Cheerio

I made it to London! There was a bit of a snafu with my visa and the fact that I still haven't renewed it, even though it expired in November. Why are they giving me crap now and not in say, February when I went to Brussels? At least they let me come back.

I'm trying to deal with the horrid exchange rate that is stabbing at my finances. When they say their monetary unit is the pound, they're talking in pounds of flesh. They say things like 'only ten quid' but really that means about 22.17 dollars. Crikey! I thought the euro was bad ...

But London is not! I'm really, really liking this city, most of all for the fact that even though there are a ton of chain stores (hello, Pizza Hut!) there are also thousands so tiny stores and pubs with quirky names like the one next door called 'The Mason's Arms'. I wonder if that refers to fire-arms or arms-arms.

While I would love nothing more, rest assured, than to give you a minute-by-minute update on this trip, I am writing this out longhand as to shave off valuable pencey seconds from my time at the web cafe. Also, because it's 1:00 AM and I am wide awake after a luxurious six hour nap, aka a full night's sleep. I was pretty lucky, though - until midnight I was the only person in the 8-bed dorm room. Around then, a married Russian couple came in, but were very nice and went right to bed. They spoke some English, and when I asked the guy what time it was, he told me, with a charming accent, that it was 'meeednight twenty'. Cute!

Why did I require so much sleep, you ask? Because I went on the entirety of a three and a half hour walking tour this afternoon! We hit almost everything with even a slight tourist appeal. Tower Bridge, London Bridge, London Bank, Soho, Covent Garden, Leicester Square, the Monument, the old Knights Templar church, Big Ben, and Westminster Abbey. Wow, I'm getting tired again. I chose the walking tour because at the hostel they have huge brochures that say "Free Walking Tour" and I'm all about the free. Well, as the tour guide pointed out, the reason they were free was because he didn't get paid and relied on tips for his income, poor guy. He even had to give part of his meager earnings back to the company as commission. He was, honestly, the best tour guide I've ever had (because he works for tips, I suppose). His name was Jason, history major, made to pimp out his knowledge of London for quid.

But the tour started out kind of awkward. He started talking about where he was from, in Harrow, and asked everyone if they'd ever heard of it. "Yes" I replied, and he asked me how I knew it. "I am staying on Harrow," I said, which is true; my hostel's on Harrow Road. "Wow!" he said, "in Harrow, you mean?" "Uh, yes," I stammered, even though I didn't mean that at all. "Take you awhile to get down here?" "Yes". From what I could piece together from that short exchange, he was not referring to Harrow Road but instead to the town of Harrow, which is about two hours north of London. Oops. So I avoided him as much as I could just in case he asked me any more Harrow-ing questions. Aha, aha.

My calf muscles are going to be freakishly developed when I get back. Not just from the walking tour, but also from me not spending money on transportation (the absolute minimum I can get by on is about eight dollars a day. That's just for buses). This morning, I walked from Euston Station to Westiminster Abbey in about an hour and a half at a fairly steady pace.

Why did I walk so far? To attend services at Saint Margaret's church, that's why! Tons of famous people got married there, like William Shakespeare and Winston Churchill. The greeters stopped this guy next to me at the door and wouldn't let him in because he looked too touristy. I suppose I was bland enough to escape notice with my khaki cordoroys and ubiquitous black jacket. The service was fine except there were way too many hymns and no bibles to read when things got boring. Also, this deluded father in the section to my right (I could just barely see him in my periph) had not one but two children young enough to be in strollers who were fussy the entire time. Oh, it was irritating. Anyway, the minister was a funny guy and everything went well until about halfway through I read that communion was coming up next. "Score" I said, "bread and juice". I waited for the tray of wine shots to come around, but instead I was abruptly shuffled out of my pew (which was the Parliamentary Warden's, by the way) and thank god I am a fast reader because I speed-read that if you didn't want to receive communion you could just hold onto your leaflet and get blessed instead by the head honcho minister lady. We all had to kneel at the altar and everyone else had their hands cupped out in front of them for the bread (really just a tiny wafer) and I was death-gripping my leaflet. When she came around and blessed my head, I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to thank her or not so I didn't say anything. At that very moment I realized that I was kneeling at an altar in front of a ton of people wearing shoes that may not have said "Save Me" as much as they said "I've had these shoes four years and boy howdy, they've seen some miles." That was embarrassing. You'd think that it would inspire me to buy new shoes, but these old things have seen me too far. After that incident, my adrenaline was up and the rest of the service flew by. When I was leaving, the head minsiter shook my hand and said that it was very nice to see me today. Perhaps I looked rather dashing.

I have a ton of things to mention but most of them require a visual accompaniment and I don't have my pictures of the camera yet.

I think tomorrow I'm going to try to get a ticket for a