LONDON

Had a cheeky day of tourism with my friend Jo (a local) who took me to all the 'major attractions' in just over forty minutes. We covered so much ground we were out of things to do before the sun set. I saw it all--Buckingham Palace, St. James Park, the National Gallery... I think Jo ultimately made a better tourist than I did.  She bought so many souvenirs she could barely carry them home!

The London Eye is the ultimate in tourist tacky-wonderful. It is essentially an enormous ferris wheel that moves really, really slowly. It moves so slowly that when you look at it from far away it doesn't appear to be moving at all. The London Eye  takes nearly forty five minutes for it to make one singular rotation but this is sort of the point. By it moving so slow, you to really get a good view of the city. The ticket machine at the London Eye made mistake and printed us two tickets when we had only paid for one so I got to drag Jo along. She was all about it. If I didn't know any better, I would have thought that Jo was the one out of the two of us that had never been to London before. 

That night, we decided to see the locals at Vodka Revolution where I indulged in doubles of both pear and birthday cake flavored vodka and my favorite, a vodka milkshake. I got to take over her brother's enormous bed. I  indulged in a night of pleasant sleeping arrangements before the following night when I lodged in the Clink Hostel, located in an old courthouse, where I slept in a cell. (This is not even a joke.)

My second day in London I decided to ignore my itinerary and spend the money I had saved for emergencies. I started at Camden market where I found a pair of obnoxious coral sandals for £5 and a brass wallet coated in pearlescent shell for £10. Letting my bargains get to my head, I set out for Portobello market where I snagged a necklace made out of jade and the face of an old watch from an adorable Japanese woman who makes them by hand. Feeling full of strawberry cream crepes and sick from the empty feeling in my wallet, I headed to Covent Garden which left little for me to do with no one to fine dine with and not a pound left to go to the cinema. I quickly found my way to Tate Modern and spent the rest of my evening there. 

Determined to see more of London than tourist traps and places to spend money, I set out to find Queen Mary's gardens in Regent's park. I found myself suddenly compelled to visit the statue of Peter Pan in Hyde Park and spent over an hour trying to find it. It was a rather lukewarm reward to finally track it down. I next went to Brick Lane where I spent about ten minutes before having an epiphany that I wanted to go to the Museum of Natural History. Luckily, I quickly got some directions and jumped back on the tube.

I will say that I was the only person in line for the Dinosaur exhibit who was not either age 5-10 or the parent of someone  who was.