or partially insert into a slot. While the sliding motion can be used at tills and registers, machines are not as likely to have a slide option, and the machine won't take the card (though you can always got to the desk, where they can run it like credit). This is especially true in metro machines.