You Don’t Know Where That Stick Has Been

 Food, Great Britain, Travel  Comments Off on You Don’t Know Where That Stick Has Been
Jul 112011
 

Today I managed to fit in Westminster Abbey, a visit to Grosvenor Square, a trip to Foyle’s, and dinner at Nando’s one last time.

My throat was still sort of sore. I think it’s all the air conditioning when I really don’t need it. Who needs air conditioning when it’s 70F?

The other major annoying thing today– tourists. If I had a major city, I would never let tourists in. They can be the most rude and obnoxious people sometimes.

Case in point number one. I’m standing in line at Westminster Abbey. I look up for 2 seconds, the line moves 2 feet, and 4 people cut in front of me. I’m tired at the time, so I decide not to make a scene. I mean, really, if it looks like there’s a line, and people are standing in it, even if there’s a bit of a break in it, don’t you usually ask, “Hey, are you standing in line here?” just to make sure you’re not cutting? Because cutting is just one of the lowest forms of line behavior I can think of.

But that’s not the bit that really annoyed me. What really bugged me was when nine people walked up to one of the cutters and start babbling in Dutch about how glad they were he saved them a spot in line.

Seriously? Is it me, or is that rude? I think it’s beyond rude. If you want to stand in line, then get in the back like everyone else. Don’t make your kid hold a place for you.

In this case, a father made his son stand in line for him, then brought the rest of the extended family along later, while they brought food with them. Must be nice.

Jerks.

Westminster Abbey. No Matter What I Say, You’re Still Going to Go There, Aren’t You?

Welcome to Westminster Abbey, where you can see all of the famous dead people in England, all piled in one place, and walk on top of their tombs.

It’s kind of a creepy place. I suppose it’s because the whole idea of walking over other peoples’ graves doesn’t sit well with me. The architecture is beautiful, but I can only see so many dead people before my eyes start to glaze over.

Poet’s Corner was kind of nice, in that it was a Norton Anthology of English Literature, all dead and piled in one corner. (Or I suppose the Dead Poets’ Society is more apropos?)

What I did not like was the abusive use of audio guides. If you didn’t give them £5, you weren’t going to find out anything about anything, unless you were up for some exhaustive tomb-reading.

The map’s sole purpose was to show you what buttons to press on your audio guide, and provided scant information otherwise. They already shook me down for £18 just to get in the building, so the least they could do is cough up some info about the place. It was the same feeling I got visiting any other major tourist trap.

It was a pretty building, and it was somewhat impressive, but I did not like the shakedown game.

Oh, and forget about taking any photos there.

One cool thing: they have the practice crown jewels in the museum. They look just like the real things, so you can avoid the huge line at the Tower of London and just look at the fakes. Unless you’re a jeweler, you’re not going to be able to tell the difference.

OMG. Where Is He Putting That Stick???

Here’s my gross Westminster Abbey story (skip it if you’re about to eat lunch): Before you can go into the admission office to cough up your £18, a security guard has to search your bag. He was using some sort of a drumstick or something to poke through everyone’s bags.

At the security point, there’s also a place where you’re supposed to throw out your gum. Well, security guy sees that disgusting tourists have been being disgusting tourists, and using the gum trap to throw away half-eaten sandwiches. So what does he do? He uses the stick to wad up a bunch of gum and half-eaten sandwiches and tosses them out in another trash can.

Yikes. Then he goes back to poking that same stick in everyone else’s backpacks. Double yikes. Fortunately, he had already gone through mine, but God only knows where that stick had already been.

If I can, I’m going to boil my backpack.

Westminster Abbey in a nutshell: pretty building. Lots of famous dead people, lots of obnoxious tourists, and a place that will try to shake every pound off of you.

But you’ll probably go anyway, because every guidebook says you have to, and it’s part of the “London Experience,” whatever that is.

Just tell the guy not to put that nasty stick in your bag.

Presidents!

After that, it was off to Grosvenor Square to see the new statue of Ronald Reagan, because I promised a childhood friend who is a huge Reagan fan that I’d snap a few photos for him. To find Ronnie, I got off the Tube at Bond Street, which has a neat shopping center attached to it.

From there, I went to Grosvenor Square Park, where I found a statue of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and a monument dedicated to 9/11, but no Ronnie. I headed across the street to the US Embassy, and found Dwight Eisenhower in his General’s uniform on one corner of the embassy, and when I went to the other corner, I found president number 40, 10 feet tall and bronze.

I took my photos and headed back to the station and did a little cold-prevention shopping, just in case. Then it was off to Tottenham Court Road and Foyle’s.

Boooooks!

I’ve been wanting to go to Foyle’s for a very long time. It’s one of the great bookstores in the world. They have a huge selection of books. I spent some time just wandering around, looking at books. It was a lot of fun.

I went to their Japanese section, and to my surprise, I found books in Japanese. I wound up buying a copy of “The Little Prince” in Japanese, as well as a book on Japanese Linguistics. I headed downstairs, and bought some postcards and a couple of Whitelines notebooks.

I’m keen to give the Whitelines products a try, because I usually just use copy paper, but copy paper can make for messy work. What would be ideal would be Whitelines products made for Japanese, or at least just graph paper pages with bigger boxes.

Then it was time to head back to Earls Court. I stopped by Gregg’s one last time for tomorrow morning’s porridge, cleaned up, then headed out to Nando’s for a last dinner on the high street. I’m going to miss that delicious chicken.

On the way to Nando’s I stopped by an internet cafe and printed up my boarding pass.

Group 2. Yatta!

Caution: 175 Steps.

 Great Britain, Photography, Travel  Comments Off on Caution: 175 Steps.
Jul 042011
 

The test’s over. My brain still resembles Jell-O, but it’s time to be a tourist.

So let’s start off big. How about the British Museum? Is that big enough for you?

It’s big enough for me.

I headed off to the Russell Square tube station, and encountered a sort of tube station that I haven’t encountered before. There are no escalators, just 3 giant elevators, and a spiral staircase with 175 steps and a warning that was no joke.

When my train pulled in, the access to the lifts elevators was jam-packed. It looked like it would take a while, so like a dummy, I thought, “Well, it’s only 175 steps. How bad can it be?”

Bad.

Very bad.

Remember how I said I’ve seen people make luggage mistakes before? I saw someone make a luggage mistake that looked like it could very well have been fatal– she was trying to lug a giant suitcase up these stairs.

That’s nuts.

I was having a hard time just trying to get my chunky American frame up the stairs. 175 steps… that has to be what? 12 stories? I stopped more and more frequently as I got near the top, because I was starting to see bright lights and hear the voices of what could be long-dead ancestors beckoning.

Turns out it was just the main station.

The downside of my stupid escapade on the stairs was that it took a lot out of me. That was energy and strength that I would need for my assault on the British Museum, which is no less of a monster than the stairs at Russell Square Station.

Getting There is Half the Fun

To get to the museum from the station, I cut straight across Russell Square Park, which is a lovely green area, then dodged the crazy traffic in the circle, walked down a street, turned a corner, and bam! There it was.

It’s huge.

The British Museum is not to be trifled with.

It’s free to get in (you ought to make a donation), but things like maps, guides, and audio guides all cost money. If you want an audio guide, be prepared to leave some sort of photo ID, like a driver’s license or a passport behind.

The museum is camera-friendly. Take pictures of whatever you want. Seriously, go for it. They don’t care one bit. I had fun, because most American and Japanese museums would wig out at that idea.

Here’s the rub– if you take the audio guide and you carry a camera around your neck, you are in for some suffering. I had both, and both annoyed the hell out of me. I wound up never using the guide, anyway, as everything in the museum is well-labeled.

Skip the audio guide, unless you can’t read.

The Treasures of the World–Now the Treasures of Great Britain!

First off I took a look at the treasures of Ancient Greece. They had lots of neat stuff, none of which I can remember the names of. I am a terrible and uncultured person. But it was all very impressive, and I took lots of pictures.

The bits they took from the Acropolis were very moving, as were the sculptures of the heads of the four major philosophers, and the sculpture of Alexander the Great.

Then it was off to Egypt. I was more interested in the sculptures than the mummies, to be honest. I always thought that the obsession with the display of old dead bodies to be kind of gruesome, yet that was the part of the museum that was the most jam-packed. Figures.

I think there should be a rule that any archaeologist that displays a body in a museum also has to be displayed in a museum when they die so hordes of sweaty future tourists can gawk at them.

It’s only fair.

After those two sections, my legs were starting to die off, because this museum is HUGE, and my hiking shoes are 4 years old, and on their way out. I knew I only had one more section left in me, and then I’d have to turn tail and run back.

I decided to head to the Japan section. (Hey, that’s my main interest.) It was a nice display that carries you from the Joumon period all the way to modern Japan.

By then I was totally beat, so it was time to shuffle back to Earls Court.

I went to the office supply store on the high street on the way back to the hotel to buy boxes, packing tape, and a magic marker, because I need to get rid of these books I don’t need. I don’t want to have to carry them back with me on the plane, and I want to have more room for souvenirs.

At least that’s the logic.

Not sure about dinner tonight. Nando’s again? Or maybe just more sandwiches?

Crossed Up at King’s Cross

 Food, Great Britain, Japanese Language, Travel  Comments Off on Crossed Up at King’s Cross
Jul 012011
 

I met up with Michele (pronounced the men’s way, not the women’s way) from Italy today. He’s someone who also posts on the RTK forums, and is really good at Japanese. He’s in town to take the JLPT N1. We had a bit of a mess at first trying to meet up.

We agreed to meet at Kings Cross/Saint Pancras, since that’s the neighborhood where the test is going to take place on Sunday. What neither one of us realized was that there are two national railway stations there: one is called King’s Cross, and one is called Saint Pancras. (Hence the “/” in the name.)

So when I asked him where he was, he said he was in front of the Starbuck’s in the station. That’s odd, I didn’t see a Starbuck’s. But I did see a Burger King. Well, he didn’t see a Burger King at all. So I moved to the wicket in front of platform 2, and he agreed to move in that general direction, thinking that maybe we were just on different floors. We even tried waving. After 10 minutes or so, we finally broke down and started asking around for ideas. Then we found out why we couldn’t see each other.

No, we weren’t in parallel universes, although that would have been far more interesting.

He was in Saint Pancras railway station, and I was in King’s Cross railway station. One is right next to the other.

See? Parallel universes would have been more interesting!

Mitsukoshi and Japan Centre

After finally meeting up, we headed over to the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) campus of the University of London at Vernon Rise, where Sunday’s test will be. It wasn’t too hard to find.

Then it was off to Piccadilly Circus and Mitsukoshi for lunch. Yes, that’s the same Mitsukoshi that’s a famous department store chain in Japan.

Mitsukoshi has a nice restaurant. The food presentation is very attractive, and very standard Japanese. I get the feeling that the intention is to make Japanese tourists feel like they’re “home,” more than it is to bring a taste of Japan to London.

I had the steamed vegetable and sashimi set meal for £14, and that was one of the cheaper ones. It was very good, but not cheap.

After lunch, we did some browsing around Mitsukoshi’s book shop. What’s interesting about Mitsukoshi is that they don’t really sell a lot of “Japanese stuff,” instead they sell a ton of English souvenirs to Japanese tourists.

Again, it’s the whole, “Hey, if you’re Japanese, then this is a store that caters to you” vibe. It was kind of disappointing, really. They had a good book store, but the prices were hideous. It was yet another case of, “Don’t you mean dollars instead of pounds?” A lot of cheap books, 1800 yen books, were going for £35.

Yikes.

After being scared away by the expensive books, we headed over to the Japan Centre, to look at their smaller selection of books. Japan Centre is neat, because they actually have Japanese products.

The downside, again, are some crazy high prices. Also, their book selection is much smaller than Mitsukoshi’s, and the prices aren’t much better.

The upside of Japan Centre is that it has a lot of Japanese products, like food and other things. It also has a restaurant that I’ll have to try later.

We looked around a bit more, and then headed back to the Piccadilly Circus tube station, and called it a day.

I headed back to the room, crashed for a bit, studied some, then headed off to Nando’s, a Portugese-style chicken chain. That’s some good chicken. The store is a little chaotic, but the chicken is tasty. It’s in some kind of sauce, but it’s delicious. The downside is that it’s not too cheap. £9 ($14?) for a meal.

Welcome to London. Empty your wallets, please.

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