Delayed Post for August 26 - London

Last night we didn’t do too much because we got taken for a lot of money during dinner. As we were wondering around our part of town looking for a place to eat, we stumbled upon a cheap Indian restaurant. We sat down and ordered our food (which was bout 9 dollars a plate – not bad for London). As we were ordering, the waiter asked if we would like some bread and rice with our meal. It sounded like a good idea so we ordered it. After completing our meal (which included a visit from a crazy English girl who left without paying) we asked for the check. We were shocked when the total was $84 for the 3 of us! As it turns out, the rice and bread were each as much as the meal…it was a total scam and I like to blame Peter since he was the one who said to bring out the bread and rice (j/k).

After our dinner incident we decided to stay in and take it easy. We booked some hostels for down the road and chilled out at the Ashlee House. We met this guy named Jeremy who is a professional photographer and checked out a bunch of his photos (www.jervn.com if you are interested).

Today, we got up fairly early and packed our stuff up. We had to change hostels because ours was booked solid through the weekend. Apparently there is a Caribbean festival in town this weekend (London’s largest festival of the year). We were forced to book a hostel online but then found out that they were over booked and we could not stay there. This, however, was not such a bad thing because we got upgraded to an actual hotel in the same area and get to stay in a nice room! Even cooler, this hotel is right next to the park where the Caribbean festival will take place (Hyde Park).

Once again we traveled around today using the Underground. We left the Ashlee House from Kings Cross Station. We decided that we had better look for Platform 9 and ¾ (of Harry Potter fame) before leaving the area. Liam and Owen will be excited to hear that we found it!

After checking into our new place of residence and dropping off our packs we headed for Oxford Circus to check out some of the super cool shops. B and I went into the Mac store to take a picture. We didn’t visit many other shops because everything was ridiculously expensive. T-shirts at the Quiksilver store were 35 pounds (about $70!). Then it was on to the British Museum.



The British Museum is one of the largest museums I have ever been too. The guidebook says that it has the world’s largest collection of antiques. Still, the coolest thing I saw was the Rosetta Stone (which B likes to call the stone with all the shit on it). I had no idea it was in the museum and was super excited when I stumbled across it. Some of my other favorites were the discus man and the Egyptian cat. For all you art history buffs, sorry I don’t know more about this stuff. Still, I had a good time and thought it was cool! We spent most of the day at the museum and by the time we left it was time for our evening meal.






For dinner we went to a pub by our new hostel. We tried to be as British as possible. We all had a local beer to go with our fish and chips. The whole time we ate we watched the Manchester City vs. Arsenal match. Unfortunately, most of the pub was in a fowl mood because Man City was beating Arsenal (London team) despite being a big underdog.

Tonight we are planning to head to the Caribbean festival in Hyde Park. I have no idea what to expect. I do know that there will be a lot of people there, as all of the hostels in London are totally full because of this event! For now, I had better get going because B is dancing around the room and decided it was a good idea to squirt toothpaste all over my toiletries…

Additional note for my biologically inclined family and girlfriend: we got lost coming out of the underground early in the day and stumbled across the building where Sir Alexander Flemming discovered penicillin. Also, I still have no idea how to use my phone card but I’ll keep trying to figure it out.

UPDATE: We were unable to find the carnival. Apparently it isn’t until tomorrow night. Instead we hung out and went to a bar for several hours. It was really chill and now we are trying to figure out what we want to do tomorrow, our last full day in London. Unfortunately, our nice hotel does not have wireless Internet so this post may be a day or two late.