I Usually Don’t Like Baths

7/1/10: London, England

Today is a sad day. LeBron is no longer a Cavalier. (Well, at least for the time being.)

Oh, and it’s the last full day on our honeymoon. I’ve told myself that there will be plenty of time to reminisce in the coming days and weeks, so I’m going to try to avoid doing that here. But, wow, what a ten months we’ve had! On September 10, 2009 we slept overnight in London Heathrow to kick off our trip. Today, July 1, 2010, we returned.

This Giraffe Juice and Coffee Bar marks the beginning and end of our trip.

Our very first night.

And we're back one more time.

Although our trip has come full circle, we would be fools if we didn’t learn something along the way. Our very first night was cold, it was loud, it was uncomfortable. It just wouldn’t make sense to sleep in the same spot again. Today we slept with the other seasoned travelers:

Long benches in warm hallways are the way to go.

But that’s the last of the reminiscing, for now. We had a big day today: we saw Stonehenge!

I’m a big fan of the idea of Stonehenge, but a very small fan of how it has been set up for tourists. Thousands of tourists shuffle around an ovular track that never comes closer than 30 feet from the rocks themselves, and it appears that every single tourist takes the exact same pictures. Audio guides are handed out, but you never really get the full feel of the site. Apparently up until the late 1800s most visitors actually chipped off parts of the rocks as souvenirs, and up until the past few years tourists abused the privilege of walking through the site by touching the stones. Thus, there we were in the mob of folks walking dutifully around the track.

Following Stonehenge our bus took us to our very last touristy spot of the trip: the historical town of Bath.

The famous Roman baths, with a tiny Zhou in the background.

Georgian architecture.

The River Avon.

Flowers adorned almost every single building and lamppost.

One of the many lions scattered about town in a charity art exhibit.

Bath was a beautiful city – the nicest city beginning with ‘B’ that we’ve visited on this trip – and a great way to end our stay in England. What we had heard was a gloomy, rainy, overcast country never lived up to the hype. We didn’t see a drop of rain or even a hint of a dark cloud. It must have been the travel gods way of saying, “You guys had a great trip, and we thank you for not following the stereotypical obnoxious American way.” Because as soon as we arrived in Heathrow for the night, the skies opened up and it rained.
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Ohio Picture: Our final O H I O was our toughest – it took me way too long to track down people to help us out, and after all that you can’t see Stonehenge very well anyway.

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Picture of the Day: As if visiting the Sherlock Holmes Museum and Harry Potter’s platform 9 3/4, Zhou found one more of her heroes: Jane Austen.

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Two Days of Plays in London

6/29/10 – 6/30/10: London, England

Fact: As our trip progressed, we got lazier and lazier and clearly didn’t make the most of our time. Remember the WOLV?

Fiction: Cool Runnings was not snubbed by voters of the Academy in 1994.

Fact: It has set in that London is our last stop on the trip, as we haven’t stopped being touristy since we got here.

The last 48 hours have been one big continuation of where we left off with Zhou’s post yesterday. We know that this is our last chance to see a foreign country on our honeymoon, so we’ve pushed the WOLV out of our minds and have gotten busy. We wake up early every day and go to bed late every night. In between, we get things done. I would try to describe our accomplishments of the past two days, but it would take far too long. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Yes we know the Muffin Man, who lives on Drury Lane.

These are the former homes of Virginia Woolf and George Bernard Shaw.

The beautiful gardens in Regents' Park.

Zhou's hero #1: Sherlock Holmes.

Zhou's hero #2: Harry Potter.

Not to be confused with the ingenious Rube Goldberg-type game

The title pretty much sums up the play.

You never know when four people without cell phones will show up.

The highlight of our short stop in the Science Museum.

Our final trip to the theater.

You can see Zhou in our private box in the lower left.

The Marble Arch of Hyde Park.

We just happened to stroll through the park during a sold-out Kings of Leon concert.

In all I estimated we walked over ten miles and in between we sat down to watch three of London’s most famous shows: The Mousetrap, War Horse and The Lion King. Add this to our viewing of Avenue Q, and I believe that we are official connoisseurs of the British theater. With that in mind, I’ll rank the four plays we saw here, and throw in one we didn’t see just because I feel like I’m entitled to.

1) Avenue Q: As Zhou mentioned previously, it was “almost pant-wettingly funny,” almost being the key word. It really was incredible what the actors were able to do with the puppets, even if there were a few moments that were so awkwardly risque that I felt embarrassed to be seen in the audience.

2) War Horse: It was a bit longer than it probably needed to be, but I sat in awe for the entire 165 minutes at how lifelike the life-size horse puppets seemed. Their ears twitched, they whinnied, they galloped, they were even ridden by the actors. You really have to see it to believe it. I’m not a big fan of war stories or horse stories, but this was fantastic.

3) The Lion King: When this show came to Charlotte two summers ago, Zhou and I snagged third row, center tickets and it was one of the most memorable things I’ve seen. While you can’t screw up the awesomeness of this show, the British version wasn’t nearly as good. The sound, the lighting and the actors were all a couple notches below the Charlotte show. On top of that, it was just plain weird to hear a British Simba.

4) Les Miserables: Ok, so we didn’t see this show itself, but we saw the line that formed after the show of people waiting for Nick Jonas autographs. And any show with Nick Jonas can’t be all that good. However, it is Les Mis, so I bumped it a slot in the rankings based on name alone.

5) The Mousetrap: The theater was hot, the seats were uncomfortable and I was tired. I slept through most of the first act and woke up with an ache in my back and a pool of sweat in my lap. The second act kept me on the edge of my seat, and although I didn’t solve the mystery before the answer was revealed, I did enjoy the process. (Zhou, she who was awake the entire show, did solve it.)
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Pictures of the Day: Quick quiz! Who are Zhou and I trying to imitate in the below pictures? (Answers at bottom.)

Answer: Zhou is puzzling over a case a la Sherlock Holmes, and I am pumping out a sweet saxophone solo just like the saxophonist for Gerry Rafferty.

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We’re Just Two Little Kids

6/28/10: London, England

This morning started off with a leisurely walk along the Thames River. As Kevin so aptly put it, “If the Thames River didn’t run through London, it wouldn’t be special.” But even if the dirty Thames isn’t anything special to look at, there are lots of things on it that are worth seeing.

Westminster Abbey.

The Houses of Parliament.

Black Rod's garden entrance.

Sarah told us about some of the weirder English government traditions. Apparently Black Rod is some person whose job is, once a year, to knock on the door of the House of Lords, announce the Queen and ask if she can come in. The person who answers the door then says NO to the Queen and slams the door in Black Rod’s face. I asked Sarah why it is that they keep doing this every year and she just shrugged and said, “It’s a tradition.” And people think American politics is crazy!

Um yes, I was trying to get this other guy in the picture on purpose.

Ok...no, I wasn't.

The famous London Eye.

The Millennium Bridge.

A piano/art exhibit.

After our walk along the river, we went to visit the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum. The only problem was that the Natural History Museum was so awesome that we spent all afternoon there and didn’t make it anywhere else. The place was crowded with tons of groups of schoolkids, but don’t worry, we pushed them out of the way to make sure we could see all the exhibits.

Deep ocean fishes.

Petey the squid!

Not sure what came over me.

The Natural History Museum in London also has a humongous collection of pickled animals. It was simultaneously disgusting and extremely fascinating.

I think these are fish?

Snake in a jar.

When we finally tore ourselves away from the games and displays, it was time to meet a couple of friends. You might remember Chris and Marija from Nepal (where we hiked together for a few days) and from Vietnam (where we stalked them – successfully!). This was our first time seeing them on their own turf, after they finished their own around-the-world trip. We (coincidentally) were staying at a place only a mile from their apartment, and it turns out that they didn’t mind us stalking them (in Vietnam OR in London) so we went over to their place and had dinner together.

Before we left on this trip, Kevin said to me that one of his goals was to meet a lot of new people and make some new friends. Whenever he said that I remembered thinking that I had a lot of goals for the trip, but making new friends was definitely towards the bottom. But now that we’re nearing the end of this trip and I look back on everything we’ve done, I’m realizing that it wouldn’t have been the same without the people we’ve met along the way. It’s helped me take home yet another life lesson. If I can keep in touch with all of the friends that I already have and just add on more along the way, I think my life will be fantastic.
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Picture of the Day: Gemstones from the Natural History Museum.

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Conversations 101

6/26/10: London, England

To Joey Tribbiani, London is just “London, baby!” It’s the city of tall British flag hats, meetings with Sarah Ferguson, going into the map and Chandler being Westminster crabby. To us though, London is much more than that. It’s actually playing a huge role in our lives as travelers: it’s our transition period back into real life.

Let’s face it, you would not want to hang out with us right after we’d spent four months in non-English speaking countries, more than two months of which were in underdeveloped areas. We wouldn’t be able to hold a conversation. We wouldn’t know what to do with toilet paper if there was no trash can around. We wouldn’t drink anything that didn’t come in a tightly sealed plastic bottle. My hair and facial hair would both be out of control, and I wouldn’t know what to do about it.

Today’s lesson in adapting back into the world we left ten months ago: talking to people we know.

Meet Nick and Sarah.

We met Nick and Sarah on our overland tour through Africa at the start of our trip. Nick lives in the Barbados but has been traveling off and on for over a year, and this was his last day. Sarah lives just outside London and has contributed to society through the form of a job ever since Africa. Both are very fluent in English and I assume they would both slap you if you were being an incoherent idiot.

In order to block out all extraneous English surroundings and concentrate on the conversation at hand, we went to a Chinese restaurant for lunch. It was incredibly hard for me not to lead in with the standard greeting:

“So, where are you from?”
“How long are you in town for?”
“Have you been traveling for a long time?”

I know the answers to all these questions, and by this point in the post, you do too. So I had to dig a little deeper, back to conversations from last summer.

“So, how’s work?”
“Are you still seeing so-and-so?”
“Any big plans for the summer?”

(Other questions I remembered usually revolved around whether Skyline Coneys were better than B-Dubs chicken wings, but I sadly filtered those out.)

I quickly found out that the key to a good conversation lies in what you’re doing when you’re not talking. You should be listening. In traveling conversations, it’s very easy to put yourself on auto-pilot and not soak in anything the other person says. Many times I have found myself guilty of such an offense. But in the real world, you can’t really move the conversation forward without paying any attention.

“Wait, Sarah, you were promoted? Congrats! Does the new position have a lot more responsibilities?”
“Nick, you’re thinking about moving to London? Why would you ever leave the Barbados?”

It may sound so simple to all of you, and I’m sure the concept was simple to me too a year ago. It was also simple ordering a milkshake a year ago, yet for some reason the last three milkshakes I’ve had on the road didn’t contain any ice cream. On the other hand, a year ago I didn’t know Angkor Wat from Ang Lee; or Ha Long Bay from Hudson Bay.

Looking back on the day, things actually went surprisingly smoothly, although Zhou and Sarah did negotiate some souvenirs they bought (I feel like that is more frowned upon here). I think I’m ready to take the next step: learning to use a credit card again.
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Picture of the Day: We tried to get tickets to see a show in Shakespeare’s Globe, but everything was already sold out for this week. Don’t these people know he was a fraud?!?

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Not as Advertised

6/25/10: London, England

I’ve made a startling discovery in the last months of the trip. I love big cities. This surprises me for a few reasons. 1) I hate crowds. 1a) I hate it when strangers brush up against me or touch me unexpectedly. 2) I am afraid of loud noises. 3) I don’t like crossing busy streets. But despite all these things, I loved Tokyo, I loved Sydney, I loved Madrid – and I love London. It surprised me too, believe me, but it’s our first day out in the city (Wimbledon doesn’t count), and there is so much to do here. Luckily, we have a lot of time.

Our first stop of the day: Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery. Most of the museums in London are free, including the National Gallery, and when we walked in, the first thing we saw was a big clear donation box with a sign saying “Please give ₤3 to help keep this museum free.” The irony.

Giant ship in a bottle at Trafalgar Square.

I can only assume this is Trafalgar, whoever he was.

Kevin tames a lion.

Trafalgar Square reminded me a bit of some of the other plazas we’ve seen, with one very notable exception. It is forbidden to feed the pigeons. Good idea, London!

Then we walked over to St. James’s Park. Not as famous as Hyde park, but beautifuller.

Look, it's the London Eye!

A bird with very, very strange feet.

We kept walking, and lo and behold, we ran into Buckingham Palace.

Hanging out by the Queen's house.

The Queen Victoria Memorial in front of the Palace.

Hi Liz!

Poor neglected Mr. Turtle makes an appearance.

We missed the changing of the guards by about a half hour, and we didn’t get to take any pictures with the men in the funny hats. If you asked me before this what things I associated with the city of London, I would have said men with the funny hats, double decker buses and red telephone booths.

One out of three ain't bad.

Then we walked up to the British Museum.

Me and my gummy bears are excited about the museum.

The British Museum was really cool, one of the best museums we’ve been in.

Wait, are we in Egypt again?

The Egyptian section is particularly large. Apparently back when a lot of excavations were being done in Egypt, some British archaeologist got permission from the Egyptian government to remove any artifacts he wanted. So he did, and then he sold them all to the British Museum.

The Rosetta Stone. I'm not sure how they got this. They only have a replica in Egypt.

We bought a copy of this papyrus painting in Cairo.

I’ll reveal my ignorance by telling you this, but I always thought that the Rosetta Stone had a lot of different languages on it. I basically thought it was a magic stone with the same thing written in ten or fifteen different languages, and that’s what helped us decipher the ancient languages. But it’s really a big stone plaque with a decree written on it in just three different languages: Hieroglyphics, Egyptian demotic script (the standard written Egyptian language) and Greek. They did use the stone to help decipher Hieroglyphics, so at least I wasn’t too far off on that account.

The British Museum also has a fairly large (and free!) collection of mummies. We didn’t stay in those rooms for too long. Being around dead people in glass cases sort of freaks me out.

Cleopatra is in there. Shudder.

They have also somehow managed to acquire many of the sculptures that used to decorate the Parthenon.

Part of the east pediment.

They also have a moai! When we first saw this, we both thought the same thing: “Wow, that thing is tiny.”

He's quite a little dude.

After the British Museum, we went to catch the matinee showing of Avenue Q. We bought the cheapest tickets possible (₤10), but when we arrived at the theater, we got upgraded to the eighth row. One ad had billed it as “pant-wettingly funny,” but that was an exaggeration. I enjoyed myself immensely, but I didn’t wet my pants at all.

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Picture of the Day: Flowers from the “South Africa Landscape Exhibit” at the British Museum.

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