A Long Walk and Several Short Piers

London. It's pretty big. The contrast between the modern and the very, very old is sometimes very jarring. The lack of British accents is astonishing. If the US is one large cultural melting pot, London is a very tiny pot with all the ingredients condensed.

Before some of you go off on me for being online instead of out enjoying my adventure, I strolled through Edinburgh for about six hours today, but I'm not feeling very well, so I decided I'd be better off taking a break in my guest house before venturing out again for dinner. I'm not quite at the point of wanting a nap, but I thought maybe blogging through my London journey would relax me.

Well, I landed.

Rather than pretend I knew what I was doing, I went to the information kiosk at the entrance to the Underground at the airport. She was very helpful and got me tickets to the correct station, and off I went. The hour I got on the train was apparently quite busy because more people packed in at every stop along the route, and most everyone flooded out of the train at Westminster station, which happened to be my stop.

The next job was to find my hostel, which turned out to be a bit hard to find because of a roundabout, but I finally popped into one of the large hotels and asked the concierge, who was kind enough to direct me. Thankfully, my bed was ready when I got there and the staff allowed me to check in quite early. I took full advantage, plugged everything in, kicked my shoes off, and took a nap.

This was my very first experience staying at a hostel (The Walrus, in case you wondered), so I have no standard by which to compare it, but the beds and showers were clean and I had a place to stay at night, so let's call that the important part.

To say that (other than my nightly accomodations) I was flying by the seat of my pants is a pretty accurate summary of the amount of planning I put into my days. I had a general idea of a few things I wanted to see, but that was about it. So, I went downstairs to the pub attached to the hostel and asked one of the staff for a suggestion for something interesting in walking distance.

When I get home, I plan to spend some time with a map going over my walk that day (and every day, since I'm the genius who planned to do almost nothing but walk for three weeks and didn't think to get myself a pedometer), but let's just say that a 2-hour walk from my hostel along the Thames and to Tower Bridge and back took me five hours. Not too shabby for getting such a late start.

Wednesday, I crossed Wesminster Bridge and walked past Horse Guard's Castle and all the many many war memorials along that road, leading into Trafalgar Square. The Square was crowded and I wandered aimlessly in the direction of a pretty building over there, and then another over there, and one more aimless turn before I found myself at Picadilly Circus.

My new favorite shop is there, an antique book shop called Sotheran's where I easily spent an hour just chatting with one of the gentlement about all things Dracula and all the very neat things they had in at the moment.

From there I wandered to Leicester Square, and then managed to lose myself until I found Hyde Park, where I stopped for a sandwich and fed my crusts to the pigeons. The park was very tranquil and I wandered through it for a while, then left the park and unintentionally wound up at the back of Buckingham Palace Gardens. Well, I figured that as long as I was in the area, I might as well stop and see the Palace.I didn't go in (I decided early on that I would rather eat every day than pay through the nose to tour some of these lovely places), but I saw it and then started making my way back towards Westminster, where I spent a ludicrous amount of time staring at the Abbey, Parliament, and Big Ben.

Crossing the river again, I wandered the other direction along the Thames, and then back through town before deciding that I was hungry enough to stop and it was getting near enough to sunset that I wanted to be near my hostel.

I'm going to leave out all the annoying roommate side stories, but let's leave it at this - having had the hostel experience, I much prefer the guest houses (bed & breakfasts).

Thursday was a little more thought out, starting by taking the train to the station nearest Abbey Road (never would have done it if someone hadn't asked for a picture - not the biggest fan of the Beatles myself), and then strolled over to Baker Street to the Sherlock Holmes Museum. Reagent's Park was very close from there, and on the north end of the park, the London Zoo, which was my next destination.

I love zoos, and I try to visit zoos everywhere I go because every one has different animals, and every animal has a different personality. The London Zoo has several things that I've never seen at any other zoo, many of them in the rainforest building. I spent a few hours wandering and taking pictures, and the only animals that were not interested in being seen were the lions. I'm used to that; they almost never move at the Columbus zoo either.

Next came the least amount of fun I've had this week (and I'm counting being under the weather today); Camden Town and Brick Lane. One of the staff at the hostel had told me about all the unique shops in Camden Town, and it was close enough to the zoo that I thought I'd walk. Unfortunately, I hit the town just as work was letting out, and the place itself was a zoo. It was the first time on my trip I hadn't felt safe, so I only stayed long enough to get a picture of The World's End before I hopped the train to Brick Lane, where one of the other guys from the hostel told me that the best curry in London could be found.

What he failed to tell me was that ALL the curry in London could be found there. Brick Lane is several blocks lined up one side and down the other with Indian (and other middle-east region) restaurants and mini-grocers, and employees stand outside each one and shout out their best deals to all passers-by, trying to entice people into their restaurant.

If I had been warned ahead of time, it might not have been the nerve-wracking experience that it was, but come on! I'm traveling alone in an unfamiliar city on the only street in the city where I'm almost guaranteed that any English spoken will be broken and heavily accented... and the restaurant I was looking for was gone. Now, logic tells me that I'm not likely to find a really bad curry in any of the dozens of establishments on the street, but caution tells me that I really would rather not go in blind and I at least want a recommendation from someone who has eaten in the area before. Turn the ears on to "find the familiar accent" mode, and I found two very nice American girls who said I could haggle a deal on a fantastic curry dinner (complete with an appetizer and glass of wine) at a place called Masala, and that it was very quiet and classy inside. I made a bee line for the place, and I was not disappointed.

Thankfully, on my way back to the train station, the hawkers didn't try to get me into their restaurants because they saw my carry-out bag with my leftovers.

I feel like this is the longest blog post ever and you probably stopped caring a long time ago... but I still have one more day to write.

Friday. My feet were not happy with me the night before, and they were still not happy in the morning. I still walked all the way to the British Museum by way of the area of theatres around Drury Lane. If I had only known... I need another few days to really experience the British Museum. I also really needed another pair of feet.

I got through (at a rather rushed pace) almost 10 rooms before my feet decided that if I tried to walk another step that wasn't in the direction of the hostel, they were going to stage a coup and relieve me of command. It made them truly unhappy with me when I accidentally went the wrong way out of the museum and wound up going through two new districts before finding Picadilly and retracing my route through there back to the Thames. Yes, I could at any point have ducked into a station and taken a train... but I'm stubborn and I didn't want to.

The half a block walk to get dinner later was the very most they were willing to do after that. I tried to avoid telling them about the two mile walk to the bus station on Saturday morning...