Quite a simple day today. As I headed to bed around 6:30pm last night due to being mildly sick, I had accrued ample sleep by around about 1am and thus found it quite difficult to fall back into a dedicated slumber past this point. I did manage to sleep, though, until about 6am when I woke, grabbed my laptop, and headed down to the hostel entrance hall in order to use the WiFi. 8am approached and Batesy and I went to the kitchen in order to ascertain some breakfast. Now, breakfast was included – I knew this from the outset. However upon walking into the kitchen I was dumbfounded – I couldn’t for the life of me see where they kept the plates, bowls and cutlery. I looked around at the five or six others in the small kitchen, and they all seemed to be using different sets. Oh God, I thought. You must have to bring your own. Batesy and I stood there, looking sheepishly at one another for about a minute, neither of us willing to ask the other surrounding backpackers where the utensils were for fear of being ridiculed as newbie travellers. In the end, I decided we should sit for a few minutes and look at our map – a tactic I employed in order to wait until a new person entered the kitchen, and then to observe what they did for utensils.
We did not have to wait long. A German girl entered, headed for the washroom, and pulled a plate and cutlery out of a surprise hidey hole. Epic success. We had maintained the integrity of our travelling self esteem and then devoured a simple yet adequate breakfast.
We started off the day by heading from Queensway on the Tube to Tottenham Court Road, where we walked to the British Museum. Upon entering we saw great articles of huge significance from the Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan, and Mesopotamian civilizations, and bullshit/boring civilizations that nobody cares about like the American Indians. Most epic of these, in my opinion, was the Rosetta Stone. Having learned about this stone from Ancient History it was awe inspiring to stand within its presence. I may be wrong here, but it’s my understanding that without this stone, we would not have any idea how to translate either hieroglyphics or another ancient language, into something we can read (it has a body of text translated in three different languages). We also saw some articles from the Parthenon, Halicanarsoss’ Mausoleum also from Greece, and about a million different Roman jugs. Haha, that’s a funny statement. Anyway, the museum was great. Plus it was free.
We then headed to Piccadilly Circus to purchase tickets for the West End show that we had finally decided to see. Although we hadn’t decided which one to see yet. We thought we’d ask the guy for tickets to our two finalist shows (The Lion King and Les Miserables) and see which one was cheapest and then go for it. We were going to go see it tonight. However, turns out West End shows can still sell out, even 20+ years after they’ve been performing them. So we bought tickets for Les Mis on Tuesday night, and I’m greatly looking forward to it. There’s some prestige involved in watching the world’s longest running show in West End, I think. Plus, the tickets were half the price that we could have bought them online for in Australia. Winrar.
After this, we had our first fast food of the trip – McDonalds. It was tasty. British fries are better than Aussie fries.
After lunch, we went to the National Gallery at Trafalgar Square. Here, we saw paintings by Rembrandt, Titian, Monet, Degas, da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Picasso, and Van Gough. An amazing and somewhat spiritual experience to be standing next to the original Monet’s Waterlilies and Van Gough’s Sunflowers. Breathtaking. Something I’ll always remember.
We then decided to walk to Leicester Square, as we hadn’t yet been there. It’s a simple square, not much to talk about. There’s a statue of Charlie Chaplin there. Oh, and the UK’s biggest and best cinema – the Odeon. We bought tickets to see Avatar in 3D (Matt hadn’t seen it) for 3:45pm. Thing was, it wasn’t yet 3:45pm. It was about 1:45pm. So we had time to kill. We went to Waterstones (biggest bookstore in the UK, where accomplished authors such as J.K. Rowling, and celebrity (aka fraud) authors such as David Beckham come to do their first book signings). Then, we took a bit of a walk on the boardwalk, and found ourselves outside Number 10 Downing Street (Prime Minister’s Residence) for a couple of photos, before heading back up to Leicester Square for the film. Gordon Brown didn’t come out to participate in the photo shoot, but it’s probably a good thing, because I think I would have probably tried to hurt him. The man is just THAT depressing looking.
While we had intended to hit a pub tonight, upon leaving Avatar, Matt reported to me that he felt quite sick. I can only surmise this is because of the lack of originality of storyline from Avatar. Thus we postpone our British Pub experience again, and instead caught the Tube home to Queensway. Tomorrow, we hit Stonehenge, Bath and Salisbury for a bit o’ a day tour. Zach out.
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