Today is St Andrews Day

The weather hasn't been as cold recently, but I'm very glad for a present I received! It's a lamby hot water bottle!! Yay!! I like to hug him when I'm at my computer, because my computer is under the window, which is very very cold. I promise not to melt crayons in this one!

Today is St Andrews Day, so the university went on a holiday and there were no classes. Hurray! Except, the weather was totally poo outside, so it's not like having a holiday was even that great. Oh well, tonight is the whisky society meeting, so that should be fun.

A Foggy Day in Londontown

Actually, the weather was amazingly nice while I was in London, during my Reading Week break from class which was the first week of November.

I took the bus from St Andrews to Edinburgh where I caught a plane down to London. It took me 8 hours to travel from my dorm room to my hostel in London. EIGHT hours is a long time. 3 of those hours were spent taking the bus to Edinburgh. It's a good thing I left an hour early or I would have missed my plane!

The hostel I stayed at was in Camden, which is North London. It was a pretty nice hostel, except it was on top of a bar. A bar which didn't stop playing floor-vibratingly loud music until 2 am on friday and saturday. In theory, a hostel on top of a bar is a good idea, you know, a place to hang out with newly made friends. Except, in reality, everyone is jet-lagged and exhausted from sight-seeing and so people tend to want to go to sleep at 9 or 10pm.

It was Guy Fawkes weekend when I went down, so as the plane was landing in London I could see fireworks at different places all over the city. Very cool.

The first day I was there (Saturday) I didn't take any pictures. I mostly walked around the Picadilly Circus/Leicester Square area because that is the classic London location. (The place is lit up like Main Street on Disneyland at night.) I went to the National Portrait Gallery at Trafalgar Square and got to see a David Hockney exhibit that I had missed in LA. (Although I was too early for the show when I went to see the Klimt's at LACMA, I think that I saw Hockney himself touring his exhibit while I was there.) I also went to the British Museum, which I'd never been to before. I didn't see much of the museum because I wandered in about an hour before it was due to close. In London, all the museums are free which is super amazing. In the Great Court, there were some Polynesian dancers and singers putting on a little show, which was very cool. Then I got lost looking for a movie theater on Regent St, off of Picadilly Circus. I pulled the classic Gwen mistake of standing at an intersection of 5 streets and choosing 4 wrong streets to walk down before I finally found the correct street. I seem to do this a lot when it is dark outside (remember trying to look for that Indian restaurant, Felisa?) I went to see 'Little Children' with Kate Winslet, but I didn't think it was very good.

Sunday
I decided to go on some walking tours and I chose a Beatles one that left in the morning. It was very interesting, apparently the guy who guided us around has been doing the tours for 15 years. He took us to the Paladium where the Beatles played and to Savile Row where they played their rooftop concert in 1969 and to Carnaby St where all the hip clothing shops were and to the art gallery where John met Yoko. It was a lot of fun, but I didn't take any pictures until the very end when he took us to Abbey Road. Here is Abbey Road Studios where many people record albums (including, very recently, U2 and Green Day's new collaboration):


Here is the famous crosswalk. This is actually a very busy intersection and the motorists were not amused by all the tourists who were trying to take pictures from the middle of the street.
And here is the street sign. This area is actually outside of central London. For this part of the tour, we had to take the tube to St John's Wood.
People write grafitti and messages on the walls outside the studio. The walls get painted every once in a while to allow new people to write messages and apparently, the walls had just been repainted one month before this picture was taken!
For meals, I decided it would be easiest to go to the touristy areas because they would have fast foody type places that I would feel more comfortable at, since I was by myself. So for lunch, I went to the Tower of London. I'd been there twice before (and it's really expensive) so I decided not to go this time. The tower is on the left, and then behind it, you can see the top of the Tower Bridge across the Thames, and then in the center-right, the egg-shaped building is the mayor's office.
Here is the Swiss Bank building. If you saw Match Point (Woody Allen, 2006), do you remember the office where the main character got a cushy job from his father-in-law? It was in this building. People call it The Gherkin (Pickle) but I think it looks like a faberge egg. It's my favorite building, because its just so ridiculous!
I bought this box of flashcards called London Citywalks. It's so cool, it has self guided walking tours, each for different districts, with directions and explanations printed on one side with a map on the other. I did #7, City of London, which basically means the financial district. London is made up of different cities-within-a-city (Westminster, Kensington, etc) and the part that is called London is basically just the financial district. Anyway, this walk took me through Leadenhall Market which is an indoor market, sort of like a Parisian arcade. Apparently (I found this out later) they shot some part of the Harry Potter movies here. The market was closed since it was Sunday.
This is the Jamaica Wine Bar. According to my little flashcard, there has been a coffee shop here since 1652. It's not actually on the street, I had to walk down a little alley across the street from Leadenhall Market. Very cool place.
This is a display case at the Royal Exchange shopping centre, which is full of designer shops and is generally very expensive. Note the little pug and his baguettes!
This is the Bank of England, from the side. All the windowless-ness at street level is where they keep the vaults with their vast sums of money. At least, that's what I've been lead to understand.
Something fun was going on at the Guildhall!
Here is a picture from the Victoria Embankment gardens at sunset. At 4:30pm. Here is the Millenium footbridge, also from Victoria Embankment
The dome in the middle is St Paul's and you can see the Gherkin on the right, with Waterloo Bridge in front. (Victoria Embankment at sunset)
Here is the London Eye and the Millenium footbridge.

Victoria Embankment at sunset
At night (i.e. 5pm), I took a Harry Potter walking tour. It was pretty fun, I met a very nice women from Tennessee who had never been out of the US before and then decided to visit London and Paris this year. Unfortunately, there are very few London locations for Harry Potter, so our tour guide told us some stuff about Dracula and Jekyll & Hyde too. This street, which is too dark to see anything, is supposed to be the model for Diagon Alley. If it were lighter, you'd be able to see that the hanging shop signs are the same as described in the books. I meant to go back and take a picture in the daylight, but I forgot. It's off of Charing Cross Road, across from the National Portrait Gallery.
After the HP walking tour, I wandered to Leicester Square. I had intended to buy tickets to see The Prestige (Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johansson) but I thought since it was opening in London the next day I might want to buy tickets ahead of time. Except, when I got there, I found out why the film was opening on a Monday. They were having the premiere on Sunday night! So I walked up and after hearing a security guard explain to 2 Irish girls that Hugh Jackman had already left and so had Christian Bale, I think, but that Scarlett was still inside, I decided to wait around a couple of minutes. Sure enough, about 5 minutes later, she came out and posed for a picture before going off to the after party. I felt bad for her though, because the next day she was on the cover of every single newspaper and they were all making fun of her hair. Those paper are vicious. Every day they've got someone on the cover and they are just going after that person in the most vicious way. Awful.
Monday
On Monday I switched hostels, and I decided to go back to the St Paul's hostel I had stayed in 2 years ago. So here is the obligatory picture of St Paul's Cathedral. I love the statue of Queen Anne out front.

I decided to go to Kensington Palace, because when me and my dad were here in March, we had wanted to go but we only got to the palace a few minutes before it closed. I got to Hyde Park and it was a spectacular day. Amazing weather, really I was so lucky. Not one drop of rain and it wasn't even as cold as St Andrews.

Kensington Palace was overpriced and pretty much only for Diana fanatics. Which I am not. They had a dress that Queen Elizabeth wore to the opera in Paris in 1957 and this video where people were talking about how it took 3 weeks to make the dress. Crazy! There was so much beadwork, so ornate. Of course, now it's totally dated, it has a huge bow on the back. The best part though was Princess Margaret's apartment. They've opened up the rooms to the public, and when you walk through it seems like you're in a nice English country house. The sunlight streams in through the windows, warming the hard word floors. Then you remember that you're in Kensington Palace, in the middle of Hyde Park in London.
You guys!! They have autumn here in the UK!!! Can you believe it? I can't. I have taken pictures of almost every tree I've seen here. Autumn kicked into high gear while I was in London. It was very apparent when I got to Glasgow (as you will see).
So, I walked back to the tube station I had alighted from, only to find that it was closed. Instead of walking west to the much closer Notting Hill station, I decided to walk east to Marble Arch station. Yeah, thing about that is ... it's on the opposite side of Hyde Park. I had to walk the length of the north side of Hyde Park, which is to say the long way. This is a picture I took in Bayswater Road (don't worry, I was standing on a pedestrian traffic island!) during my 40 minute walk.
I decided to do the Waterloo to Whitehall flashcard. As soon as you exit Waterloo station, you are practically on the Thames, aka underneath the Eye. This thing is HUGE. I was trying to take a picture that would convey to you how large it is, but I think you need to go and stand under it yourself. I still haven't been on it, because the line is as long as the one for Splash Mountain in mid-July. Someday I will, though.
Anyone seen the movie Closer? This is where Clive Owen meets Julia Roberts. London Aquarium! It's right on the Thames.
I walked across Westminster Bridge and here is Big Ben (which is the name of the bell inside of St Stephen's Clock) and the Parliament buildings. The sun was setting in my eyes, so sorry about the quality of this picture.
Here is the view of the Eye, and the Saatchi Gallery from the other side of the Thames.
Okay, Match Point again. Remember the apartment (after he gets married to the not-Scarlett girl) with the insane view of Parliament?? I've decided it's in one of these buildings.
Here's a close up of St Stephen's Clock. Apparently, the BBC still sets its clocks by the ringing of Big Ben
Here's No. 10 Downing St, aka Tony Blair's house. The gates were put up during the 80s to protect Margaret Thatcher from the IRA.
Here is the Admiralty Arch, next to Trafalgar Square, which is just off to the right of this picture. When I was in London 2 years ago, I almost got lost because I didn't know what was on the other side of this arch and since it was night I didn't want to walk under it, so I took the long way around and then found out I couldve cut liek 10 minutes off my journey if I had just walked through it! Aah, getting lost. I could do with it, you know.
This is St James Park, right off The Mall, which leads to Buckingham Palace!

Here is the statue of Victoria out front. I believe the sculpture was carved by Victoria's daughter, Louise.
Here is The Mall from underneath the Victoria Sculpture. It was a long way from the Arch to here.
This is Bush House, home of the BBC!

Part of the reaosn I decided to come down to London was so I could go to a concert. I wanted to see an English band called Badly Drawn Boy at the Bloomsbury Ballroom. I looked at the venue website before I went down and thought I knew where it was it. But I couldn't find it. So I walked up and down Southampton Row before I decided to ask someone, so I popped into a hotel. He seemed to know what I was talking about and directred me to a place around the corner from the Tavistock Hotel. So I walked around there for a while, still couldn't find it. Went to the Tavistock Hotel to ask. Turns out, everyone thought I was asking for the Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes. NOPE. Not it. I was so confused. I tried to flag down a taxi driver and ask him, but he'd never heard of the place. Finally, I went to an internet cafe and looked at the website and saw that they did not have a precise address on the site, only a map with a red circle at the corner of Southampton Row and Bloomsbury Way. So I hired a taxi and got in and told him my predicament. He'd never heard of Bloomsbury Ballroom either, so we drove around the block twice. He asked to see my ticket about 5 times, even though it had no address on it. Finally, he said, 'Oh maybe it's right here' and pulled into a street off of Bloomsbury Way. Yep, that's where it was! Oh my gosh, I NEVER would have found it without him! All of this took about an hour and a half. I finally arrived at the venue at 9:40pm. However, Badly Drawn Boy was almost as late as me and had only gotten stage about 20 minutes earlier! I walked into the hall (where people were smoking. crazy.) and stood about 20 feet from the stage with a pretty good view for the whole rest of the show, which was completely amazing.

Tuesday:

I was really tired today, I mustve really overdone the touristing today. It sucks because I wanted to do so much, but it was incredibly tiring to be walking around for 10 hours every day. Today I finished a city walk through Holborn that I'd cut short the day before due to being desperate for a nap. I walked through Mayfair (saw the American Embassy at Grovesner Square) and then I did a walk through Bond St, with all the fancy pants shops for Rich People. I saw a Rolls Royce dealership across the street from Berkeley Square. That was nutty.

This is Carnaby St, former home of all the mod clothing stores in the 60s.

This is No. 3 Savile Row. The very same rooftop where the Beatles had their offices and where they played live for the last time on this rooftop in 1969. Unfortunately, as you may notice, you can't see onto the roof from the street. Some people were climbing up roofs and chimneys to get a look at the Beatles as they played.
Here is a mural just off of Carnaby St. It was painted in 1991. The bottom of it resembles the Sgt Pepper album cover. (In Newport Beach, there is this pizza place called Sgt Pepperoni. It's awful, but it makes me laugh and I can't get it out of my head because I used to see it ALL the time).
For Felisa, here is the Burberry flagship store on Bond St.
This is Berkeley Square. I've heard that a nightingale sang here once. Oh yeah, and Winston Chruchill grew up in one of those houses on the opposite side of the street. This is the most New York park I saw in London. There aren't that many benches in the parks, except in certain areas, whereas parks in New York are lined end to end with green benches. That's my favorite. Nothing will ever beat hanging out in Washington Square or walking up The Mall in Central Park.
Here is another BBC building. (What did you think I was going to take pictures of??) Ooh, very art deco.
Since I wasn't jetlagged on this trip, I wasnt falling asleep at 7pm and I needed to entertain myself at night. Completely on a whim, as I walked by the Palace Theater box office, I went and bought a ticket for 'Spamalot' the Monty Python musical. It was really great!! Tim Curry was so funny and the play was really good (We are lost... in a Very Expensive Forrest). The theater gave the impression of being large, but also quite cramped at the same time. I was in the second balcony but I could see everything very well, including faces. At the concession, they were selling Spam sanwiches! The highlight of the night was when I paid $11 for a rum and coke. See, when I asked for it, I didn't know it was going to be that expensive. But after the horrible experience of almost not being able to find the Bloomsbury Ballroom I figured I needed a treat. But goodness gracious, $11??

Wednesday

Ahhh, Glasgow. This is Kelvingrove Park. Isn't it amazingly autumnal?? I seriously can't get enough of Autumn. I've never had a proper one before!

This is the Kelvingrove Art museum which was just reopened a few months ago after being renovated for about 3 years. It is awesome inside, and they had some Scottish art. Ever heard of the Colourist movement? Me either. Apparently, it was 4 guys in Glasgow. But it looks cool.
This is the view from the window of my hostel in Glasgow. The red brick building to the right is Kelvingrove Museum. Glasgow is great, apparently its the cultural capital of Scotland (it is the largest city). I really want to go back there soon!
The reason I went to Glasgow was to see one of my new favorite bands, TV on the Radio, live. It was an amazing show, I had no trouble finding the venue!! An extremely important quality in a venue, in my opinion. I'd never been able to see TV on the Radio live before, and I'm really glad I made the trip because they were fantastic. Some of their songs can be slow on the record, but live they were all energy and intensity. It's funny how as a listener you have a very specific relationship with a song (the version on the album) whereas the artist has an infinitely different relationship with the song, since he wrote it and probably recorded it 10 different ways before releasing the album and then performs it live differently than even those 10 other versions. Great, great show.

Thursday

Today I took the bus from Glasgow to St Andrews. The bus only costs $9. However, it takes at least 2.5 hours. Is it weird that the bus to Edinburgh and the bus from Glasgow took the same amount of time? I think that it is. Edinburgh is 50 miles away, and Glasgow is 100. I find that to be strange. The two cities are on opposite sides of the country. Yeah. (Sure, it's the narrowest part of the whole island, but that's still crazy). Oh, wanna know something weird? Here, in St Andrews, I'm an East Coaster. That's insane to me, the Califoria Left Coast West Coast girl. Anyway, that's my trip!

[Sorry for any spelling/grammar mistakes. This post is far too long for me to want to proofread it.]

Brrrr, it's freaking cold here.

It is really cold here now. I frequently see my breath in the middle of the day. It's been a long time since it was so cold that I could see my breath while the sun was still up. But the cold isn't that bad as long as it isn't rainy or windy, which it is about half the time.

I'd like to use visual aids at this point in my whinging. See, I took this picture out of my window in September, right when I got here. Oh look, isn't it nice?
Here is the same view a mere two months later. Unfortunately, this picture does not portray the corresponding drop in temperature. Whenever it rains a lot, the grass turns into a giant puddle, and I can see ducks bathing themselves in what used to be solid dirt. The best part has got to be the fact that the sun sets just after 4pm now. Yep. See, around daylight saving time the sun went from setting at 6 to 5pm and then it got noticeably earlier every day to the point where it is pretty well dark when I get out of my film class at 4pm. Apparently, it stays light as late as 11pm in the summer, which sounds great except then you realize that that means it gets ridiculously dark in winter. Boo. Oh well, when my radiator is on (which isn't as often as I'd like, for instance it is not on right now) I feel warm enough. If you'd like to get me a Christmas present, I have two words for you: warm socks. Just kidding of course, I'll make my parents buy some for me.

The other day, I was writing a letter to a friend (sorry if you haven't received a response from me by the way, and also for the lack of updates here - I was trying to concentrate on some work) and the street lamps outside my window came on at 3:50pm. That is crazy. Crazy.