Yea, very efficient holiday, that was. Not that I complain, but I think I will dedicate my next vacation for doing not much at all. :)
We got really lucky with the volcano in Iceland spewing smoke and chaos all over Europe. Heathrow airport was closed a day after I met with Chie there, and during the most our following journey we would see hordes of frustrated tourists and other travelers trying to find any alternative ways of getting where they needed to go to. Luckily we had reserved train tickets and hotel rooms for the most critical days already beforehand; the London-Paris Eurostar train ticket queue at St. Pancras train station, for instance, snaked all they way through the station and to the metro station outside. Got some long looks, when we just waltzed past it, holding our pre-bought tickets.
Anyways, London.
Out of all the places foreign that we visited this time, I think London is probably the closest thing to being "my type".
Went to see the musical Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty's Theater (no photos, sorry). A truly mind-blowing show. I've never really been to big musicals before, because thinking "potentially boring" and seeing the general price of the tickets hadn't really encouraged me to broaden my views, but now I'm really happy that I went, and will definitely go again. (Just too bad that I started from what was probably the best show of them all.)
Just our luck, most of Europe seemed to be under renovation. A good 75% of the famous buildings were at least partially covered in scaffolding like this wall at the Piccadilly Circus. It's a choice between this or the tourist hordes of the summer, really.
Since both me and Chie were mostly interested in museums and such, I think we chose well. We rarely had to really queue for anything. This here is the British Museum. Spent a really nice day browsing through it.
Rosetta Stone.
It's a nice statue, but...
Oh-kay..
This little dude is all ready to rock.
Didn't know the Easter Islanders made pocket-size versions of these statues, too.
This story is told and re-told in a lot of ancient art. Centaurs as guests in a wedding party get drunk and decide to steal all the women for themselves, resulting in a fight with the human men. I've seen a lot of really nice statues, paintings and whatnot depicting that one brawl all over Europe.It's really too bad that Christian art pushed these classic stories to the background for such a long time. You see one picture of Jesus or Maria, and you've seen them all.
I wonder if I could afford to buy a statue like this for my garden. :)
They really went all out, looting the Egyptian stuff and hauling it all over the continent.Oh, a funny thing we noticed: most of the big state-owned museums and the like had free entry, but anything that had the smell of the royal family on it, cost an arm and a leg. How much can Corgi food really cost?
Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, London Eye and a double-decker bus, all in one photo.
Big Ben viewed over Thames. Notice that parts of the Palace of Westminster are under renovation. (yay)
Baker Street tube station and its Sherlock Holmes theme.
221b Baker Street, the Sherlock Holmes museum. Half the shops on the street are named Sherlock Holmes this and that, from cafeterias to souvenir boutiques to self-service laundry shops to fish'n'chips outlets.
Just one of the thousands swarming the Buckingham Palace during the guard change.
Blargh. That reminds me, what a silly holiday: I didn't get drunk during it, not once!
Fish and chips, a meat pie, peas, mashed potatoes, nice pint of stout - not even the Union Jack is this British!
5 Abbey Road. I didn't actually know the significance of the place, when Chie dragged me there, never been a Beatles fan, see.
This is quite enough of a pose for me. Took plenty of pictures of Chie walking across the road, though. (but not posting them here without her permission)
Tower Bridge.
Had they decided to open the bridge at that moment, I would have found out, whether watching all those Jean-Claude Van Damme movies had taught me anything or not. (Someone once made a Jean-Claude Van Damme flash game. JC had exactly two moves in it: jump and make a split.)
It was a really pretty day. Almost disappointing for someone looking to experience England.
The engines that move the bridge, when they open it to allow large ships to pass.
View from the top of the bridge.
Shakespeare's Globe Theater.
