London

It's day 1.5 right now.  I say 1.5 because I probably should have had a night's sleep last night while on the plane (even as short as the night was), but I didn't.  I've been up for a little over 29 hours straight now, and think I've earned a good night's sleep.  The day started driving up to LA to take a flight out of LAX to Heathrow in London.  The flight was long and the people next to me looked at me like I was speaking Swahili the few times I tried to strike up conversation (at least they weren't farters like on my cousin's plane ride to London).  The food was good, I finished a couple chapters of my book, and I was able to watch 2 inflight movies: Bridge to Teribithia and Blades of Glory (again).  

Once I got to London I was really tired, as it was about 3am California time.  Jet lag is much worse if you don't force yourself to adjust the first day, so I told my friend Luke, who met me at the airport, that on no circumstances was he to let me sleep until it was good and time to (cue scene from Young Frankenstein).  We walked so much, and saw a whole lot of stuff, though everything touristy was closed so we just saw exteriors of things.  St. Paul's cathedral is HUGE.  I knew it was big, but had not planned for how much this building dominates its section of town.  Parliament is also really cool.  All of the architecture is just amazing.

Another myth to dispel:  British food does not suck.  It IS expensive.  Not everything in the UK is twice as much, but food for sure is.  We went to a pub for dinner and had a few pints, and I had a beef and ale pie that was quite good.  Maybe I just like beef pies, I don't know, but I thought this one was pretty darn good.

Maybe some of you didn't know this, but in Britain they drive on the other side of the road.  Despite the fact that you all now know this, every single time you walk to an intersection in Britain for the first few weeks there, you will forget again and be amazed at how many times you have almost been hit by drivers not being where you expect them to be.  If your life isn't in danger, you will still laugh at the seeming craziness of it all.  The novelty doesn't wear off.  Something else fun, they park whatever way they feel like, so in the same row on the same side of the street you will have 5 cars, two pointed one way, three the other.  This doesn't help pedestrians figure out where traffic will come from if it happens to be one of London's many one way streets.  Luckily the Brits realized what a pain it is even to walk in their city and built another labyrinth of streets below the streets, where only bikes, peeps, and trains can go.  The train goes fast and runs on time--another victory for capitalism.

That's all for now, I'm going to bed and getting ready to head to Stratford tomorrow!  Cheers!~