London/Barcelona

So it has taken me a reeeeally long time to write in here.....I seem to have a lot less spare time floating around these days than I thought I would. There is lots to catch you up on just with normal life in Denmark, but that will have to wait because right now I want to tell you about my trip to London and Barcelona last week!

It was truly divine. I liked them both even more than I thought I would...which was quite a lot to begin with. Ok so I'll start with London.

Leaving Copenhagen early saturday morning, we flew through Malmo in Sweden (cheap tickets) in London! After several hours on the plane and buses, we were let off right accross the street from the London Beatles store on Baker's Street, which immediately caught my eye of course, so we immediately went in and asked for directions to Abbey Road, which we knew was close by. The smirking store clerk gave us directions and following them we found ourselves at the very place! I couldn't stop grinning and I'm sure it was pretty annoying. The mixture of truly being in London for the first time and being on the way to a place of so much importance to my childhood whimsies, was just too much to handle without grinning like an idiot. We took lots of pictures of course, much to the chagrin/amusement of the cars trying to pass by at the time. We didn't feel too bad though because over the space of about 15 minutes we saw 4 or 5 larger groups of tourists also passing by and doing exactly the same thing.

After that we hitched a ride on the tube (being sure to mind the gap) on our way to Notting Hill, also fairly close by. On the way we stumbled upon Portabello Road, a crowded market full of "anything and everything a chap can unload"....yes I was singing the song the whole time. Notting Hill was a beautiful part of town, where I could have sworn that I saw Hugh Grant stepping out of several different doorways.

This is where we kind of went into hyperdrive mode and everything gets a little blurry. So from here I will just list a few more of the high points in no particular order...: Kensington Park/Palace where (apparently) Princess Diana lived; Buckingham Palace (where Jen fell out of favor with some unfortunate birds who happened to be in a tree directly above her head...); King's Cross Station, where we found a special platform marked "9 3/4" with a cart stuck in the wall under it; the Big Ben of course (both by night and by day); also Westminster Abbey where we attended Evensong and got in for free (you have to pay otherwise), we unfortunately couldn't find Chaucer's tomb though I'm told it's in there somewhere. The inside of the Abbey was BEAUTIFUL and the choir was made of men and fidgety little boys who reminded me strikingly of Nathan (my brother). We also attended Evensong at St. Paul's Cathedral, consequently seeing that for free as well, and though it was beautiful as well, I liked Westminster Abbey more. We saw Trafalger Square at night where we briefly made friend with two (slightly drunk?) Welshmen who took pictures for us, and also went to Trafalger Square by day and found out why the National Gallery is free (it's incredibly boring). We did find some more interesting museums for free though, especially the Museum of Natural History (they have an awesome lifesized robot T-Rex), and the Albert and Victoria Museum which is full of pretty much anything history and art related under the sun, and if we had been really ambitious museum goers, we would have had an excellent several hours there (hyperdrive mode only allowed for about half an hour). The buildings for these museums were something to behold in and of themselves, and Kensington itself, which is the area of town where we found the museums, is a great spot close to Hyde Park, with a the "Imperial College" close by (I found myself jealous of the students) and also the Albert Hall which I dragged Jen to so that I could take a picture and tell fellow Beatles fans that I had been there. Hyde Park was neat too. I found out after we had walked all through it that it's the spot where President Hinckley preached on a soapbox during his mission. It was also neat to watch the mixture of people there, both the hip hoppers and the roller bladers and a fascinating mix thereof, as well as the hoity toity looking crews with their fancy little tables on the other side of the water.

Ok I'm just stopping to catch my breath for a minute....no, that's not all we saw in London. That's about half. Yes we're crazy and I have no idea how we fit it all in.

SO...continuing. We saw the Tower of London both by day and by night, and I'll have to say I did like it better by night because the lights are GORGEOUS...but after about 10 attempts to get a good picture of it I gave up (something about London at night didn't agree with my camera) so you can't see it, sorry. We had a little confusion about the London Bridge and the Tower bridge, because apparently they aren't the same thing. The actual London bridge is pretty nondescript, and I'm not sure which bridge the song (falling down, falling down, falling down....) actually refers to. The Tower of London itself was also really neat. It's a fascinating structure that started being built in very early medieval times and continued being built upon and changed for hundreds of years. I wanted to go inside but it was horrendously expensive so I didn't.

We also toured Camden market which I liked very much, though it was on a Monday so a lot of the shops were closed, though I still managed to get an amazing deal on some hippie skirts. We also had a fun time exploring Picadilly Circus, Chinatown (which we just happened upon as well), the West End, and lots of other old churches/buildings/etc that I don't remember the names of. Oh and on our last day there we had kind of a wild goose chase experience trying to find Shakespeare's Globe Theater. It seemed odd that nobody we asked even knew where it was, but when we finally found it, we knew why: it was pretty boring. Just the round building trying to look like the original, which burned down. The most interesting part was when Jen ducked under the red tape to go into the courtyard, and very convincingly played dumb when she was told by the bemused guard guy that she wasn't supposed to be back there.

I really enjoyed London. I kind of didn't expect to, after the bad experience in the airports, but I loved it. Like really really loved it. I loved the "melting pot" aspect the most. You hear so many different languages on the street and see so many different looking people, that nobody is really "different" because everyone is. It's really interesting to be in that atmosphere. And also maybe it's just that England is in my heritage and I can't get away from that. Besides the ancestry, so many things that I have grown up with or grown to love are there. Music groups, authors and books, movies....it's like everywhere I turned there was something of importance to me that reminded me of something else.

I was actually pretty sad to get on the bus and leave for the airport. I'll have to go back sometime.

We won't talk about the night in the airport, though.....not much to say about that except...UGH. Moving on.

Barcelona. Beautiful, wonderful, Barcelona. It was definitely all that I hoped for and more. We had a little mishap finding the Hostel when we first got there (no doubt due to extreme lack of sleep), but when we got there the hostel was so nice that we didn't want to leave again! The sweetest, cutest people worked there, and the hostel itself was sooo cute and perfect. If any of you ever go to Barcelona you have to stay there, it's called "Backpackers BCN," and it was around 15 Euro a night but it was pretty much like a hotel. Promise me you'll stay there if you ever go to Barcelona.

That night we wandered around the Parque de la Ciudadela for a bit and watched people (it's really fun to watch people in Barcelona - tons of street performers, hippies, people with dreads and lots of piercings, and really really cute couples). Wednesday was fun - we did a lot of walking around, toured Gaudi's Park Guell Wednesday morning and went to the (beautiful!) beach for several hours with a new friend from the hostel, and that night we got lost in the (pouring) rain in the gothic quarter, trying to go to a flamenco show and missed it, sadly. We also learned that old navy flip flops and Barcelona rain are not a good mix if you want to stay on your feet. Thursday we took a walking tour of the medieval city which was really cool, walked around the shopping streets which are really neat narrow little parts of the medieval city where cars can't go...it's like a huge maze in cobblestone...sooo cool. Then we went to the Familia Sagrada which is that really awesome/weird cathedral Barcelona is famous for, and also some more buildings around there. Gaudi's buildings are pretty much dotted all over the city and they are really amazing. I watched a documentary about him for extra credit in my guitar class umpteen years ago, and have wanted to see them ever since.

Thursday night we went to a cooking class. Yeah that sounds weird, I guess you have to have been there to understand the appeal. It was the same company as the flamenco show and the walking tour, they do some cool stuff for tourists in barcelona, so the "cooking class" was basically dinner, a REEEEALLY good dinner, drinks for those who cared to partake (and Fanta for those who didn't, such as myself), and kinda learning how to make the dinner, and meeting some really fun and cool aussies (you know who you are). After that we explored the city by night a bit and watched some of the wacky street performers...they dress up like statues and stand on the street for money, and it's really funny to watch them. They do that in Copenhagen too but not half as much. In barcelona on La Rambla, the main shopping street, they are pretty much everywhere you look. Pretty neat. Also lots of street musicians, classical guitarists as well as everything else under the sun, like digeridoo, etc...

I was sad to leave the next morning, though tired and ready for my own bed and kitchen again. All in all it was a wonderful trip!