London & Stonehenge

 

This post is a time machine.  Nevermind the fact that London is 8 hours ahead of Portland (and 6 or 7 ahead of Costa Rica).  And nevermind even that the day I’m posting this is actually a couple days after writing it.  The stories that happened today will be for another post.  Those aren’t the point.  The story below contains the journey I’m sending you on now.

05-May-2012

We’re on the bus from London to Stonehenge right now as I’m writing this.   So, as I’m writing and riding, I’m on my way to a monument built 5,000 years ago!  And, since I’m writing this now, while I’m still on my way there, you get to go with me.  Consequently, by the end of this message, you will have actually leapt about 5 hours into my future.  In the words of The Great Keanu, “Whoa.”

It never occurred to us until we were practically here that Stonehenge would even be close by.  Turns out it’s about a 2 hour drive from Victoria Station in Central London (just down the road a bit from Buckingham Palace, and all the lunacy that goes on there.  Holy CRAP, those guards are nutty.  Completely fuckin bonkers).  Right before we landed in London, we looked up the Couchsurfing wiki for the city, and one of the things it mentioned was that Stonehenge was a common day trip.   So, we looked it up when we got here, and Jime found a deal that got us transportation and admission for about 26pounds each.  For comparison, just taking local transportation to get there would have cost more money, and that wouldn’t have even included admission.  For reference, the conversion is about 30 pounds to $50.  England is not a cheap country.

In any case, this is now our 2nd full day here in London, and so far it’s been a fairly mild beginning.  Our hosts, Martin and Ginette, are fabulous!  They’re super friendly, super helpful with helping us figure out how to get around town, and have been great about showing us around even their own neighborhood of Twickenham (Google it if you want).  They have a lovely sofabed for us to sleep on, and oddly, it’s got to be the most comfortable sofa bed I’ve ever seen.  It’s perfect!

(Our awesome accommodations. The bikes in the back are for Ginette’s bike tour business called The Merry Peddler. She must have some Portland in her blood, because options include a bike Pub Crawl!)

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(Martin & Ginette & The Lawn Couch)

Yesterday, we took a walk along the Thames, from Waterloo station up to Tower Bridge and The Tower of London.  We didn’t go into those things because as I mentioned… London is not a cheap city.  The tour for just the bridge was 8 pounds per person.  So, call it close to $30 for the two of us.  We looked.  We snapped photos.  We had a lovely focaccia bread from a street market for lunch.  We left and continued on to SoHo.

(Tower Bridge)

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(3 pounds 50 = about $6.  It was quite tasty though. )

We walked through the streets of SoHo in the rain.  I looked for a place called Lee Ho Fook’s.  I was gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein.  Alas, all we found were sex shops.  But hey, at least they were high class sex shops! After that, we were a bit walked-out for the day (it’s still early in our trip, remember, so we haven’t built up our sea legs yet, as it were).

We headed home, and then Ginette took us to get some classic British take-out from a local fish & chips shop.  We got some haddock and some cod.  What was the difference?  Well, you see, one was sort of long and narrow, and the other was a bit more stubby.  I couldn’t tell you which was which, and frankly, anybody who says they can tell the difference is fooling either you or themselves.  Still, it had to be done, and I quite enjoyed both my pieces of fish, completely immaterial of what species they were.  The batter was nice and not too thick, with just a hint of sweet in it to my taste.  The chips were fine, but nothing fancy, and could have done with a bit more salt and vinegar, I think.

(I have fish AND I have chips!)

After dinner though, as soon as Martin got home from work, we popped over to their favorite pub (“The Sussex Arms”, I believe it was).  GREAT selection of local microbrew ales!  And oddly, the prices were pretty fantastic as well, considering the location.  Pints were about 3 pounds 50, and half pints were around 2 pounds.  Since they had more than 10 ales and ciders on tap, we went with half pints so we could hit the best variety.  I won’t bore you with rampant beer geekery, but suffice to say we had 4 rounds each, and my favorite of the evening was a smoked porter that you’ve never heard of.  Great beer!  Would definitely drink again.  In fact, I had two.

(Alex & Martin with two half-gone half-pints)

That brings us back to today.  This morning, after confirming our tour for the day, we headed out to London Victoria, from where the tour bus would leave.  We went in a bit early, because this is also right next to Buckingham Palace. We weren’t originally planning on doing the Palace thing… colonialism not having historically been a pleasant experience for latin america in general, and European royalty stuff not being our general cup of tea anyway.  But fuckit… we were right there anyway, and it is part of the typical London tour itinerary and all.   We got there at 11:30.  Apparently The Changing Of The Guard starts happening around 11:15 so we watched a bit of that, but it was so ridiculously over-crowded that we didn’t stick around for that long.  We walked a bit through St James Park, which was nice, but also very similar to many parks in the US, so nothing over the top there.  On the way back to the tour bus pickup, we happened across the tail-end of the Guard Change variety show… as they returned to their own building.  Same craziness, less crowdiness.  We confirmed… these people are indeed bat shit crazy, and can’t POSSIBLY have any idea how ridiculous they look.  If they did, they would surely shit themselves.  Either that, or they just know that it’s a Vaudeville one-off, and they just roll with it.  It’s a bit amusing under that light.  Caricatures are not required.  They do a fine job of that themselves, thank you very much.

(There’s no way they can see out with those giant poof-balls pulled down past their noses. They remind me of the sheepdog in the Wiley Coyote cartoons)

Tomorrow, and all weekend really, there’s apparently some sort of Canal Boat Regatta in Richmond on Thames, which is very close to where we’re staying.  So, we’re going to check that out and enjoy a local festival, with a bit more local culture and uniqueness than the typical central London phenomena.   Should be a hoot! 

On Sunday, we’re hoping to wake up and have a “Proper English Breakfast”® of Bangers & Mash.  This will pretty much end our London trip, since we fly out to Barcelona that afternoon.  One more interesting little stop we’ll make on our way though, is… we found out that one of the places we can pick up the train to Luton Airport (which is our departure point)… is Kings Cross station, made famous by the Harry Potter movies.  So, we’re going to pop over there and take a couple pictures.  I’ll have already posted this blog update by then, so I’ll include those pics in a photo album somewhere.

And that’s pretty much it for our London trip!  Well, sort of.  You see, I’m still on the bus to Stonehenge, which brings me back to the Time Machine bit.  “Oooooooh!”  So, would you like to try it out?  OK, here’s how it works.  I’m gonna count for you, and by the time I hit three, you will have been “magically” transported 5 hours into the future! 

Ready?  OK!  One….  two…..

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THREE! 

GREAT SCOTT!  It actually WORKED!  And you didn’t even need 1.21 Gigawatts, or have to hit 88mph.  Although, I think I’m doing around 88kmh at the moment, so maybe that counts.  At any rate, here we are,  back on the bus after seeing Stonehenge.

It was neat!  It was also ffffffuckkkkkking ccccccoollllld!   Jesus jumped up Christ on a cracker!  My fingers are numb to the bones.  I’m practically back to hunt and peck with my typing here… not because I don’t know where the keys are, but more because my fingers don’t actually move or bend anymore, so really I’m moving my whole arm, from the elbow down, to type each letter.

So, there’s a road that goes pretty much right up to it.  As you’re driving up, there’s no big exit through massive arches or anything.  It’s just suddenly you’re there, and there it is.  The tour we did had a nice little audio-guide that we got to carry around with us to give us some of the history, and items of note.  For example, we learned that the word “henge” means “a hanging thing”.  So, Stone Henge is the Hanging Stones.  Also, we learned that the rocks balanced on top are called “lintels”, and that they’re attached to the pillar stones with a ball-and-socket type joint, and that they were additionally secured to each other with a tongue-and-groove joint for extra stability.  Also, this is apparently the 3rd “henge” on this site.  The first henge was made of wood about 5,000 years ago (per carbon dating).  The second was also stone, but a bit smaller.  This third one was erected about 3,500 years ago. 

(We may be smiling, because this site was really awesome, but inside we’re frozen solid)

So, that’s it for now, I guess.  We’re nearly back to London, and as soon as we get home we’re off for some lovely Indian food (Edit:  It was, in fact, the best Indian food I’ve ever had).  Thanks for taking this little trip with us.  See you in Barcelona!

Cheers,

Alex