london
lamm | 23 September, 2006 14:14
The official London report
Proper
adjectives for London:
great, superb, gorgeous, bloody fantastic, incredible, wonderful, huge,
amazing, flabbergastingly, astonishing, surprising, big, crazy…
Our hotel:
Whatever you do, don’t check in at Somerset hotel, badly mooded and tempered
receptionists, disgusting mattresses, 3 bed rooms contain generally only two
beds and a disgusting mattress, bad service, great continental breakfast (two
slices of toast, and maybe a mug of cereals), broken windows, not opening/closing
windows.
Our bus
driver: I wonder, if the guy has a driver license. He ran every red light he
came across with, whether there were pedestrians near or not, the pavement
became part of the street and it took two hours to get out of London. At least we had a good laugh, even
when we were really pissed of by his driving habits.
The
ferries: Ferries are fun. I just stood and stared into the dark sea for hours
and of course I shouted a stylish I’m the Queen of the World out.
So okay,
but now about the great adventure London:
“Our hood”:
we stayed near Baker Street,
the imaginary living place of the fictive Sherlock Holmes, so he was
everywhere, a statue of him near the underground station and the station was
tiled with his profile. Baker
Street is also very near to Regent’s park where
there was a cool rose garden and some pretty rare animals, I even met a fox in
the park and many cute squirrels.
Nutrition:
I ate many delicious bagels and two slices of toasts every morning ; ) so I’m
absolutely done with white bread for a very long time. Yummy was the food at
Food for Thought, a mere vegetarian restaurant, near Covent
garden were I had a tasty Chilli con Tofu for dinner.
Shops: I
really fell in love with the local second hand culture, second hand book stores
and second hand record stores, I postulate such shops right into Germany!
So I had to support such gorgeous tiny shops, so I bought for books and three
cd’s, goodie. At Cheapo Cheapo Records I immediately remembered the description
of such a store on high fidelity. A tiny little, chaotic microcosm, loved it.
Museums:
Unfortunately we just had time for two museums, the British and the Natural
History Museum, the first one impressed because of the magnificent architecture
and of course because off the Stone of Rosetta, never imagined it that huge and
in such a good condition. So if you’re into archaeology, try the British, I
just liked the Pergamon (Berlin)
better. The Natural History Museum contains some dinosaur skeletons, but not
the T-Rex, grr, now I’ve got to visit Sue in Chicago But they built a T, kind
of kitschy roboter, just can’t stand such roboters The exhibits at human
biology were out-dated and I’ve seen some better (the Mathematikum/ Technisches
Museum) also when it is about padded animals I prefer the Natural History
Museum of Kiel, but when it comes to architecture the NHC is amazing,
incredibly amazing. (Pictures will follow)
Galleries:
I never thought I could enjoy art exhibitions, until the London trip I found anything likewise just boring,
but the Tate turned my opinion about it upside down. So we visited three
galleries, the Tate Britain (loved it, because of the extreme variety of
artists and epoques), the National Gallery (pretty good, for fans of
renaissance and Da Vinci, Rembrandt…) and the Tate Modern (not a fan of modern,
as it is often too simplistic and too complex for the visitor to catch the
artist’s intention). In every Museum some pictures really caught me and I spent
quite some time just staring at those. The great thing is that one gets a real
idea of the techniques by glancing at the originals, that’ what posters can not
provide. So I saw an astonishing variety of great art these few days.
The city
itself: London is just like a lovely chaotic
place that is crammed with different types of architectures and height of the
buildings, I think that’s the charm of London,
one can experience that this city did actually grow, and wasn’t designed.
Cheer
up-it’s Shakespeare: The visit at the wooden O was more fun than one could imagine,
as our guide had a sort of stand up comedy about Shakespeare, his Time, and his
works and it was a pretty good one, so I laughed my ass off about the guide’s
version of hamlet, gorgeous!
Oxford:
I did like the atmosphere of Oxford
and it’s many old houses, that endured centuries, quite interesting was also
Christian church where the shoot a part of the Harry Potter films. But all in
all I was to tired that very day to enjoy the little detour, pissed of as of a
dearth of sleep and because it took our bus driver three and a half hour to get
to Oxford (distance London-Oxford: about 80 km)
About
residents and tourist: Londoners seem pretty polite; even if they don’t mean it
they often express their thankfulness and the excuse all the time. The male
Londoners are eye candy, I even saw a guy in the tube that looked like Jake
Gyllenhall with glasses on.In addition
to that we visited Westminster Abbey, had a London tour and I was often forced to cross
the street without using the traffic lights or to ignore the red signs for the
pedestrians.
