The Last Day in London II, the return of the man in black...

(Be forewarned, the title has little to do with the blog.)
Today was the last and least exciting day in quite some time. The only thing that we did out on the town was visit the British Museum, which is a very large museum of history from all over the world. It is best know for the Rosetta stone and the marble decorations from the Acropolis, formerly known as the Elgian marbles after the man who "saved" them from Greece. It was quite the museum with a healthy dose of dead bodies and mummies to boot. My favorite galleries were those on Mesopotamia and the African exhibit which has fantastic statues made from the remaining guns from wars in Africa that have been dismantled and assembled into art. So after three hours there I had good old fashioned fish and chips in a proper British bar. The last of our day out was spent on my final tube ride and shopping for dinner. Bev made her famous enchiladas and we had a very charming, very British lady over for dinner. Sadly it wasn't Mrs. Theresa Mabbot, who I emailed and lost her phone number in Romania, so if she happens to recieve a call from some strange person speaking a foreign language, she knows who to look for. It was interesting to hear a former San Fransiscan telling us how she hates Obama because he has caused all of the problems for UK and is not doing anything, even though those very problems were starting about 8 years ago with our former president Bush, so all I have to say is: don't blame Obama, he is doing a good job cleaning up all the crap he inherited from Bush while also dealing with all of the problems arising from around the world. Just think what it would be like with McCain ruling the US, nothing would be done and the everything would just be put off for the next four years before finally being cleaned up. She was very nice company and put into perspective the European dislike for the US, after all, it was Bush's fault for some of their problems. Oh, and there is no way US universal health care would be payed for or put burden upon anyone who is outside of the borders, unless they want to pay... And now I'm done writing about politics, for now, and will sign off with the anticipation for my final British pudding, so lets see how it fares against sticky toffee pudding...

Kindeys feel like a well ground steak

Today was long. 11 hours. Leaving at 9 and returning at 8. The first part was spent out at Portobello Market, which is a little bit like Canal Street in Ney York, but with more food and less crap. We walked along it all, and by ten, just as we were making it out to the top of the street, the crowds came, just flocking in filling the sidewalks and the street itself. It was surely a pickpocket's heaven, and walking up against the crowd made us a little less likely targets. We hopped on a bus and rode it to Piccadilly's Circus from where we walked over to the national gallery. It was a nice museum, but the majority of the fantastic paintings were not on display, as the computer told me. There were many examples of Bottechelli, Raphael, Van Eyke, Monet, Piccasso, Rembrant, Vermeer and even a Da Vinci, among countless less famous artists that were stored away in the basement. Considering the Small floorspace that was used, it is far more appaling what was stored than say the amount in the Louvre, which has over 375,000 paintings. After passing a statue of George Washington outside the museum (?) it was a walk along a few squares to the theatre to watch Love Never Dies, the sequel to The Phantom of the Opera. It was really a fantastic play, with an astounding cast and some fun writing and songs, think traditional Phantom music with a little bit of a rock influence, even a song that was practically rock. After the play I treated Bev and Buz to a dinner at the oldest (continually operating) resteraunt in England, Rules. It was very fun, with political cartoons decorating the walls and an very eloquent feeling inside. I had, against my better judgement and only because of the traditinal nature of the dish, steak and kidney pie. The very first thing that I thought was that it smelled alot like the churches that we went in, my second thought was "only one oyster?" followed by "that certainly is a good looking oyster." It was... interesting. I don't think that I've ever had anything quite like it. It had some strange flavors and a very gross taste of the kidneys. I will have it again, but not for quite some time. The best part of the meal was the mustard, a very spicy English mustard with a very nice flavor before the heat swept through my mouth making my eyes water. So it was a nice tube ride back and finally home for the night.

Eyeing London

Today was a very long day, spending almost 11 hours out in the city. Starting from 10 we left and went out to Westminester Abbey, going through the church for and hour. As compared to the wooden and painted churches, this was a refresher of the traditional granduer that European churches bring to mind. This church has a great amount of famous and rich and royal bodies burried somewhere in the grounds. IT has everyone from Elizabeth I to Darwin to Laurance Olivier. It was quite elaborate and colorful, perfectly fitting for the coronation of the queens and kings. Right after we beelined it (as far as the tube will beeline) and walked across the millenium bridge, the one that is supported entirely from the sides, over to the Globe Theatre. After a lunch upstairs, it was to our seats on the second row up in fairly good spots. The play was Macbeth, and fittingly, the actors had some very convincing makeup with gashes and shine as well. It was a very convincing performance with a fantastic cast and directions. It was far more about the audience than I thought before, and people up close had to stand beneath a black piece of cloth with just their heads poking out to see to protect them from... liquids which were part of the performance. After the show we walked along the Thames to the London Eye, the giant ferris wheel that is all white and pretty well recognizable. It was another 30 minutes spent circling around the sky, looking out on London and getting dripped on by a leaky AC unit on the ceiling of out pod. And somehow that took up 8 hours, and it was in the tube with someone who had visited the SCL Burger Co. who was in a hurry and passed right by me, what a coincidence. So we then made it to the local pub and I enjoyed an impressive Asian Duck salad, something that I dont quite associate with pub food. Another ten minute walk, a stop for gelato and back to the house for the night.

5:30 am all day

We woke up early, really early. 5:30 early to make it through the 120 Km left to the airport before 10. Which we did, but barely. I luckily slept through it all, with my bag buckled into the seat next to me like another passenger. Apparently Bucharest was worse than ever before, with a 30 minute traffic jam just to go one block in the center of the city. Have I mentioned yet that every single road in Romania travels directly through the center of the town before opening up into the fast road again? They all go directly through the centrum, sometimes taking 30 minutes for a very small town. We made it through our flights, and the 2 Km walk from terminal 3 to 1 in Heathrow, through customs, into a van for hire and back to our cute little purple house. It was then rest and reaquainting before going out for Tex- mex in notting hill. It didnt have any mexican gravy, so it wasnt really Tex-Mex, more like Nevada-Mex, suprisingly good for England, just about the same as the Mexican in Bucharest. Finally it was a walk back home, stopping into the Tesco to buy fruit, milk, a newspaper and flowers for tomorrow morning. All day has been tiring, and now I feel like sleeping. Not the first time today, but it should be nice anyway.

There's a reason Dracula can become a bat.

Today was fairly slow, leaving Sighishuara and visiting a fortified church, not a monestary. It was high up on the mountain and had two special locks, one on the front door required flipping the key upside down after the first turn, opening another lock. The inner door had 15 different bars to lock, and 4 more directly in the lock part. After leaving that we traveled into another fortified town and had lunch and walked just a little while in the horrible rain storm covering all of the country. The local church has the REAL biggest organ in Romania, with over 6,000 pipes. Too bad it was covered with scaffolding. Then we drove another few hours to the site of Vlad Dracul's castle that he built during his life, of which only half is still remaining up right, because part of it all broke free and fell off of the cliff that it was built upon. We did not walk up to the castle because there was over 1400 steps up. That's with the modern sized step, I cant imagine what it would have been like in the day the it was made. We spent another hour driving, and ended up at out hotel in Pitesti with a taxi driver showing our way and a bolt in the tire. So at 8:30 I go outside and with a little help from Buz chandge the tire on our Golf, and put on the doghnut that is supposed to get us 120 miles to Bucharst in the early morning tomorrow for out flight back to London.

Music to My Eyes

We woke up this morning in Cuj, and... we did stuff, too late to remember what we did. We all went to an Ethnographical museum which had an impressive collection of local traditional items from fishing gear to clothing used during christmas and weddings. The new year's mask looks something like a Where the Wild Things Are Thing face, made from wook and leather designed to loook a little comical while scaring. We left and went out to a violin factory in the coutryside. We had to pretend that my new viola was made at their factory to let them give us a tour in the factory, and we got in and had a tour through all of the steps of the making process. Every part that they could use was clearly made in the iterest of cutting costs, with low quality in areas and corners cut in the final steps of the finishing. So we spent the night in the oldest inhabited walled city in Eastern Europe called Sighischuara (si(like simple)-gi(gift) schua(swash)- ra(random[with a lazy accent]). We took a tour led by two high-school students who knew far more about their city than I know all about Salt Lake City. We sat down for our last dinner and had my second most traditional meal this trip, after gulash. After I watched a Romanian film that won awards at Sundance and local festivals out in an open square just a few hundred feet from our hotel.
And the movie ended and I went to sleep. THe end.

Applebees of the East

For a change of pace today, we dove for no more than two hours all day. This drive was not seperated at all though, and we had two hour long stretches with just a break for a snack around noon. Before we left, we ran into the square of Baia Mare and found bathroom mats and a real hat for me, a nice brown rabbit fur hat. It is a million times better than yesterday's, but that was just for the experience. We arrived into our town very early in the day, around two, and checked into my tiny room in a quaint little hotel. I have a little room with a single bed, bathroom and little more floor space than my bag takes up. The nice part is that there is a little terrace with tables and an awning for when it rains, which it is now, almost as lound as a rock concert. There is also a little food area with a coffee machine, microwave, fridge, sink and a table for people who just want to chill out with a nice snack. It's very nice actually. We all walked down to the square and ran into the same band from a few days ago playing outside the little art accademy in town. We walked around and enjoyed the impressive display of buildings from every century since the 1400s. The little cobbled square has a roman street excavation and many statues made from recuclable trash, which was all recovered and put to use. We stopped in for a snack and ordered a "chocolate shake" which turned out to be chocolate syrup in milk with ready whip on top, with two bendy straws. It was refreshing, if not what I expected to find in a European bar, and being only a dollar, it wasn't that big of a dissappointment. We then ventured into the city's botanical garden, just up the street from out hotel, and found the natural forest to be relaxing, even with a simple Japonese garden in the middle of it all. We went back, cleaned up, watched Wimbledon for a little while and then waited for the rain to stop for about 45 minutes. We had our dinner in a large resteraunt with an open room on top with just a roof over it, and about 50 tables, whos chairs were covered in brand new Heineken beer cushions. We all ordered reasonable dishes, which were tasty, but far too sweet, and apparently Bev and Buz's wine was horrible, with "too much barnyard," never trust organic wine apparently. The whole place had the feeling of a chain resteraunt, with premade feel all over it, and having three in the city does not help that feeling. After trudging through another gale to our hotel, our day is now over, and the rain is not.