London

On Friday, we hit the road for the Friedrichshafen airport at around 1:30pm. Friedrichshafen is about 1:15 west of Kempten, on Lake Constance, which separates the borders of Austria and Switzerland. Not knowing how large the airport was or how long it would really take to get there, we ended up leaving quite a bit earlier than we really needed to. It didn't take that long to get there, and it was one of the smaller airports I've ever been in. It's so small that there aren't even any shops or restaurants in the boarding area - once you clear security, there's nothing to do but sit and wait for your flight to board. They don't recommend going through security and entering the boarding lounge until about 30 minutes before the flight leaves, so we killed some time by having a drink outside of security. The Germans sure love their beer, the check-in line for one airline passed right by a bar, and half the people in the line took the opportunity to enjoy a cold one while they waited to check in. One thing I learned on this trip to London, though, was the difference between German and British beer drinkers. I think Germans drink beer because they enjoy the taste and it's just such a part of their culture. It's better (and less expensive) than a Coke. But the Brits seem to drink with the sole purpose of getting wasted. It's really not uncommon to see the Brits pass out or even fall over in the pubs. Hence, the reason for the early closing time of midnight at the pubs of London.

This was our first experience flying Ryan Air, one of the many low-cost carriers in Europe. Ryan Air charges for everything - paying with credit card, calling their customer service line, checking a bag, checking in at the airport, fuel surcharge, very high taxes and other fees, etc. So our 0.99€ flights each way, quickly added up to almost 100€ each way. You can actually check-in free if you do it online, but only if you're an EU citizen, so that was a 4€ charge for each of us at the airport. We packed very lightly, so we didn't have to pay the 15€ bag check fee, and carefully tried to keep our carry-on bags under the 10 kg limit - not sure we were really under 10 kg, but we got by anyway. Boarding the plane was another adventure. People in Europe will crowd around (no line, just a crowd) the gate for 30 minutes before the flight boards to get a good seat, because they also don't have seat assignments - it's first come, first serve unless you pay the 10€ for priority boarding. Then once you're on board, you can't even get a soda for free - 3€ for an 8 oz. soda, ridiculous! And the interior of the plane is one big billboard. Now I get it why they are so cheap. Anyway, we had no problems getting on the plane and finding a seat. Except that Laura didn't like the seats I picked since they were the row in front of the exit row, seats that typically don't recline - until we found out...none of the seats on these planes recline! I also wondered if they cut costs by hiring under-qualified pilots, because we had some of the roughest landings I've ever experienced. Oh well, we somehow made it safely.

After landing in London's Stansted airport, we got seriously questioned by the immigration officer. I'm not quite sure why it was such a struggle (when going to Germany they barely care to stamp your passport, let alone ask any questions), but after getting past customs we headed downstairs to catch the Stansted Express, a train that takes you into the city. Stansted airport is quite a ways out of London, so it was about an hour train ride into London's Liverpool Street Station. It didn't take long to feel the impacts of a 2 to 1 currency exchange rate. It certainly made things easy to calculate in your head, but painful to multiply every cost by 2. The Stansted Express was £48 for the two of us to go round-trip. Then the subway wasn't much better. It's a great subway system, but a single ride on the subway is £4 (although just £5.30 for an all-day pass), compared to $2 on the New York City Subway. They've certainly made more improvements, the "Tube" is a fancier name, and it's cleaner than the NYC subway, but it's not 4 times better. This is where I started the comparisons between NYC and London.

After a few weeks of lots of German, it was nice to be in a place where we spoke the language, but I really just felt like I was in NYC most of the time we were there. The two cities were so similar that I put together a list of what was different about them. To me, London was the same as NYC except: London has older buildings; they drive on the wrong side of the road; they speak with different accents (although there are so many American tourists, you didn't hear the British accent as much as I expected); everything is almost twice as expensive; the people in London are far less attractive (and yes, it's totally true about the teeth in Britain!); and things in London don't stay open all the time like they do in NYC - I'm still shocked about the midnight closing time at pubs. It's tough to find places open on Sunday's anywhere in Europe, London is no exception.

So, back to the trip. A couple hours after our flight landed in Stansted, we finally arrived at Karen and Matt's apartment in Holland Park, which was actually pretty easy to find. Karen is one of Laura's friends from when she worked at Avon in New York, who moved to London with her boyfriend, Matt, when he got a nice job offer there a couple years ago. At the time of the move, Karen was working for L'Oreal, and she was able to find another job within the company in London before they moved. Karen and Matt were great to hang out with for the weekend, we had so much fun with them. Such nice people, and we really appreciated them taking us in for the weekend. They had a great apartment in Holland Park, a really nice area in London. We stayed in their office, which had a pullout bed. When I told a work colleague from London where we were staying, he referred to Holland Park as a very "posh area," and that it was. After getting in, we caught up with Karen over a couple of drinks while we waited for Matt to get home from work. Also in London for the weekend was Joi, Laura's current work colleague who stopped in London on her way out to Germany for work this week. Laura, Karen, and Joi all worked together at Avon several years ago. Joi met up with us at Karen's apartment, and shortly thereafter we all went to dinner where we would meet Matt.






Karen & Matt's apartment



Before we went there, I had heard London is really known for their great curry. So that's what Laura and I were craving, and Karen took us to their favorite neighborhood Indian restaurant. The food was great, and good to have Matt there after a couple hours of just me and the girls. After dinner, we had time to stop at their neighborhood pub for a drink before they shut down. Matt introduced me to the British style ales, which are quite different from the lagers we are used to. First, they are served a bit warmer than we typically like it. Second, they are hand pumped from the cellar of the pub, rather than being pumped by using CO2. To pour the beer, they pull on the handle a few times. While the beer does have fizz on the top, it is a bit flatter than we normally drink it. The beer itself was good, but not my favorite. Either way, I did sample quite a few of them while I was there, if for no other reason than to watch them pour it because I thought that was interesting.

Saturday morning we got up fairly early, had some breakfast, and then set off for a day of being tourists. Karen wasn't too into the really touristy stuff, so she opted to let us go on our own and meet up with us later. We first went to Buckingham Palace to watch the Changing of the Guard, where we were supposed to meet Joi. It was a huge crowd there, so tough to find Joi until afterward, and also tough to really see much of anything going on. We did see the soldiers march out and heard the marching band; and we were able to get a couple of pictures, but not much more than that. The Changing of the Guard ceremony takes place every day at 11:30 in the summer months (every other day rest of the year), weather permitting. If they don't have the ceremony, they still have a guard change, but they just don't make a big deal of it. So really, the ceremony is just a tradition they've been doing forever, and it's all a show for the thousands of tourists who go to see it.










After the Changing of the Guard, we walked through Green Park and over to Westminster. We saw the famous Big Ben, Parliament, and Westminster Abbey. Laura and I couldn't stop thinking about the scene from European Vacation when the Griswald's got to London, and kept circling around because they couldn't exit the round-about. So we kept shouting, "Look Kids, Big Ben....Parliament!" It wasn't quite as exciting to see these places as we had hoped, which was partly due to the fact that it was just loads of tourists running around trying to get a good picture (okay, so we were some of them but we didn't like it that much). To get a better view of the buildings and of the London Eye, we walked on a bridge across the Thames River.


















Now that the real touristy stuff was over for the day, Karen and Matt met up with us. We walked along the river towards where Matt's office was, since he knew of good places to grab lunch around there. I was craving some pub grub, as well as the Extra Cold Guinness I had heard so much about. We first went into the Sherlock Holmes Pub, which looked really cool, but unfortunately finding a table was tough and the food didn't look all that great. So we walked around the corner to another place where I found some fish and chips, and the Extra Cold Guinness. Matt was raving about the Extra Cold Guinness, and told me "the closer you get to the source, the better it tastes." I guess I have to go to Ireland next and find out directly from the source! I did enjoy it, but I actually prefer it just regularly refrigerated. To get it extra cold, apparently they pump some type of extra gas into it on the way through the lines. Guinness is one of my favorites, and I felt that by making it extra cold, some of the flavor is taken away. After lunch, we were in search of a Barclay's bank (the one in the UK that Bank of America has an agreement with so we don't get charged ATM fees) to take out some pounds, but on the way Matt had to show us his favorite sign in London (in case the video doesn't turn out for you, I've also got a picture):


We then headed over to the Trafalgar Square, where the National Gallery is. I wasn't much in the mood for a museum, but the group decided to go into the Portrait Gallery section of the museum. Amazingly, it costs money to get into some of the Cathedral's in London (Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral are £10 to enter), but museums are free. So we walked around the National Portrait Gallery for a bit, looking at some very old paintings of the Royal Family, etc. Then Matt had to leave us because he was meeting up with a friend to go to the Chris Rock comedy show that night. So it was back to just me and the girls. We walked over to Covent Garden, which was not really a garden at all (although London does have a ton of parks and gardens throughout the city). It was more just a city square with shops, restaurants, pubs, and lots of street performers - and jammed with tourists. We walked around for a bit, then tried to find a place to just sit and have a drink in the square, but everything was full. So we left Covent Garden and found a pub around the corner, where I could try another British Ale while the girls had some alcoholic cider (they don't like beer so much, so this became their drink of choice while in London). It was nice to sit for a bit, and come up with a plan for what to do next. Karen suggested some walking tours that looked interesting and were fairly inexpensive. The one we decided to do wasn't until 7:00pm, so we could relax and enjoy our drinks for a bit.

The walking tour we decided to go on was a tour of the "The Old Hampstead Village Pub Walk." A company called "London Walks" does many walking tours throughout the city. Karen had been on a couple of them before, but not this one - so it gave her a chance to do some touristy stuff with us that she hadn't already done. Hampstead is on the northern end of the city and was home to the wealthy many years ago. It was a really nice town, up on a hill, which was believed to be the best place in London to live for your health - a way to escape the hectic, smoggy city and have fresh air to breathe. Being up on a hill, it also has nice views down to the city. We arrived a little early, so we stopped in a pub to grab a drink and a snack before heading off on the pub crawl. Richard III led us through the narrow neighborhood's of Hampstead, telling stories, giving us an idea of what it was like to live there a couple hundred years ago, pointing out the homes of the famous now and then, and of course we stopped in a pub for a drink every 45 minutes or so. It's amazing how much some of these old, beat up places are worth, and why people would want to live in such cramped areas, but this quiet neighborhood is apparently the place to be even now for the rich and famous. I think the tour was more interesting for Laura, because she actually knew who most of the people were that the guide was talking about. The only names I recognized were Scary Spice and Ozzy Osbourne. Either way, it was still interesting, and the little neighborhood pubs we stopped in were very cool. Richard pointed out which local ales were best to order ("Haahvey's, oh Broodside") as we stopped in the pubs of Holly Bush and The Olde White Bear, before ending the 2.5 hour tour at Young's Flask.






















After the tour, we were starving and exhausted. Karen knew of a good Thai restaurant in the city that she took us to. We knew it had to be good when we got there after 10:00pm and there was still a long line waiting to get in. The line went fast, though, and it was well worth it - some great Thai food. It's interesting that we went to London and had Asian food all three nights (we ate Chinese Sunday night). I think the fact that Karen and Joi are both Asian was just a coincidence - it's really because that seems to be the best food in London. You can only do pub food so often. Had we eaten some sushi on Monday before we went back to Kempten, we would have really covered all our bases for Asian food. After dinner, we could barely pick ourselves up to walk back to the Tube and get home. It had been a long day. We left the apartment around 10:00am, and didn't get back until around midnight. After a long, tiring day, we were gone the second our heads hit the pillow.

The walking tour of Hampstead Village turned out to be a great ida, and it sparked a new interest for us. It's a great way to not just see the sites, but also hear some of the history of the area, the buildings, and get some good stories along the way. So before we left Joi Saturday night, we told her we'd meet her at 10:30 the next morning in Westminster for "The London Walk." On Saturday, we saw many of the sites this walk would take us to, but we knew nothing about them, so this was a good way to get a further appreciation for what we were seeing. Unfortunately, when we woke up Sunday morning it was pouring. Although it made things feel a bit more like we were in London, walking around in the rain is no fun. Laura wasn't happy about it, but I got her motivated enough to walk out the door anyway, figuring if the rain didn't slow down any, we'd do something else. But we were only in London for the weekend, so I didn't want to waste the day sitting in the apartment. I'm not much of an umbrella fan, but it was raining hard enough to need one, so I borrowed one of Karen and Matt's. It turned out to be a US Army umbrella - I thought it was kind of funny to walk around the UK with a GO ARMY umbrella, but it did the job. As it turned out, almost immediately after we got off the Tube at Westminster, the rain slowed and eventually stopped, and suddenly Laura was smiling again. Joi apparently didn't look out the window of her hotel when she woke up, because when she arrived to meet us, she didn't even know about the horrible rain just a half hour before.

This tour was given by Helena. She was good, but probably the least entertaining of the three walking guides we had in London. And although we no longer needed our umbrella's for the rain, if you stood in the front row when she was talking, you could have used the umbrella to cover you from the spit shooting from her mouth when she spoke. Although we saw the same sites on Saturday, this was much more enjoyable since we got the history and stories of Parliament Square - Big Ben, Winston Churchill, Parliament, Westminster Abbey; Buckingham Palace; the Changing of the Guard; Royal Park; St. James's Palace; Piccadilly Circus; Leicester Square; and Trafalgar Square. One thing I thought was interesting is that "Big Ben" is really just the nick name of "The Clock Tower, Palace of Westminster." It is the world's largest four-faced, chiming clock, and it gets it's nickname from the bell inside which is called Big Ben, after Sir Benjamin Hall.























We also walked by the Changing of the Guard again, as it was finishing. We got some info on the ceremony, the guards and their uniforms, as well as the queen and Buckingham Palace. Helena knew exactly where to take us, so we could see the guards and get a close up photo of them without the crowds in front of us. After the guard changing is completed, they march out of Buckingham Palace and down "The Mall," a pretty empty street where we stood and watched as they walked right by us.





The London Walk finished in Trafalgar Square, where we met up with Karen and Matt. We found some lunch at a pizza place close-by. They had a great special that included a personal pizza and either a beer, glass of wine, or a soda for only £6, a real steal in London. There were some interesting pizza choices, but we were all able to find something on the menu. After lunch, Matt had to go to work and prepare for a business trip the next day to San Francisco. The rest of us continued being tourists, and headed over to St. Paul's cathedral. It's a huge cathedral, designed by Christopher Wren in 1668. We weren't going to pay the £10 to enter. That seems a bit outrageous to see the inside of a church, even if does hold the second largest dome in Europe (behind St. Peter's in Rome). Plus, after a few weeks in Europe, a lot of these buildings and cathedrals all start to blend together and seem the same. This one was impressive though. Lucky for us it was Sunday, so instead of charging £10 admission to see the inside, there was a service going on and we were able to enter for free. However, because of the service, we weren't able to walk all around, look up at the dome, and take pictures. We were only able to stand quietly in the back and look in as the service went on, but this was good enough for me. There were actually very few people there for the afternoon service, but lots of tourists like us walking around in the back.





















After St. Paul's, it was off to the Tower of London. To get there, we walked along the Thames River and were able to get a look at the London Bridge and the Tower Bridge. While the Tower Bridge was very cool to see, the London Bridge might as well have fallen down, because there is nothing to see there at all - it's just a flat, boring bridge. We didn't get to the Tower of London until 4:00pm, and it closes for tours at 5:00pm. We weren't too interested in paying the outrageous £17 per person admission fee, for only one hour, so we went into the visitor center and watched a little video about it. I jokingly told the girls we could just watch the virtual tour when we get back, and that would be just like going through it - and now I've found that there really is a virtual tour online! It may have been cool to see, but just a little pricey and we weren't in the mood for it. The original tower was built by William the Conqueror in 1078. But there is much more than just a tower, it also functioned as a fortress, a royal palace, prison, and execution/torture place. After the visitor center, we looked at it for a bit from outside the gate, then it was time to move on.

We really messed up our timing on going out to the Tower of London. Since we didn't go inside, we didn't spend much time there. But three hours later, we needed to be right back by there for our night walking tour. We had too much time to just sit around there, but not enough time to head back to the apartment and relax. We really should have just waited until later in the day to head out that way, but Karen thought we wanted to go inside, so she got us out there before it closed. Oh well, to kill time we took a double-decker bus back toward St. Paul's, crossed the bridge, and went to the Tate Museum - London's Modern Art Museum. I'm not too into modern art or museums, so it wasn't the best place for me, but I did find a nice bench to sit on and rest for awhile. Laura was also too tired to walk through the crowded building to look at some weird art exhibits, so she joined me as Karen and Joi walked around. We didn't stay too long though, figuring we should grab a snack before our evening walk. There was a bar/restaurant next to the Tate, right on the river, that we stopped in. But it was a really touristy place and we didn't like the options or the prices, so we decided to cross back over the bridge and walk back toward the Tower of London/meeting spot for the walk, figuring we'd find a pub somewhere along the way. This turned out to be a disaster. We walked for about an hour without finding a single open spot - not even a Starbuck's was open. That's because A) it was Sunday in Europe, and B) we were in the financial district of London, which stays very quiet on the weekends. While walking through the financial district, we did have some close views of the interesting-looking Gherkin Building. Finally, we found an open place close to the tower, where we had enough time to have a quick drink and head over to the meeting spot for our walk, "Jack the Ripper Haunts."

After a quick drink, it was back over to the Tower of London Tube Station, the meeting spot for the Jack the Ripper walk, where Matt again met up with us. This was a very cool walk in East London, about the murders by an anonymous serial killer, famously named "Jack the Ripper," in this neighborhood in 1888. It was guided by Russell, who was filling in for Donald Rumbelow. Although Russell was fantastic (probably the best of our 3 London guides), it would have also been interesting to get the tour from Don, "Ripperologist" and author of The Complete Jack the Ripper. Johnny Depp's 2001 movie, From Hell, was based on the story of Jack the Ripper. Although Russell tells us that movie was "rubbish" and inaccurate, it was interesting to know that Johnny Depp actually scheduled time with Don before filming the movie, to walk around the neighborhood and learn more about the murders.

On the tour, we walked through the neighborhood of the killings, stopping at several of the murder sites to hear the stories of the brutal murders. Russell began the tour at ruins of the London Wall, built by the Romans almost 2000 years ago to separate the City of London from the outer areas. The City of London is actually a very small part of what we now consider London. It is similar to the burrows of New York City, in that there are several areas that makeup the London area, the two most famous of which are Westminster and the City of London. There were seven murders in this small area that were connected to the mysterious "Jack the Ripper." Six of the seven murders took place in the Whitechapel area, just outside the City of London walls - only one occurred within the walls of the City of London. At the time, the Whitechapel area was a very poor and over-populated area. Very few people could afford a place to live, and a large percentage of the women residing there were prostitutes, whom Jack the Ripper targeted in each of the murders. They were all gruesome murders, where he would suffocate the women first, so less blood would gush out, and then slit there throats (all in the same fashion), before cutting away at various other organs and part of their bodies.

While a bit graphic, the tour was very interesting and we got some great stories along the way about the area at that time and the murders. Especially interesting was to hear about the police investigations during the murders. There is a road that splits the City of London and Whitechapel today, and each area still has it's own police force - the City of London Police and the Metropolitan Police. The police forces cannot cross each other's boundaries even to this day. There was also a big rivalry among these police forces, which still exists. Despite interviewing hundreds of suspects, and people even volunteering themselves as the killers (people would have rather gone to jail and died than live on the streets in those conditions), the killer was never found. All the murders happened in a very short time period in 1888, and it's still a mystery as to who the killer was - although there are many theories out there, and still on-going studies about the murders. It is such a big deal, because they were the first recorded serial killings we know of. Russell believes it could have been one of 9 people, although he admitted his #1 belief is that it was the Prince at the time.

The tour ended in front of The Ten Bells, a pub established in 1753, with very few upgrades done since. This is the famous bar connected to the 1888 murders, because it is where many of the prostitutes would hang out before stumbling out drunk and meeting their killer. We had time for a drink at this landmark before walking over to the Drunken Monkey, a Chinese restaurant, for dinner. Matt took care of the ordering, almost like tapas style, so we could all share a variety of delicious Chinese dishes.

While we were in London, we all got a kick out of the signs painted on the streets at walkways, telling you to "Look Right" or "Look Left." Perhaps too many tourists didn't get the idea of driving on the wrong side of the road, and got hit by cars. Unlike Germany where they just won't cross the road without the walk sign, regardless of the time or who is around, they are not scared to jaywalk in London. So I took a picture of one of these walkways because I thought it was amusing. What wasn't quite as amusing was that, while we were eating dinner, either a local had a couple too many Ales at the pub, or a tourist didn't look the right way, because suddenly there was a rush to the front window of the restaurant to look outside at somebody laying in the middle of the street after being hit by a car.

After dinner, we were again exhausted after another 14+ hour day of being on our feet, walking around London. So it was back to the Tube, headed for the apartment in Holland Park. Matt had us make a little pit stop on the way, ducking into a corner store to buy a couple of beers for the walk and train ride. It's legal to drink in public most places outside the US, but this was a bit more monumental because it was the final week that London will allow drinking alcohol on the public transportation - therefore, we needed to experience it (one last time for him, one first and last time for me). We, however, did not do any "busking." Busking became our favorite word from the trip after Joi read signs in the Tube that said "No Busking," not knowing whether or not she was indeed busking herself. Not to worry, we looked it up on wikipedia, and it's defined as the following: "Busking is the practice of doing live performances in public places to entertain people, usually to solicit tips. "

Monday was Memorial Day, the reason we scheduled our trip to London, so we could have a long weekend. It was also a holiday in the UK, so Karen also didn't have to work (although Matt got on a 12 hour flight to San Francisco for work Monday morning). So the plan was to wake up and check out a couple places we didn't get to before hitting the road. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate with us, so instead of breakfast in Notting Hill and then a walk through Hyde Park (the huge park in London, that NY's Central Park is based off), we settled for breakfast and a slow morning at the apartment before leaving. We had to stop at the Tesco (supermarket) before leaving, so Laura could pick up some English Breakfast Tea and crumpets, and then we were on our way. Back on the Tube to Liverpool Street, then the train out to Stansted airport. We nearly missed our flight, as we were wandering around the airport trying to figure out how to spend our last few pounds. After getting it down to just 4 pence, we gave up and ran to our gate as we heard the final boarding call. It was a great weekend in London. Although we were worn out by the end (I was really proud of Laura, she didn't even complain about all the walking and activity), we had the best time, and we were truly grateful for all that Karen and Matt did for us while we were there. They were a great couple to hang out with, and as it looks now, I think we will be meeting up with them again in Vienna and Budapest for a long weekend in mid-July.

Next Up: Prague (after a change of plans, moving Munich to another weekend)