Wednesday, Jan. 12 ---
---I awaken on my 22nd, still feeling super after talking to Mand. I'm still so juiced (and a little relieved) that I take my excesses of energy for an early morning run around town. Juices flowing and heart racing, I return to get ready for the day.
With nobody else up, I decide to head down to the city early (we have a meeting at 2) and walk around St. Paul's Cathedral. I studied this, and several dozen other buildings, rather extensively last year, but none of my studies could prepare me for actually seeing it up close and personal.
The building is absolutely gorgeous -- a towering palace full of unspeakable beauty. The views are just too much and I have to sit down to catch my breath. This is definitely one of the highlights of the trip. I walk around the outside, carefully photographing all the key areas, and then I go inside.
For as beautiful as the view was outside, the inside is ten times better. It is utterly amazing -- the high, barrel-vaulted ceilings, the ornate decoration, the enormous, skying dome. It's unbelievable. Feeling a little weak in the knees, I sit down again and take in some of the morning service that is going on.
After I wander about a bit, I decide to head up to the whispering gallery, which is halfway up the dome. The view here is also stupendous as you look down on the sea of chairs and checkboard decorated floor and again are just aghast at how old and beautiful everything is. Turning your view up you get an even more phenomenal view of the dome's interior paintings.
After soaking in the beauties of the whispering galleries, I make the trek up 530 steps to the top of the dome, taking care to hit every single one of them (I don't want to cheat myself, now do I?) It takes a few minutes and I get a kick seeing the older people peeling off from the climbing group and taking a blow on each of the landings -- the numbers increasing with each floor that we surpass. It's kinda like rats flocking to cheese or moths to a flame; all these people desperately in search of that light at the end of the tunnel, this time coming in the form of a cement landing offering a moment to catch one's breath.)
I reach the top after scaling more spiral staircases than I can count and squeezing through the tightest of passageways (I honestly don't think many big-boned people could fit through-- if scrawny little me had trouble, what about someone who weighs a couple hundred pounds more than me? Anyone remember Taft in the bathtub? That's what I thought...)
As I step out of the concrete coffin of the dome and into the open air of the city, I'm slapped in the face with a mighty stiff breeze. The day, despite being rather overcast and cloudy, still offers an unbelievable view of the city. I can see for miles in any direction and, for the third time today, I feel a little weak in the knees. I just can't get over this place -- how beautiful. I think I could leave today and still consider the trip a success thanks to this place.
After I collect myself and take more photos, I descend from my lofty heights, again being mindful to hit every step on the way down (remember -- just like Aerosmith, I don't wanna miss a thing...) and then head over to the Museum of London to reunite with my fellow Americans.
We make our way through the massive (and unbelievably detailed) museum, and as it drags on I become a little bored with the microscopic precision in which they present the city's history. Still, there are some pretty nifty things to be found within.
A brief replay of the experience: there still stands outside the museum a Roman security wall that was built in 200AD to protect the perimeter of the city (a very cool looking, yet rundown thing), the city has been absolutely plagued by fires (I just don't understand this one. There are at least a dozen fires that have decimated the city over the course of time, not counting the whopper of 1666. There were two during the Roman rule, and 7 alone between 1077 and 1135AD where the city basically had to be rebuilt from scratch each time! You'd think after, oh, I don't know, the tenth major fire they'd change things a little? Like I said before, the Brits do NOT like change...)
There were two major breaks from Roman rule, and the second time, when the Romans recapture it, they completely destroy the city as payback. Then rather than hang on to it and rebuild it, they abandon it. (These Europeans are just nuts!) The city lies empty for over 200 years, believe it or not, before the Saxons take over. Then the Scandinavians, then the Normans, Tudors, Stuarts, Victorians... (It's a really long, somewhat boring history. Some of these people held onto the city for all of five minutes, yet they get an entire wing in the museum. Personal favorite? The Horatio "Hot Wings" Buckley wing, named after a fat cross-dressing Viking who, besides a lust for the spicy little bird parts, controlled the city for five minutes after winning it from a rich Japanese proctologist in a cutthroat game of no-limit Texas hold-em (poker, to the uninitiated...) on the decks of the Jolly Beard o' Plenty in 1345. His reign was ended abruptly when he proceeded to lose the city in the very next hand, which was then sold by the doctor to the Anglo-Saxons for a bucket of gold and a healthy stock portfolio. Fate -- she can be the cruelest of mistresses, can't she?)
A couple more interesting items: the names of pagan Anglo-Saxon gods give us the names of our days -- Tiw = Tuesday, Woden = Wednesday, Thunor = Thursday, and Frig (I kid you not) = Friday. The Great Fire of 1666 was started thanks to the King's baker who let a fire start on Pudding Street and ended up destroying 13,200 houses, 400 streets, 44 halls, and 88 churches, but it only killed 8 people! I found out that the huge Irish population in England can be traced back to a great insurgence of people fleeing the potato famine in Ireland, and, maybe the best item of all, I learned that a gong farmer is the person who cleans the shit out of the cess pools. Great stuff, eh?
After this, we return to the flat and decide to go out for a nice birthday dinner for yours truly. We head back to Finnegan's Wake and I get the meal that I've been fiending for for almost a week -- bangers and mash, baby! This, along with a hearty pint of John Smith's, make this quite the lovely birthday feast, and I head back to the apartment happy and full of hoppy Irish goodness. Feeling so good, I turn in for the night after quite a lovely day, indeed...
Thursday, Jan. 13 ---
--- I wake up normally and get ready for my interview at the Daily Express. I take the Tube and get there a half hour early. Those who get nervous for interviews, especially this one, are crazy. I walk in, meet one of the five people I'll be working with, say hello, get a quick tour, and then she says, "Well, that's about it. See you on Monday."
I'm like, uh, say what? That lasted all of ten seconds, so I ask a few questions, mainly, "What the hell am I going to be doing here?" I find out that I'll be trolling the Internet and other publications for story ideas, getting to write some, and then helping on sub-editing and copy editing the page. The latter two especially excite me because I didn't get to do much of that at the paper this semester (I was too busy writing articles for every frigging edition since no one else wanted to write...) So, it looks like I'll actually be learning something new (yippee!).
I stay a little bit longer to go over some old issues to get a feel for the page (which duly impresses the others -- already I'm the sun in their universe...) and I finally realize how to describe it. It's like the Inc. page in the Tribune -- full of short little clips about all things celebrity, be it a movie star, author, cook, politician, etc. and told with a humorous, witty twist. Should be interesting,, but not the type of story I like to write; they're too short and too inconsequential. I like to weave stories with a little meat, gradually spinning out a tale with a little more bite. But, I'll give it a chance. You never know.
After this I head back to the flat and we traipse off to the storied department store Harrod's. Holy bejeezus, this place is huge. We get there and begin looking around. There are a ton of people here, more so than usual, from what I gather, because of their annual sale (which, I'll have you know, isn't all that great for the non-Monopoly bank-rolled among us, i.e. everyone. Sure, you can save a couple hundred bucks on the things you buy, but they still cost you several hundred bucks more than they're worth.
Case in point, the silverware collections they had. They come in these really nice boxes, full of plush material and the silverware itself is the shiniest, most beautiful thing you've ever seen (the spoons were so huge and shiny all I wanted to do was eat some cereal with it. That would have been great...), and then you see the price tag. As consciousness fades and you climb towards that light at the end of the tunnel, the last thing that flashes before your eyes isn't your childhood trips to summer camp or the faces of your loved ones, but rather the price tag for this case of chowing utensils -- TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR SILVERWARE??? eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee... flatline...
Anyways, after this bout of sticker shock, we continue walking around and I begin to become dazed -- this place is too much. They have everything you could ever want. If it's not here, it's not anywhere. They have china, clothes, a full bookstore, an electronics department, a pet store, a toy store, a sporting goods department, etc. I spend half the time walking through the food area marveling at the beauty of everything. They have mountains of delicious looking chocolates, piles of candies, a zillion different cuts and types of meat, fish, salads, fruits, vegetables, etc. I just can't get over it (or the prices. You're really going to pay for that hankering for brown shrimp or New Zealand quail -- the former costing 40 bucks for a mere pound!)
Amidst all this culinary confusion they have restaurants serving various types of dishes with equally extravagant prices. They have a sushi bar, a seafood bar, a deli (with a 26 dollar reuben! That better be the best damned reuben ever, or there'd be trouble. It better massage your stomach and intestines on the way through, or something. If it comes out the other side and my colon isn't completely at ease, I'm taking it back...) a butcher shop, oh brother! I could go on all day!
After becoming tired with the sheer immense nature of it all, I look for my group for about an hour and realize I've either been abandoned (at which point I will begin to cry and wail) or I'm just never going to find them even if they're still here (I decide it's probably a mix of the two, only to later find out that it was just the former.)
On the way back I cash in 40 bucks worth of traveler's checks only to get 23 pounds -- GOD I love the exchange rate. I basically just threw one of those things away. That sucks. I head back, grab some grub, and then hear that people are going on a Mayfair walking tour. It costs 2 pounds to do, but I decide to try and go gratis.
Luckily for me, some people don't show up, so I get to go on the tour for free! We walk around the Mayfair area of London, said to be the richest area of town (although you wouldn't know it from looking at the buildings, kinda like the Golden Ghetto that we live in -- it looks like a dump, yet the weekly rent costs you ten times more than you'll make in your entire lifetime.)
Some cool things that I learn -- I learn who invented the tie and the tuxedo (Beau Brummel), I learn what the famous area Piccadilly is named for (back in the old day, people used to wear frilly ruffs around their necks and the Piccadill was what held them up and made them look perky. The man who invented them lived in present day Piccadilly, and the area was then called Piccadilly Whore because, apparently, that's what he was, trying to sell his goods to anyone that would listen. The people dropped the 'Whore' over time (and in the end, don't we all?) and kept the 'Piccadilly' instead. Interesting, eh?)
We also learned of the most haunted house in London (several people have died there, one or two jumping out the windows and being impaled on the fence -- it's now a book store. Now to the average American, I know this sounds like a far scarier place, but trust me, it isn't.), the scandalous Lord Lukin (he allegedly murdered his maid whom he thought to be his wife. He then fled the country and hasn't been seen since! He's the most sought after man in the country.), and that prostitution is legal as long as you're not selling it on the streets (so they get around this by putting phone numbers up all over the place, putting red lights in their windows (we saw some in this ultra-rich area of town) and some still stand on the corners -- three members of our group have actually been propositioned by them, only one of which accepted (he says it hurts when he pees, now. I told him it's probably just the water...)
The May fair (after which the Mayfair area is named -- wonder how they came up with that one...) used to be a big gala that attracted people of all classes, but gradually degraded into a spectacle of public debauchery and prostitution (sounds like New Orleans!) The city tried to stop having the event, but the organizers had a contract with the city and so kept on having it, but it gradually petered out in popularity.
Finally, we stopped at the bar I Am the Only Running Footman, previously the longest pub name in all of London (Now something else is, but I can't recall its name -- it was too long...) The interesting thing is, a running footman, back when the city didn't have street lights and paved roads, used to run up and down the street with his torch, carefully lighting the way for the horsedrawn carriages so they could avoid any dangerous holes. The staff of his torch, interestingly enough, was filled with eggnog so he could have some refreshing gulps of grog in between his running. (Obey your thirst)
Frozen to the bone (this whole tour was outside and it was damned cold out there) we trudge back to Knaresborough and I crawl under the covers, desperately trying to drum up some heat, and then turn in for the night.