London was great! Not sure if it rivals Berlin (oh Berlin, how I miss you), but good times were had. Plus, they speak English in London, so that's one point Berlin doesn't have.
It's nice to go to a city you've visited before; it kind of takes the pressure off. You don't have the feeling that you absolutely have to visit the top 10 tourist sights, since you've already seen them. You don't have to spend half an hour figuring out where you are, where you want to go, how you're going to get there, and how to ask the guy behind the counter for the ticket you want. Fitting everything in doesn't matter as much, you're just relaxed and there to have a good time, which makes it more likely that you will actually have a good time. What I'm trying to say here is that I really didn't do very much in London, and I'm totally okay with that.
What I did do was meet up with Mandy, a former Wittenberger who's doing her PhD at University College London. We got to talk about Witt, good times as Fulbrighters, and the perils of academia. (And I was very, very envious that she is fully funded. Grr.) We took the bus up to St. Paul's Cathedral but didn't go in because it costs 10 pounds. (For a church! Prime example of how London is overpriced.) We wandered around for a bit, then went to the Tower of London, which was awesome! From the outside, it just looks like a fortress, but there is a regular complex in there, including 13 towers which held prisoners, a courtyard, the house that was built for Anne Boleyn (but wasn't finished before she was beheaded), the central White Tower which was home to kings and queens, the chapel where many, many (mostly unidentified) people are buried, and the building housing the crown jewels. We had a tour by one of the Yeoman Warders, who clearly had done this a million times, but was just as enthusiastic this time as he was the previous 999,999 times. Did you know that the Beefeaters live in the Tower? And that their dress uniforms cost 10,000 pounds?
our excellent tour guide
After hanging out in the Tower for a good 4 hours, we then went for dinner at a Pakistani restaurant, which was delicious... I am totally going to miss this kind of food when I go home. And then we had to book it across the city so I could make my 7.30 bus: from the bus, to the Tube, to the coach station, to running through the coach station, to sprinting across the parking lot... I made it to the bus at 7.29. Whew.
So now it's Sunday night, we get an essay assigned tomorrow and I'm dreading this week. But of course I'll keep you all updated on that, because it's NaBloPoMo and I have to.
Two more pictures of the Tower of London for good measure. Here's the White Tower:
... and a shot of where some of the Beefeaters live, complete with laundry:
