Saturday, March 27, 2010

Lily and London!

So of course after I write a post about how lovely things are something horrible happens: right before heading out to watch the England vs. Scotland rugby game I trip with laptop in hand. When I turned my laptop on to see if it was alright all I got was a gray screen telling me that the wiring in the monitor was no longer as it should be. Thus Lily's visit was a little less enjoyable then it could have been as I was a) spending a lot of time trying to find a way to fix my computer, b) sending frantic emails to my father, and c) studying in the library for exams. Incidents like these really make you miss home as this sort of thing would have been a lot easier to handle if I wasn't abroad. Also, without a computer I didn't really have any connection to home. However, I now have a beautiful, shiny, new laptop and all is well. So onto Lily's visit and adventures in London!

On Saturday I picked Lily up from Waverley Train Station and then got her settled in at my flat. For dinner we went to a place called Susie's Wholefood Diner which is a vegetarian restaurant set up sort of like a small, homey cafeteria. The food was pretty good, though at £6.50 it is not somewhere I can go all the time like the Mosque Kitchen. I got a carrot, squash, couscous mash that despite the odd mixture of foods was quite nice, an "enchilada" which was good when I didn't think about it in the context of the enchiladas I eat at home, and a pasta salad. All in all I enjoyed my meal and the homey atmosphere.

After dinner Lily and I went to some pubs with Lee. We tried to go to Brass Monkey (a pub with a back room that has lots of cushions), but being a Saturday night it was super full, so we popped over to the next closest pub, Aspen. Nothing to exciting to report there. They had the usual array of drinks accompanied by speakers blasting the top 100 and TV screens everywhere playing the weird Cartoon Network cartoons for 10-14 year olds. As soon as we finished our drinks we went to another pub, The Green Mantle. This pub was much more my style: a cozy, neighborhood pub with live music and well priced drinks. We stayed there for a while and got talking with some of the musicians.

Sunday Lily and I went to The Green Mantle to watch the Italy vs. France rugby game. Rugby is way more fun then American football. In rugby they lift people up by their shorts! It is an actual move, though I don't remember exactly what the purpose of it is. Near the end of the game the sound was turned off, however, because Sunday afternoons at The Green Mantle are dedicated to traditional fiddle music, so Lily and I just decided to make up our own commentary for the game. After the game we were joined by Lily's Australian friend Karl. We sat around talking and drinking for a bit and then headed to the Mosque Kitchen for dinner. Later that night Lee, Lily, Karl and I went to a pub on Grassmarket called Biddy Mulligans. The pub was Irish themed, but the atmosphere felt somewhat cheesy. The drink variety wasn't that impressive and was somewhat expensive. That combined with Lee being tired lead to Lee and I leaving the pub early.

Monday Lily and I got a late start, but we spent the afternoon walking up and down the Royal Mile. We went to the castle and we went to Parliament and Holyrood park. For dinner we went to Bella Italia (the Italian restaurant Lee and I went to in Glasgow) and spent the rest of the evening watching Friends with my Phoebe, Phoebe's friend who was visiting, and Aby.

The rest of the week mostly involved me going to class and studying during the day, leaving Lily to her own devices, and going to pubs at night. On Wednesday (St. Patrick's Day!) Lily and I went to the Blind Poet and a place called Opium. The Blind Poet had a nice variety of ciders and had big comfortable couches everywhere. The atmosphere and the people were quite friendly, definitely worth another visit. Opium was not exactly what I would call a pub. There was a bar downstairs and a dance floor upstairs, and most of the people there were young and quite drunk. Although we ended up staying there until 3:00 in the morning I didn't really like the general vibe of the place and don't think I will be going back.

Thursday evening Lily, Lee, and I met one of Lily's other Edinburgh friends, Josie. We drank Tennants at her new flat, and then headed out to the Three Sisters, a very popular pub on Cowgate. The Three Sisters is a popular spot to watch rugby games, and I can understand why as it is pretty big pub. There was live music playing when we got there, so we sipped our drinks and listened to the show. When the show ended and it was getting close to closing time Lee and I decided to head out.

Friday Lily and I caught a 3:00 train to London. We got into King's Cross around 7:30 and were starving so we bought some fries at Burger King. We sat around eating them and watching a one footed pigeon hobble around. For only having one foot it was pretty good at maneuvering. Then we took the Tube to Hyde Park where our hostel was. We had a bit of trouble finding it, however, so eventually we had to hail a taxi. We got there, checked in, put the sheets on our beds, and then went in search of some real food. We stopped at one of the first places we came to, a Malaysian and Chinese food restaurant, and ordered the vegetarian platter. The vegetarian platter consisted off mini egg rolls, mini samosas, weird vegetable-stuffed fried things, and mini cheese jalapaneo poppers, of course. It was not much food and rather expensive, but it hit the spot. After dinner we went back to the hostel, talked some, and then went to sleep.

Saturday morning we woke up and took a walking tour around London. We saw the following things: the Wellington Arch (dedicated to the Duke of Wellington who beat Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo), Buckingham Palace, the Place where the Princes' live, Hampton Court (the Tudor castle where King Henry the VIII lived), Pall Mall (famous street in London where many of London's elite live), the exclusive gentleman's club Winston Churchill was a member of, Trafalgar Square, an old World War II bunker, the house of the royal guard, the London Eye, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and Parliament. For lunch we went to Leicester Square and ate Dorrito nachos at a pub called Vibe. Then we walked around Chinatown and got dumplings and bubble tea. Afterward we headed to Oxford Circus and spent some time at Top Shop and Primark. I didn't get anything at Primark, but I did get these excellent socks at Top Shop that have red telephone booths on them.

After a long shop, we dropped our purchases at the hostel and then headed to the neighborhood Lily had lived in when she was abroad. We went to this delicious Thai restaurant for dinner, and then went to her old dorm to met up with some of her friends. After hanging out for a while waiting for everyone to get ready we finally headed out to a pub thanks greatly to a fire alarm. The first pub we went to was a live music pub, but the place was full so we walked for a while to another one. The second pub was full of the closest thing England has to frat boys, and had a horrible band playing. Picture a 45 year-old man who thinks he is still young and punk rock singing crude, crude lyrics. Soon after the band started the once packed pub had cleared out quite a bit. While initially we were enjoying making fun of the band, after a while we couldn't stand it anymore so we left. At that point Lily and I decided to head back to our hostel, and so we took the night bus home. This was quite an adventure as we didn't quite know what buses to take or which stop we needed to get off at to change buses. Luckily, both of the bus drivers we had were very helpful and nice, and we made it back to the hostel in one piece. Though when we got off the last bus we went running madly for our hostel as we both had to pee so much it hurt.

Sunday we spent most of the day at Camden Market, an outdoor market with lots of antiques, clothes, and food. The best thing we saw had to be this necklace:


Yeah. I'm pretty sure that's a caveman. After eating delicious veggie burgers and wandering around the market a bit longer we went to the graveyard where Karl Marx is buried. We sat on Herbert Spencer's grave and observed Karl Marx's grave and then walked around for a while. Afterward we went and sat in a nearby park. For dinner we went to Chinatown, and then we headed back to the hostel and played Scrabble and watched Jaws until it was time for me to leave to catch my bus.

My bus left London at 11:00 in the evning and got me back to Edinburgh a little after 7:00 the next morning. I was able to sleep most of the bus ride, waking up only twice: once at 3:00 am when the bus stopped at a rest stop and once a 6:00 when we were passing by rolling green hills in the Scottish countryside. I was only briefly able to appreciate their beauty in the golden morning light before falling back asleep again.

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