Flickr

We interrupt the string of London posts to announce the advent of the Flickr link! Check out the top links bar for a link to my flickr account. I'll be (very) slowly adding photos to it since I can't possibly put them all up here. If anyone wants to donate $25 so I can get unlimited uploads and add more than ~80 pictures a month, let me know ;) If you also have a flickr account, you should totally friend me :) Thus far I've got various pictures from around York, photos of the York Minster, and a few random ones from a recent house BBQ up and I've just about reached my upload limit for April. But check back again in May for some more!

Shopping! (London, Part 3 of 9)

Guess what this is! No, really. Have a guess. That would be Harrods, London's department store par excellence. The store takes up an entire city block, has over 200 departments spread over 7 floors, and employs over 6000 workers. One store! While it has kind of become a shopping destination for lots and lots of tourists, ignore that fact and visit their food halls anyway.

Ignore the handbags and scarves costing thousands of pounds on your way in and make your way through the expensive stuff to the food halls. You can ignore the rest of the store, but this is worth a visit. Forget Wegman's and their food stalls. Harrods has everything, from rows of delicious baked goods and chocolates to Indian, Malaysian, Chinese, etc etc prepared food and (best part) a Krispy Kreme! There are a few krispy kreme shops scattered around the country, but there's not many and none in York, so when I saw that, I had to have a taste of home. Even if it did cost me 1.10 for a plain original donut. What I love most about Harrods is the decor- the candy rooms look like the set of Pushing Daisies- dark wood floors and trim, bright colored paint and gold ornaments... Its really neat. (But they get mad if you try to take pictures, eep!) I went through around 6:30 and they had end of the day discounts on a lot of the prepared food, which was awesome. I got myself a whole bunch of different goodies for dinner for under 5 pounds. Delicious! And the whole store is fun to explore because each room is decked out differently. There's the gleaming marble and stained glass ceiling in the Asian food hall, the magical chocolate shop, the snobby "luxury goods" room, and the Egyptian escalator room decorated in consultation with experts from the British Museum to check for authenticity!

Fun story, Harrods was also home to Britain's first escalator (also the first department store in the world to get one), installed in 1878 and the proper ladies & gents were so confounded by it at first that Harrods used to employ someone to stand at the top to offer complimentary smelling salts to the ladies and port to the gents! (Alas, they don't still do that.) They've also got really neat window displays. When I was there, they were all takes on the new Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland. Here's the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, Harrod's style.

Harrods also used to employ Dave Prowse, who you might not have heard of but you totally know. Hint: "Luuuuke *breath* I am your father.... *breath*" That's right, Dave Prowse was Darth Vader in the original trilogy of Star Wars, but they dubbed his voice with James Earl Jones because Prowse had the whole British accent thing going. (Personally I think Darthy would've been that much more awesome if he'd been British, but oh well.) He used to be a fitness consultant in the sports department while Pierce Brosnan used to work in the pharmacy. So there you have it. I totally think Harrods is worth a visit, even if you aren't going to buy any of their luxury goods. The food halls alone are totally cool and a great place to grab something to eat on the go!

And now for something... well, not _completely_ different, but magical in its own way.

Hamleys Toys! You know it has to be an amazing toy shop if it is OLDER THAN THE UNITED STATES. That's right, founded in 1760, Hamleys has brought joy to young children (and not so young children) for 250 years. To (loosely) quote one of the tour bus commentators, "I highly recommend a stop in Hamleys. I guarantee that everyone remembers the last time they went in. I remember the last time I was there. I was 24. I'm still 24. It was yesterday." Gotta love the British. Or maybe its just that guy- hysterical. But more gems of wisdom from him later on. Anyway, I'll just say that I was thankful I came out of there without an armful of new stuffed friends. Thank goodness I'd just packed a rucksack so I physically couldn't take home too many purchases or else I'd probably have a new teddy right now.

And how about this shop for all of your Sherlock Holmes paraphernalia needs, conveniently located a block away from Madam Tussauds. But ignore the green building and instead check out the door on the left. You can't really make it out, but that would be 221B written on the window above the door. And this would be Bakers Street. The man might be fictional, but his address certainly is not! I actually stumbled across it almost by accident. I got off the bus at Madam Tussauds to grab a waffle for breakfast (not at Madam Tussauds) and noticed that the sign down the way said "Bakers Street." So I thought, hmm, let's go see. And there it was. There's a bigger/better Sherlock Holmes Museum down towards Westminster by the pier, but I thought it was kinda cool to see where he would've lived, y'know, if he'd been real.

Ahh, Camden Markets area- home to 2 markets that kind of run into each other, plus a street full of fun shops & cheap eats. If I had known my flight to Istanbul was going to be canceled, I would have bought stuff from here, but I was good and saved room in my pack. Alas. Anyhoo, here you can find the Camden Lock Market & Camden Stables Market.

Here you can find all kinds of things, from jewelry (both nice & costume), clothes (both goth/punk and normal), antiques, leather jackets, purses/handbags, statues, t-shirts, costume supplies, scarves, art- if you can think of it and it is portable, they probably sell it. There's also a number of vintage shops both within the market stalls and in buildings along the streets nearby. I also got delicious Chinese food for 3 pounds. Priorities, right?

So there you have some of the more interesting shopping options. Worth seeing- I didn't buy anything at any of them! But I would have. Silly volcano. In fact, I limited my purchases in London to some postcards, little souvenirs to mail to various people, and a zip up tote from the British Museum a) because it is awesome b) because I'm dorky like that and c) because it was cheaper than those totes at the MFA that I never talked myself into splurging on. Oh, and a London A-Z because maps are good things to have in London, although it is surprisingly easy to get from place to place. Or maybe that's just me coming from a mass-transit background. The only time I ever got turned around was coming out of Victoria Station by different exits & having to find the road to my hostel, but that just involved walking around the station until I found it. (Is it sad that I had an easier time navigating London by tube/bus than I did trying to find the rows in Chester by walking through the town? To be fair they don't mark the rows on the free city map at the train station. You have to know that the rows are at "the Crossing" and follow the signs pointing there. But still.)

I think next post will cover the awesomeness of the British Museum, because everyone should go to the British Museum. So if you can't, you can go there by proxy through the 97 pictures I took there. Don't worry, I'll only post the best ones ;)

Buckingham Palace (London part 2 of 9)

This is where the queen lives. Woo. Enjoy some pretty pictures. :)

The Victoria Memorial in front of the gates of the palace.

Crest on the gate. See the unicorn & lion?

London, an overview (London Part 1 of 9)

I was supposed to fly out to Istanbul on Saturday, but what with the volcanic ash cloud hovering over Europe, air travel has been severely disrupted, and thus I am back at York. At least I got to enjoy three days in London, which I absolutely love. Most of my fellow Yorkites seem to regard London either with moderate dislike or outright hatred, but I thought it was a fantastic city. But granted, I'm completely a city person. Give me mass transit, loads of ethnic food options, plenty of museums and sights to see and things to do and I'm set. I almost wish I'd gone to one of the schools I got into in London instead of York, but York has a special place in my heart too.

Its hard to even try to cover some place like London in one post, so I'm not even going to try. For this post, I thought I'd do a quick overview of what I got up to while I was away and then do several posts on specific sites in order to make it more manageable to write about.

The city of London proper is actually quite small- only about 1 square mile and directly correlates to the Roman city of Londinium. Most of what we think of as "London" is technically part of either the city of Westminster or surrounding villages that have conglomerated into the giant sprawl of modern Greater London. Today the ancient city of London is missing it's medieval walls but you can still tell when you are entering or leaving the city by these guys:

Dragons are the symbol of London and will mark the transition into London proper in some form or another along all road access points. I actually stayed in Westminster, in a district called Belgravia. The area was/is largely owned by the Grosvenor family, the head of which holds the title of Viscount Belgrave (among others) and this is where the district's name derives from. The Grosvenors mandate that the buildings there continue to be painted "magnolia" and must be repainted every 10 years and washed every 5 to keep them as pretty as they are.

It isn't the most happening part of London, but I thought it was quite a nice area to be able to go "home" to. Plus, within easy walking distance to Buckingham Palace and Victoria Station, so easy tube and rail connections. The area is dotted with hotels and embassies, and continues to be a fashionable neighborhood for the well-to-do. I saw Sean Connery's house, but apparently he doesn't actually stay there much, and Margaret Thatcher lives there; you can find her house by finding the police officer who stands guard outside.

While I was in London, I was determined to see/do as much as humanly possible, considering most touristy things close around 5 or 6. So I did one of those awfully touristy hop-on-hop-off bus tour things, and y'know, I think I really got my money's worth out of it. I got to see a lot of London riding around on it that I wouldn't have if I had just taken to tube back and forth to all the places I wanted to go, plus I got inspired by the commentary/live tour guide on the buses for additional places to check out that weren't on my radar. But for now, let's focus on the touristy things.

The British Library- an absolute must for history/literature enthusiasts. While it functions much like our own Library of Congress in that it has copies of EVERYTHING, it also has a neat room full of the "treasures of the British Library" on display. Admission is free (yay!) and they have all kinds of cool things, from Shakespeare, to the Lindisfarne Gospels, and the only manuscript of Beowulf.

And how about the British Museum? Issues of cultural heritage and looting (coughElginMarblescough) and whatnot aside, the British Museum is incredibly impressive. Collecting things from around the world while you're a huge imperial power gets you an awesome national museum. This totally deserves it's own post, so more on this later. But just wow.

Buckingham Palace: It is only open to visitors in August and September while the Queen is away at her summer palace in Scotland, but fair warning that the Queen charges an arm and a leg to view her palatial residence. 

The London Eye: London's most-visited tourist attraction. The London Eye was built in 1999 for the Millennium and was only meant to last for 5 years. It has since had its lease renewed for another 25 years, so it'll be sticking around for awhile (I mean come on, its London's biggest money maker, of course it is sticking around!). The London Eye is Europe's largest ferris wheel, but it has been surpassed as the tallest in the world by two wheels in Asia. The current record holder is the Singapore Flyer. Each capsule on the wheel can hold 25 passangers and one loop around lasts 30 minutes. In case you were wondering, you can in fact get married on the London Eye, provided you want 25 or fewer guests present and can get the thing done in ~25 minutes. But they recommend you hold the reception elsewhere (no toilet facilities + lots of alcohol = not a pretty picture). This will also cost you an arm and a leg (about 18 pounds), but is actually open pretty late, so you can chose to see the panorama of London during the day or lit up at night.

St Paul's Cathedral: Charles & Diana broke with royal tradition and got married here, instead of Westminster Abbey, the traditional site of all things ceremonial and royal. It is a gorgeous cathedral, although only about 300 years old, which is fairly young for a great European cathedral and was designed by Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of 1666 destroyed most of London. Unfortunately, this is another one that does not allow photos inside, which is a shame. But I went and paid my respects to Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington in the crypts and then climbed up 259 steps to the Whispering Gallery, then up 119 steps to the Stone Gallery, which circles the exterior of the bottom of the dome, and then up 152 steps to the Golden Gallery, along the top of the dome. While the steps up to the Whispering Gallery aren't bad- pretty wide and shallow until the last ten or so which are standard thin passage stone steps. But up to the Stone Gallery it is all twisting narrow stairways that even I had to duck down in on the way down. And to the Golden Gallery? Up metal scaffolding set up in the giant cavern of the dome. The views are pretty good, but I don't know that there's much difference between the view from the Stone & Golden Galleries.

My favorite, the Tower of London! So many pictures and stories to tell about this castle, so I'm not even going to get into it here.

 Trafalgar Square: An awesome (and pigeon-free!) place to hang out and enjoy the sunshine and people watch.

Westminster: I'm kind of combining several things here. The remains of Westminster Palace are now the Houses of Parliament (pictured). Big Ben hangs in a tower of the Palace and chimes out the quarter hours. Westminster Abbey is right across the street, while 10 Downing Street is just down the road.

So there are some highlights of my trip. Much much more to come on both these and other sights. But I'll leave with this thought: The beauty of traveling alone (besides the obvious perk of not having to deal with other people and compromise on what to see and do) is that you meet really awesome other people! Since I was traveling by myself, I elected to stay in an all-girl room and got to meet some really great girls also traveling by themselves which made for instant friends. It takes a certain kind of adventurous girl with a bit of a responsible side to travel alone AND chose to pay 1 pound more per night to stay in an all-girl room instead of a co-ed one, so we all had at least that much in common, despite the fact that we hailed from the US, Italy, Belgium, Australia and New Zealand. This also serves as my photographic proof that I got sunburned in London on an overcast day.

What's on the telly?

(copyright BBC)

I like tv. I watch a lot of tv. And while there are a lot of familiar American tv shows airing here- exhibit a: Friends is on All Day Long- there are also some really great British shows too. My favorite new discovery is Doctor Who, a sci-fi adventure featuring a time-traveling alien and his various companions as they save the day throughout history. This week the Doctor and his friend Amy Ponds visited Starship UK, home of the Brits after the Earth is destroyed/uninhabitable and encounter creeptastic smiley statue things. I'm pretty sure SyFy is airing some episodes, but I'm not entirely sure which seasons. Doctor Who originally aired 1963-1989 but was revived in 2005 and continues running strong. Periodically the actor portraying the Doctor changes and is explained by the Doctor regenerating into a new body, usually as a result of major injuries. The eleventh doctor played by Matt Smith (can I just say that I love that he's decked out like a nerdy professor? Bowties and tweed jackets for the win) just started his run 2 episodes ago, so if you've got a chance, give the Doctor Who bandwagon a chance. :)

Spring! (Thank goodness...)

Today I thought I'd do something a little bit different. Instead of my customary whining about the lack of good mac & cheese or Mexican food, I thought I'd talk about some of the things I love about living in York/England. That, and gush about how happy I am that spring is finally here. I don't think I could've stood the constant cold, windy, rainy winter days much more. I now understand why they advocate those sunlamps for people who live in areas that don't get much sun over the winter months.

First up: Jumbo Chinese Buffet. I only recently (read: yesterday) tried out this wonderful, wonderful restaurant, but that was enough to propel it onto the list of awesome places. For 5.99, you can enjoy an all-you-can eat lunch buffet of deliciousness. Dinner costs more, but you get more options. You can enjoy all kinds of rice, noodles, entree dishes, soups, veggies, and appetizers. Plus, these amazing pineapple-fried dough ball things. So good. So I finally found good Chinese in York. Only downside is that it is pretty much just a buffet and as far as I know, doesn't do take out. Alas.

Next up: Bootham Bites. I didn't think to take a picture of the restaurant, so instead you get a picture of my favorite option there- the Yorkshire Ham & Mature Cheddar (or as I call it, the ham & cheese) panini. I'm pretty sure I've already waxed poetic elsewhere in this blog about chicken and bacon sandwiches, but these are quickly growing to rival the chicken & bacon for my affections. And I don't even normally like ham. But they don't really do ham lunchmeat like we do in the states, instead you get slices of real ham on a sandwich. After living here, I've come to the conclusion that it was never the ham that I disliked, it was the honey-baked hams that I disliked. I prefer ham to be kind of salty rather than sweet. Congratulations, England. You've overcome my dislike of ham, mayonnaise, and onion (although after a certain point I start picking them out of my food again. So maybe I've only sort of gotten over my aversion to onions.) In a country where sandwich shops rule the streets, Bootham Bites makes some excellent ones (the bree, bacon & cranberry sauce one is also really good).

Nom nom nom

Boots' sparkling blackcurrant apple juice: This is to England what Club Orange was to Ireland for me. So good. And for the record, my love for it has NOTHING to do with the fact that the bottle is purple. That's really all I have to say on that front. :)

Street food: I have yet to have bad street food, with the possible exception of the kind of cold paella I had one time (but to be fair, it was the first week of February so I totally blame it on the weather. Oh, and the Brits insist on pronouncing the l's. I made a point of pronouncing it properly and the vendor guy gave me the biggest smile ever). I love the international market that pops up on Parliament Street every so often. Yeah, its the same stuff all the time, but its yummy. Danish pancakes with Baileys & whipped cream? Yes please. Baklava? Heck yeah. Polish potato pancake things? Yum. But even when that's not running, there are all kinds of stalls with crepes, "kinky donuts" (I have yet to try those but they're on the list!), sausages, etc. And the ice cream carts have recently reappeared!

You can't see him in this picture, but the crowd gathered be hind the ice cream cart is watching a street performer juggle & do balance tricks. It isn't Faneuil Hall, but it'll do :)

I just liked the slogan on this one :)

Now let's talk pasties. That's "past" like something that has already happened + ie, not like the glue. These flakey pastry envelopes of delicious filling are classic inexpensive British eat-on-the-go, or eat on a bench watching everyone in the square, whatever floats your boat. The traditional pasty is steak & onion, but I tend to prefer the varieties with a bit less onion. Cheese & bacon is delicious when you can find it, other good choices are pork & apple and ham, brie & cranberry. 

While it isn't a food, I'll stick the Gap on this list. I _never_ shopped there in the States because I tend to be a "Can I find something comparable elsewhere for less?" kind of shopper. But England has this great thing called the "Midseason sale" when ALL of the stores have big sales. So I wandered into the Gap one afternoon and emerged with like 5 layering shirts and a navy jacket that I love and adore (and for 18 pounds! That's like $27 for a jacket! And from Gap! Who knew?) I think part of why I'm more open to the Gap here is because pounds are smaller #s. 6 pounds for a t-shirt feels like a deal (even thought its like $10 and that's about the most I'd spend on one at home). Either way, I got some much needed layering pieces for spring. At home I usually go straight from light sweaters to t-shirts, but we've got a bit more of spring here.

Which is a perfect segue to my next topic: spring time in York. The endless rain is mostly gone (although we still get the odd rainy day/s) and temperatures are up in the high 50s/low 60s. Sunglasses have been worn 3 times now (oooh, aaaaah!). But more importantly, flowers are springing up everywhere. Daffodils are up in pretty much every patch of grass in the city:

along the walls,

 in the alley off my street,

Museum Gardens in the ruins of the abbey  

and in front of the Yorkshire Museum,

even among the gravestones in church graveyards.

I love all the daffodils. Yellow flowers are my favorite because they just seem so cheerful. They help make the city a bit more sunny, especially on overcast days. Sadly I think my little yellow rose plant has bit the dust after a month. I probably should have bought it a real pot instead of leaving it in the plastic one it came in. Oh well. On Friday, I'm taking the "Harry Potter train" to "Hogsmead," but in the meantime, I have paper writing to do (boo!). See you next post.

Happy Easter!

Look where I went to church this morning! Ah, the Minster. Today the Most Revd and Rt Hon The Lord Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, an adorable teensy Ugandan man presided over the service and gave the sermon. And I got to shake his hand on the way out the door! Clearly I'm rubbing elbows with important people! Ok, no, not really.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Anglican church, it is basically a mash up of Methodism and Catholicism. How does that make sense? Well, for a _really_ simplified rundown...

The Anglican church broke off from the Catholic church so that Henry VIII could get married and divorced a lot, but they retained a lot of Catholic liturgical practice, just with no pope. Over the years they leaned more Protestant and after Queen Elizabeth I, the Anglican church (i.e. Church of England) was pretty firmly established as Protestant. Fast forward to the 1700s and you get John Wesley and his buddies espousing a sort of mini-reform of the Anglican church and establishing it both in England and in the American colonies. Well, post-Revolutionary War and the Methodists are firmly established in the US and NOT under the control of the Anglican church (can't really blame the Colonial folk- I wouldn't want anything to do with the national church of the country I just won a revolution against), despite the initial plans of the founders of Methodism. Over the years, American Methodist churches (at least, the United Methodist churches which are the ones I'm most familiar with) have moved further away from some of the Catholic traditions preserved in Anglicanism, but they still have similar prayers, hymns, etc. as the Anglicans. So, since Anglicanism is the halfway point between Catholicism and Methodism, I'm totally not surprised that it resembles both.

For Easter, we began and ended with a procession of various church officials, clergymen, the choir, and a whole slew of people carrying banners, crosses, scepters, books, chalices, etc. Plus loads of incense! (I'm not a fan of the incense.) The other glaringly Catholic-derived aspect was Communion. While they did let any "communicant member of a Christian church" partake, they have you kneel and press a wafer in your hand and hold the cup to your mouth for you to drink. The germophobe in me has always been creeped out by drinking from the same cup as all those people. That's a practice that has been replaced at a lot of Methodist churches, where instead you either dip the bread into the cup and consume both together, or they pass around thimbles of juice/wine. The sharing the cup thing still persists some places, but it isn't nearly as common. And I've never had communion wafer before- always real bread of some sort, often pita bread.

But what surprised me was the Lord's Prayer there. When I learned the prayer when I was young, we happened to attend a church that said "forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us" instead of "trespasses." A lot of churches have stuck with "trespass" over "sin" because it is more traditional and old school I suppose. But the Anglicans! Now, to be fair, I can't say for certain whether this is a widespread Anglican phenomenon or if the Minster is just really radical and new agey, but somehow I doubt that.

The "standard" (i.e. the way I've always said it) Lord's Prayer:

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our sins/trespasses as we forgive those who sin/trespass against us.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Amen.

The Minster Lord's Prayer:

Our Father in Heaven, hollowed be your name.
Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and forever. Amen.

Its in more "modern" English than any version I've ever heard. Still, it was a lovely service, and the archbishop is my new favorite person of the moment. He did an excellent job with making the sermon both relevant to Easter and to modern life and the struggles of modern Christians. I will leave you with a word of advice. If you ever have the chance to go to a service in a grand old cathedral/minster, you should totally do it. But dress warmly because they do not heat those things and it gets FRIGID. Although I'm sure it feels really nice inside in the middle of summer, in early spring & winter it is a major brrr! fest.

After services, I came home to start cooking! A few of us got together for an Easter dinner of roast lamb (hey, when in Rome right?), sweet potato casserole provided by yours truly, roast potatoes & carrots, and asparagus in a garlic cream sauce. Are we classy or what? I totally meant to photograph our feast and took my camera down and everything annnnd forgot. But trust me it was delicious. We modified a recipe for lamb with pomegranate molasses because pomegranate juice was SUPER expensive. So we used cranberry apple instead. I highly recommend it. Super flavorful. And I made 3 new converts to the deliciousness of sweet potato casserole. As I was working on it, one girl was like "I'm more of a squash person than a sweet potato person, but I'm entirely intrigued by whatever it is you're making." She is now a believer :) Another girl announced at dinner, "Excuse me, I have to do something I've never done before and get seconds of the sweet potatoes." That's right. All shall bow down before the sweet potato casserole, cuz it just isn't a holiday without it! Even if it does take about 3 times as long as it should to cook potatoes (sweet or otherwise) on the silly electric stove tops.