Oiye London! Day 4 Saturday

Saturday the game plan started out as the London Zoo then the British Museum. This was nixed because we realized that both of those things alone could take up the entire day! We changed it at the last minute – St. Paul’s Cathedral – Tate Modern Museum – London Film Museum – Westminster – If time permitted British museum (although out of the way) and then shopping down old and new bond streets and to Piccadilly circus.

Starting out the day at St Paul’s not only set our mood but also started the day off in I think the best way possible. It was sunny all day Saturday so it was beautiful all day long – and even a bit warm at some points. We got on the Edgeware station and went straight down to St. Paul’s stop. We got there early morning – probably around 9 after the train ride and cab. We got in for free with our London pass which was totally worth the money since we had free tube/bus all day for 3 days and more passes into events than we actually used. St. Paul’s is amazing and I was crushed to find out we couldn’t take pictures or video inside (even though I think we each snuck one or two). We decided to climb up before going down into the crypt. I am so glad we did this before walking around all day because I was winded on the way up. It was 270 some odd steps just to the base of the dome. The pathway after that is one direction only because the corridors are so narrow and short if you want to turn around you’d have to make everyone else on the way up turn around also. We got to the inner lip of the dome and its really incredible to think about how on earth they could’ve built something so crazy detailed and humongous way back when they did. After hanging out here for a few minutes we decided to start hiking to the outer lip of the top of the dome. We took tons of pictures and videos from here between the columns and iron bars. After a few more minutes up some very windy spiral iron stairs we got to the topmost part of the cathedral. There is only room enough for maybe 15 people and that’s being crammed – you had to turn sideways to squeeze by people and try to take pictures. After a while enjoying our cool breeze from our 15 minute cardio hike we started back down. After our hike down(I tried to count stairs but got dizzy and gave up – got to almost 300 from the tiptop to the bottom of the dome, but there were at least twice that since we had just started down from the dome. We headed down to the crypt where Admiral Nelson’s body was (he was the center tomb) and it kind of creeped me out that there were restaurants down there near the dead people but I guess they didn’t have room anywhere else.

From here we headed to Tate Modern but found a little pub that served “official English breakfast” which I hadn’t had yet since I’m not a breakfast person. The food was good, just an odd hodgepodge of food(egg/”bacon”(ham)/mushrooms/chips(fries)/tomato…).

After that we ran across what I kept calling the “Harry Potter bridge” because I just remember it being destroyed in the new Harry Potter movie – it’s a cool suspension walking bridge straight to the Tate Modern Museum(pic). We walked around there for a while and looked at what people in London consider “art” which is always a hilarious concept to me. I think defining what art means would be harder than defining the purpose of life….anywho you be the judge.

From there we walked down to the tube and hopped it over to the film museum just next to the London eye. It was 11£ to get in and they wouldn’t take our London pass – so we bucked up and paid to get in. We walked through what we thought was the museum for a few minutes and then realized it was just the hallway that lead to the museum full of models and posters. We finally made it to the actual museum and it was very interesting – lots of movies were produced/filmed/etc through London that I had no idea had anything to do with London. Aliens, Planet of the Apes, Krull, Ali G, Chronicles of Riddick...the list went on. We took pictures of Star Wars and the Dr. Who exhibit. All in all we were sorely disappointed. It was maybe 3 hallways and they advertised a lot about Harry Potter and Bond and there was a few HP posters and one Bond little area which was just a little fake plane used in the movie.

We finished this museum in maybe 30 minutes and ran back out near the Eye to cross back over to try and hit up Westminster. We started to get hungry but there were so many people (mostly tourists) in that area we knew everything would be way overpriced and overcrowded. After fighting through the crowd to get some pictures of Big Ben and Parliament from the riverside we walked back across the bridge and took some pictures in the sunlight since all we had were gloomy pictures from Friday. We took a few and fought the crowd to get by Big Ben – they closed down a lane of Westminster bridge to add sidewalk space. We got to Westminster around 2 – plenty of time to go see it since it closes at 530 right? WRONG – They close at 130 to visitors on Saturday….so yet again we missed Westminster.

At this point we were not too far from Trafalgar square so we hopped a bus up to Trafalgar and walked over to Piccadilly circus. We started up the shopping route backwards which was a terrible idea since we found that this was all designer stuff that we could not even begin to dream about affording - most brands we didn’t even recognize. After about 20 minutes of walking we decided just to go to Harrods since its so famous. We got on the tube and rode it over to Harrods – we ran back into our bagpipe guy (video?) and there was a cool guitarist in the tube (they have designated areas for music). We stepped into the gift shop at Harrods and everything seemed trivial and crappy and way overpriced. We stepped out to look at shoes/jeans/shirts and found a 4300£ leather jacket that looked like it had been put through a pasta cutter…at this point we decided it was a waste of time to be there.

We got on the tube and headed back to Piccadilly since we had seen a shop there that looked cool/trendy. We headed in and after a few minutes realized if we wore any of this in the US we’d be THAT guy. We started to look for food and actually saw a small shop offering buy one get 2 dress shirts free and at 79£ for one shirt – that’s not a bad deal. We headed in and I started grabbing shirts only to realize a lot of them were weird collared and had to have cuff links. I made Peter get measured just so he could look around. We ended up with some really good stuff for cheap AND they have something called VAT (value added tax) which is about 20% that as non-UK citizens we get back. It’s a deal, it’s a steal!

We took off after that and ran to get food – we wandered around for a while and fought about what to eat as our last meal, peter wanted pizza (some chain) and I wanted Indian but we ended up with Asian – not sure how that’s a compromise though. The place was tiny but smelled delicious. We ordered dumplings and if you’ve ever seen Kung-fu Panda we fought over the dumplings with our chopsticks like they did and like idiots knocking them out of each other’s chopsticks and onto the table and laughing really loudly. The owner walked over and asked as nicely as possible in his thick Asian accent “do you need fork?” I thought he said 4 (like maybe we were shorted a dumpling or something) – but we both lost it and died laughing! We got rice and chicken(pic?) and took off back to the tube to get to the hotel early to pack and leave early in the am – the guy at the tube actually remembered us this time and called us a cab to the hotel without us even asking! Turns out he was from DC (where we flew out of – chatted about the NBA for a second then took off). Got back to the hotel at a reasonable time and started trying to fit everything back into our luggage.