Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore

One more day before classes start and I have to stop playing tourist for a while and start playing student. It's sad to think about that, though I'm sure I'll enjoy my classes, seeing as how I'd love to just spend the next six weeks traveling around London all day long with my friends. Mainly because, well, I had a great day. So, some more traveling advice first to get that out of the way:
1. Always have a back up route. So you know the tube stop you need to go to to see the British Museum, but what if a certain rail line is out. Do you know what stations you should go to to change lines? How about bus numbers and stops? Unless you want to shell out a huge amount of dosh (that's money in London) then you'll probably want to keep at least one alternate route in your mind at all times.
2. London rail shuts down at 12:30 every night but there are night buses that run all night from Trafalgar Square so make sure you know which bus can take you back to your hotel/hostel/residence hall/best friend's sofa. A night of partying was never more ruined than when you found yourself without a way home unless, again, you want to shell out a huge amount of cash for a taxi.
Alright, now that that's out of the way I can tell you about my day. Started off with breakfast. I went to the market just down the street and picked up bacon, eggs, cereal, milk, some biscuits (cookies), and other not so fun stuff like dish washing detergent and paper towels. I'm lucky. I have a kitchen in my dorm and if you're staying in a hostel then you might too. Even if you're not, do a cold cuts lunch and go grab bread, cheese, and meat at a market, sit yourself down in one of the many parks around London, and have a great time. It really can save you some money. Also, and perhaps it's just being in a big city, London is huge into prepared foods, and we're not talking TV dinners. I walked into the grocery and saw at least two huge cold storage shelves of sandwiches, chicken curries, rice dishes, noodles, etc. All available to buy for just a few pounds and microwavable.
After breakfast we (meaning the entire IES program) went to Greenwich. I got the great opportunity of taking a boat ride of the River Thames and standing on the Prime Meridian.
*Big Ben from the River*
*I'm in the East and West hemispheres at the same time*

Then, after that I hung out with some friends. We went to a great market in Greenwich where we bought lunch and went to a wonderful candy shop and bought peppermint humbugs (fans of the Harry Potter series will understand this), and fudge and all sorts of good things. Then we went home, taking the long way of course. Actually, in Greenwich there's an underground walking tunnel that goes under the River Thames and we walked it and then took the DLR (which is London's above ground train) to a station to change over to the underground.
Then, when we got back to the res hall, my friends and I split up, most of them taking power naps, but I went and walked around for a while. I also made dinner, which consisted of eggs and bacon because I was craving some protein, and then I had this great candy bar called a flake. It's wonderful. I've never seen them in the states but they're basically just really good, really flaky, rod-shaped candy bars.
After dinner my friends and I met back up and all of the group when to a play at the Globe Theater, which was the coolest thing in the world. We saw Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. We were in the standing ticket section but it was great because during a change of scenery several cast members grabbed a huge gossamer blue curtain and ran it back across the whole standing audience. It started to rain a bit but I really felt like I was back in London in the 1600s watching a play in the original Globe Theater.
So, if you ever get a chance to see a show at the Globe, do it. Standing tickets only cost five pounds and they're well worth it. I don't think I've ever seen a better performed straight play in my life and considering the fact that a movie in London costs about twice that, I didn't mind standing at all.
Tomorrow brings more adventures. I'll be sure to tell you all about them.
Safe traveling,
~P.

Welcome to London, check your sanity at the door!

I’ve been up for the past 29 hours. Therefore, I reject any responsibilities for bad grammar, poor spelling, or stupid jokes that seem much more humorous after international travel than after a good night’s rest. I landed in London today at around 6:30am (London Time) but it took me a good three hours to get to my dormitory. I recommend this little tip to all London travelers. Do not attempt to take the Tube from Heathrow all the way into central London on the Blue (Piccadilly) Line (and seeing as how this is the only Tube line you can do that on I’d suggest a cab or a bus) during rush hour traffic seeing as how in all the suburbs of London, more people get onto the train than get off of it. I ended up doing that. Had to get off at the South Kensington station in order to change to the Circle (Yellow) Line. Ended up not being able to get back on seeing as how the trains on the Circle and District lines were delayed because police had requested that an old, unexploded, World War II bomb be removed from near the tracks. I didn’t mind them doing this to be honest, but if it hasn’t exploded by now, don’t you think it could wait until after rush hour?

So, I walked from the South Kensington station to King’s Road to get to my dormitory. The walk seemed about a thousand miles long, but then I made it on an empty stomach after fourteen hours of non-stop travel while carrying all my luggage, including a backpack about half my height and a third of my weight. I made the same walk about three hours later with a guide in order to get my rail pass and it seemed a lot shorter then.

Anyway, after I got to King’s Road the dormitory was easy to find as it is the tallest building in the surrounding area at ten stories high, which lets you know that I am not in a very built up area. It’s actually fairly residential and as I type now, I looked out over a large square of houses with a nicely forested central garden from my 8^th floor window. I’m in Chelsea, and I keep expecting Perez Helton to peer his brightly festooned head around from a corner because everywhere I walk I hear people in my program say, “That’s where so and so lives,” or “That’s where A-lister number One had his house but now he sold it to A-lister number Two.” I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it’s quite fun to listen to.

So, I’ve also learned a few lessons, a few pieces of wisdom before I shut down and go completely comatose right around 32 hours of no sleep…I still have time:

1. The lesson mothers teach their kids, to look left and then look right before crossing the street, is going to get me killed. Instead, I have to fight against all instinct, and look right, and then look left, because otherwise, while I see an empty street while looking left, the large car on my right is running me down because I am an idiot, and a sleep deprived one that cannot quite work through the wrong side of the road thing right now.

2. McDonalds will take over the world someday. There’s one right down the street from my dormitory. But, if McDonalds is the only fast food I see in a 24 hours period, then everything is A-OK.

3. I have discovered the secret to driving in London. The lines on the road are merely for decoration and should be ignored and avoided at all cost, even if this means swerving into oncoming traffic, nearly running over motorcycles, bicycles, and baby carriages, and that yellow lights, and the first five seconds of a red light, actually mean, “Hurry up, slowpoke!”.

4. Traveling alone has its pros and cons. If you get the chance to travel and have to do it alone, do it, don’t worry about it. You’ll make friends. I’ve already found a group of people that I’m hanging out with. But, at the same time, there were a few moments of being overwhelmed that would have been spared had I had someone with me. After all, even for a fairly independent traveler, when you arrive in a city as big as London and are suddenly stuck with the realization that you don’t know a soul in the entire country, much less the entire city and you’re going to be living here for six weeks. It gets pretty scary, pretty quickly. But, I can tell you from experience, it’s worth it.

Well, I think I’ve just about exhausted my writing abilities for tonight, and my vocabulary for that matter given the fact that I had to take a break I’m now pushing my barrier of consciousness. I’ll be sure to add more tomorrow, or, sometime soon anyway.

1week to go

So, the face of the earth contains 148.94 million square km of land according to the CIA world factbook, and indeed, I plan on walking them all. I've always loved to travel. I've been all over the US and on family trips when I was a kid my parents and grandparents and I would go Arizona, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and a number of other places. I went skiing in Salt Lake City and horseback riding in Flagstaff, Arizona and saw Civil War reenactments in Alabama and went to the beach in Florida. I was a junior in high school when I went to London and Paris and the Normandy region of France, my first trip abroad. I went to Ireland the summer after I graduated from high school and now, the summer before I graduate from college, I'm going to London for six weeks and then spending two weeks in Belgium and Germany. I leave in about a week. The purpose of this blog is two-fold. First of all, I can post pictures and write about my time in London for my family and friends to see since I may not get the chance to talk to all of them on a regular basis. (Hi mom, dad, Sheila, and Gary and whosoever else may stumble across this thing that happens to know me.) Also, if anyone here, backpacker or traveler, stumbles across my humble blog feel free to glean any information you can from it, or give hints, tips, and advice in return. I really don't mind, but maybe I'll talk about a few places people haven't been to or maybe I'll just make my friends really jealous...kidding guys, stop glaring.
Even though I'm going to London for school, I have three day weekends, which means a lot of opportunity to travel, and my hope is to go to quite a few places, as time and finances will allow. My goal is to hit up either Rome or Athens for a three day weekend, and to stop by Dublin again and to go to Scotland and Wales as well. But, we'll see what actually happens. Anyway, I'll make this short since I really don't have much to say, and I'll see you in a week when I post from London. See you soon.
~P.