First days with the Matts in LONDON
Day 180, April 7, 2009
It seems like what I’ve been doing for so long, this journal, is going to majorly spill into my first week back home. That’s alright though cause I have a lot of good things in my head that I wanna put down but haven’t done it yet. This past week, which I’ll write about in more detail later on, has been pretty great once I got over the initial shock of losing the company that the matts gave me. That was rough, but now I’m back into Mark as a single mode and it’s been great. Watching a lot of movies/tv on my laptop and juts sorta catching up on stuff. I finished the last season of BSG which of course was quite amazing, the only thing it left me wanting was more, so I think sometime this summer I’m gonna buy the whole series and start watching from the first episode. Knowing everything you know at the end and then going back and watching from the start would be a real treat I think, plus you wouldn’t have any of those pesky season breaks or anything like that. I’m also running through Weeds season three which has been great and I’m always interested in the ways that Nancy is going to get out of whatever trouble she’s in and then at the same time create even more trouble for herself. I’ve also been going downstairs and eating a lot and reading the hobbit and lots of things before I leave, again I’ll write more about that another time. This entry is more for my first few days I spent with the Matt’s when they got over here.
The first time I saw them over here was on Saturday March 28th , a day I’d been looking forward to since about November. It was great, I went to the bus stop to meet them there just in case they were confused about which stop to get off at. Had a big hug with both Matts and pretty much immediately picked off where we left, talking video games, tv, b-ball, whatever, just stuff that we have always talked about and proly always will talk about. It was so nice to have them around though and talk to people that share most of my interests and things like that. It was also funny to have them tell me that I have sort of a British inflection in the way I speak, totally not doing it on purpose but I guess I got it a little bit, that plus some of the words I’ve picked up over here which I say a lot. We went for a little walk and I showed them some of my favorite little spots in Nettlebed, it was a nice day out so that helped a lot too. That didn’t take too long cause there’s really not much village to go around, and after that we went back to the hotel to have lunch. It was funny watching those two eat in my restaurant and I think they were somewhat impressed by it all. Bro got some stuff he’d never had before like mussels and then duck which he didn’t really like all that much but this changed his mind. Matt S. had bangers and mash which is typical British food which is what he wanted; I think he enjoyed that a lot as well. I went with chicken liver pate followed by chicken and leak pie which was nice. I really had a good time though watching them sort out how things worked at my place and trying these new things that I tried so long ago but now have become just second nature for me. Eventually we finished up with that and were pretty much on our way. We took the bus from Nettlebed to Henley and then down to Reading to get the bus back to Slough.
Once we got there I was brought into their hotel room which was really great, pretty much exactly what we needed a nice little fold out type of bed for me and just enough room for us all to be comfortable. They also had a great breakfast in the morning which was perfect for us as we were getting up in the morning and trying to get on our way into London as fast as we could. So we stayed up in their room for a little while, just sorta chilling and catching up and me being beaten down by their duel nerdyness, it was like here’s this game, so did you hear about this, and so on and so on. It was pretty hilarious.
After we hung out there for a little while it was time to head into London to get some grub but more importantly catch our first walking tour of the old London. Now I remember a few weeks back when Matt S had told me about doing some of these walking tours I was really excited cause I knew how awesome they were. I also heard that bro wasn’t so enthusiastic about the whole prospect but I think he changed his tune after this first one. We learned a lot about the history of old London which mostly included the area surrounding St. Pauls. While it was a really cold night, it was perfect for some of the dark material the tour guide was talking about, it’s crazy how much death has occurred in that old city, but pretty much everywhere you walk in London you’re walking over long gone graves or plague pits or whatever. I learned a lot though, the tour guide was very knowledgeable and by the end of it we were all very happy with our decision to come to London and see this walking tour and the fact that we had at least one more that we were going to do. We went and had a quick bite at a pizza express right next to St. Pauls and made our way back to Paddington station. The only problem was the amazingly bad train service they had on the weekends. In the 6 months I’ve been here, I’ve not once had problems with trains being late or cancelled or anything, maybe I got lucky, but within a few hours of being with the matts we had a busted tube ride, a cancelled train, and some bad luck with getting to Paddington right as a train to Slough was leaving. It sucked, but eventually we got back to Slough and went to bed for the next day.
Sunday was sorta weird for us cause it happened to be daylight savings time here, which happens about a 3 weeks after it does in the US, so we lost an hour right there which was pretty lame. We also had to deal with some shady train rides again; people still take the trains on Sunday…duh. Eventually we made it to our first destination of the day, albeit later than we wanted to, Speakers Corner in Hyde Park. There weren’t too many people there and only a few people actually talking but it was still pretty neat to see these guys rambling about what they believed in and having people in the crowd yell back. Sorta old school. I think my favorite guy was this dude who had a sign that just said, “Everything is okay.” Even if people came up to him and started talking with him he remained silent. It was great. So we did that for a little bit and also ran into a random moped rally, very strange, and were off to our second activity.
The next thing we did was the Churchill museum and War Cabinet Bunker. Both were crazy awesome and the museum themselves were really modern and well set up. So much to read and listen to and watch, it was just great going from knowing very little about Churchill to finding out about so much. A very fascinating guy for sure. We spent a really long time in there, playing with some of the displays that they had up and just enjoying the whole museum. It was also pretty amazing to see where the British central command spent a lot of the darkest days in World War II. I was thinking how important the place was and how if any German had for some reason gotten in there at that time, the war would have been much much different and thus the world today would be a lot different as well. Crazy to think about just how important that place was in terms of world history. I guess that could be said about a lot of places, but this one was so tangible. We had a really good time there and spent proly at least 2 hours there I think, but we had to get moving if we wanted to get in all that we had planned for that day.
Next up was the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge. The Tower was one of those places that I would have gone and done for sure if I knew that Matts didn’t want to do it for some reason. Again, history just drips from this place and while it’s very touristy at this point, there’s still just an amazing feel of English history permeating the walls throughout. I really enjoyed looking at the crazy crown jewels they had on display there, along with all the other artifacts that the royal family is involved with. Bro made a good point about how most of the stuff they have there is from after the Civil War because Cromwell had most of the stuff that came before him destroyed and how much of a pity it was to lose some of that amazing stuff. Of course this was what Cromwell was all about and is why he is so important to history. After going through a lot of the Tower we went as close as we could along the Thames to the Tower Bridge, which is the one so many people mistake for London Bridge, and took a few pictures of that. After that we were all really hungry and went to this great place called Wagamama which is sort of a Japanese restaurant with benches rather than tables, it was great. We also got a discount there cause of our London passes, which made the entire meal more worthwhile. With our stomachs full we headed out to East London (cue thunder and lightning) to do our jack the ripper walking tour.
Getting into proper East London didn’t dispel any of the rumors I had heard about it. On the whole it seems pretty run down in most parts. I mean I had been to East London already when I went to that West Ham match but that was at night and while the buildings and things might have been run down I still say that was the best experience I’ve had when it comes to fans being friendly and a real home atmosphere in the stadium. We got off the tube and had some time to kill so we did what I always do when I need to kill some time, go to a pub for a pint. We found a really good one, nice and new and clean, and took our time with the drinks until it was time to go find our tour guide and do the walk concerning jack the ripper. Now, I’m glad I didn’t know anything about him before doing this besides that he was a sort of serial murderer in London and went after prostitutes and the poor. I’ve never seen any of the movies that have been made about him or anything like that. I was happy about this cause I could just absorb his story and not worry about anything that I thought I knew up to that point. The walking tour was once again really awesome though and a little scary too. With day light savings, the tour started in the light and as it went on it got progressively darker until it by the end, when you’re really dealing with the worst of the murders it was dark and cold. It was really cool though, touring around East London where so many murders had been done and at the same time learning a lot about the history of this side on London, a side that I really hadn’t been very much or knew much about. In the end, jack the ripper got away and the case still remains open, although he’s dead now just from old age if anything else. But it still amazes me how the police never really got a good idea of who it could be or what the motivation was or anything, these horrible murders that really effected the city so much were never solved.
Although we were all very tired at this point and maybe even a little cranky, we were all lifted by the really good time we had on the walking tour. It was quite late but we were so close, I just had to suggest we pop up to Kings X and find platform 9 ¾ of which I’ve been to 3 times now. We found it no problem and took some pictures, followed directly by some Japanese school girls that were looking to do the same thing, pretty telling of our group in general really. Finally, we headed back to Slough to get some much needed sleep. We had gotten a sort of late start but was still able to fit in a four star day, and by that I mean four major attractions in one day, not bad at all.
I’ve got more coming in the next days, but I’ve gotta completely finish packing my room, not too much left to do, and also there’s a Champions league match on tonight. So until next time.
It seems like what I’ve been doing for so long, this journal, is going to majorly spill into my first week back home. That’s alright though cause I have a lot of good things in my head that I wanna put down but haven’t done it yet. This past week, which I’ll write about in more detail later on, has been pretty great once I got over the initial shock of losing the company that the matts gave me. That was rough, but now I’m back into Mark as a single mode and it’s been great. Watching a lot of movies/tv on my laptop and juts sorta catching up on stuff. I finished the last season of BSG which of course was quite amazing, the only thing it left me wanting was more, so I think sometime this summer I’m gonna buy the whole series and start watching from the first episode. Knowing everything you know at the end and then going back and watching from the start would be a real treat I think, plus you wouldn’t have any of those pesky season breaks or anything like that. I’m also running through Weeds season three which has been great and I’m always interested in the ways that Nancy is going to get out of whatever trouble she’s in and then at the same time create even more trouble for herself. I’ve also been going downstairs and eating a lot and reading the hobbit and lots of things before I leave, again I’ll write more about that another time. This entry is more for my first few days I spent with the Matt’s when they got over here.
The first time I saw them over here was on Saturday March 28th , a day I’d been looking forward to since about November. It was great, I went to the bus stop to meet them there just in case they were confused about which stop to get off at. Had a big hug with both Matts and pretty much immediately picked off where we left, talking video games, tv, b-ball, whatever, just stuff that we have always talked about and proly always will talk about. It was so nice to have them around though and talk to people that share most of my interests and things like that. It was also funny to have them tell me that I have sort of a British inflection in the way I speak, totally not doing it on purpose but I guess I got it a little bit, that plus some of the words I’ve picked up over here which I say a lot. We went for a little walk and I showed them some of my favorite little spots in Nettlebed, it was a nice day out so that helped a lot too. That didn’t take too long cause there’s really not much village to go around, and after that we went back to the hotel to have lunch. It was funny watching those two eat in my restaurant and I think they were somewhat impressed by it all. Bro got some stuff he’d never had before like mussels and then duck which he didn’t really like all that much but this changed his mind. Matt S. had bangers and mash which is typical British food which is what he wanted; I think he enjoyed that a lot as well. I went with chicken liver pate followed by chicken and leak pie which was nice. I really had a good time though watching them sort out how things worked at my place and trying these new things that I tried so long ago but now have become just second nature for me. Eventually we finished up with that and were pretty much on our way. We took the bus from Nettlebed to Henley and then down to Reading to get the bus back to Slough.
Once we got there I was brought into their hotel room which was really great, pretty much exactly what we needed a nice little fold out type of bed for me and just enough room for us all to be comfortable. They also had a great breakfast in the morning which was perfect for us as we were getting up in the morning and trying to get on our way into London as fast as we could. So we stayed up in their room for a little while, just sorta chilling and catching up and me being beaten down by their duel nerdyness, it was like here’s this game, so did you hear about this, and so on and so on. It was pretty hilarious.
After we hung out there for a little while it was time to head into London to get some grub but more importantly catch our first walking tour of the old London. Now I remember a few weeks back when Matt S had told me about doing some of these walking tours I was really excited cause I knew how awesome they were. I also heard that bro wasn’t so enthusiastic about the whole prospect but I think he changed his tune after this first one. We learned a lot about the history of old London which mostly included the area surrounding St. Pauls. While it was a really cold night, it was perfect for some of the dark material the tour guide was talking about, it’s crazy how much death has occurred in that old city, but pretty much everywhere you walk in London you’re walking over long gone graves or plague pits or whatever. I learned a lot though, the tour guide was very knowledgeable and by the end of it we were all very happy with our decision to come to London and see this walking tour and the fact that we had at least one more that we were going to do. We went and had a quick bite at a pizza express right next to St. Pauls and made our way back to Paddington station. The only problem was the amazingly bad train service they had on the weekends. In the 6 months I’ve been here, I’ve not once had problems with trains being late or cancelled or anything, maybe I got lucky, but within a few hours of being with the matts we had a busted tube ride, a cancelled train, and some bad luck with getting to Paddington right as a train to Slough was leaving. It sucked, but eventually we got back to Slough and went to bed for the next day.
Sunday was sorta weird for us cause it happened to be daylight savings time here, which happens about a 3 weeks after it does in the US, so we lost an hour right there which was pretty lame. We also had to deal with some shady train rides again; people still take the trains on Sunday…duh. Eventually we made it to our first destination of the day, albeit later than we wanted to, Speakers Corner in Hyde Park. There weren’t too many people there and only a few people actually talking but it was still pretty neat to see these guys rambling about what they believed in and having people in the crowd yell back. Sorta old school. I think my favorite guy was this dude who had a sign that just said, “Everything is okay.” Even if people came up to him and started talking with him he remained silent. It was great. So we did that for a little bit and also ran into a random moped rally, very strange, and were off to our second activity.
The next thing we did was the Churchill museum and War Cabinet Bunker. Both were crazy awesome and the museum themselves were really modern and well set up. So much to read and listen to and watch, it was just great going from knowing very little about Churchill to finding out about so much. A very fascinating guy for sure. We spent a really long time in there, playing with some of the displays that they had up and just enjoying the whole museum. It was also pretty amazing to see where the British central command spent a lot of the darkest days in World War II. I was thinking how important the place was and how if any German had for some reason gotten in there at that time, the war would have been much much different and thus the world today would be a lot different as well. Crazy to think about just how important that place was in terms of world history. I guess that could be said about a lot of places, but this one was so tangible. We had a really good time there and spent proly at least 2 hours there I think, but we had to get moving if we wanted to get in all that we had planned for that day.
Next up was the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge. The Tower was one of those places that I would have gone and done for sure if I knew that Matts didn’t want to do it for some reason. Again, history just drips from this place and while it’s very touristy at this point, there’s still just an amazing feel of English history permeating the walls throughout. I really enjoyed looking at the crazy crown jewels they had on display there, along with all the other artifacts that the royal family is involved with. Bro made a good point about how most of the stuff they have there is from after the Civil War because Cromwell had most of the stuff that came before him destroyed and how much of a pity it was to lose some of that amazing stuff. Of course this was what Cromwell was all about and is why he is so important to history. After going through a lot of the Tower we went as close as we could along the Thames to the Tower Bridge, which is the one so many people mistake for London Bridge, and took a few pictures of that. After that we were all really hungry and went to this great place called Wagamama which is sort of a Japanese restaurant with benches rather than tables, it was great. We also got a discount there cause of our London passes, which made the entire meal more worthwhile. With our stomachs full we headed out to East London (cue thunder and lightning) to do our jack the ripper walking tour.
Getting into proper East London didn’t dispel any of the rumors I had heard about it. On the whole it seems pretty run down in most parts. I mean I had been to East London already when I went to that West Ham match but that was at night and while the buildings and things might have been run down I still say that was the best experience I’ve had when it comes to fans being friendly and a real home atmosphere in the stadium. We got off the tube and had some time to kill so we did what I always do when I need to kill some time, go to a pub for a pint. We found a really good one, nice and new and clean, and took our time with the drinks until it was time to go find our tour guide and do the walk concerning jack the ripper. Now, I’m glad I didn’t know anything about him before doing this besides that he was a sort of serial murderer in London and went after prostitutes and the poor. I’ve never seen any of the movies that have been made about him or anything like that. I was happy about this cause I could just absorb his story and not worry about anything that I thought I knew up to that point. The walking tour was once again really awesome though and a little scary too. With day light savings, the tour started in the light and as it went on it got progressively darker until it by the end, when you’re really dealing with the worst of the murders it was dark and cold. It was really cool though, touring around East London where so many murders had been done and at the same time learning a lot about the history of this side on London, a side that I really hadn’t been very much or knew much about. In the end, jack the ripper got away and the case still remains open, although he’s dead now just from old age if anything else. But it still amazes me how the police never really got a good idea of who it could be or what the motivation was or anything, these horrible murders that really effected the city so much were never solved.
Although we were all very tired at this point and maybe even a little cranky, we were all lifted by the really good time we had on the walking tour. It was quite late but we were so close, I just had to suggest we pop up to Kings X and find platform 9 ¾ of which I’ve been to 3 times now. We found it no problem and took some pictures, followed directly by some Japanese school girls that were looking to do the same thing, pretty telling of our group in general really. Finally, we headed back to Slough to get some much needed sleep. We had gotten a sort of late start but was still able to fit in a four star day, and by that I mean four major attractions in one day, not bad at all.
I’ve got more coming in the next days, but I’ve gotta completely finish packing my room, not too much left to do, and also there’s a Champions league match on tonight. So until next time.