London
On my first of two spring breaks, I went to a TV station and radio station in Sevilla on Friday for a tour with my communications group. The next day I took a bus to Málaga, which was a big, hot city swarming with sun burnt British package tourists. It’s not the most charming place. While waiting in the airport, I felt like I was already in London. There were British people everywhere. The airport was huge and all of the flights were going to the UK and northern Europe. I was going to stay for a few days with Alan Walker in Weybridge, a suburb of London. When I landed in London, I started to realize that I don’t know what Alan looks like so I wasn’t sure if it would be easy to find him. When I entered the arrivals lounge, no one recognized me, so I went to a currency exchange desk to get some British pounds. When I turned around, I saw a guy holding a handwritten sign that said “S.B.” It was Alan.
We walked out to his car, a sporty Audi TT convertible, and he asked me where I wanted to go first. I had no idea what I wanted to see, so he decided to take me on a whirlwind tour of London at night (it was about 10:30 pm). It was my first time in a car with the steering wheel on the right-hand side. I had been to two British territories before, the British Virgin Islands and Gibraltar, but in both places cars are driven on the left-hand side of the road and neither place uses British pounds. So this was my first time in the real UK. We cruised around on some highways and it was a really weird experience to be in the front left seat of a car and not be driving. We drove through Knightsbridge, past the Harrod’s department store, crossed Piccadilly circus, drove by Buckingham palace, crossed a bridge by Big Ben and stopped in the middle of the Waterloo bridge, where there is an incredible view of the Houses of Parliament along the river to the west, the London Eye to the south, and the skyscrapers down the river in East London. We drove to his house where I settled in and went to bed thinking “did that just happen?”
The next morning I had cereal! It was the first time in months (other than two mornings in Madrid) that I had cereal. I met Ben that morning - he was home from college on his Easter break. Alan wanted to take me to a town on the coast south of London, Portsmouth, where he lived for many years. We drove through the countryside for about an hour and stopped to pick up some food. We walked along the beach, ate lunch, saw some naval bases and a memorial to the British sailors killed in World War II. One of Alan’s great uncles was killed during the war and we found his name on there. There were little round manmade pieces of land scattered throughout the port. They were part of the naval defense that the British installed to defend against a French invasion in the 19th century. There were lots of giant ferries going to and from France. We stopped at two different pubs and I had a pint of ale at each one.
It rained on the drive back to London. That night Alan prepared a “Sunday roast.” Americans have the Sunday brunch whereas the British have a slightly different tradition - the Sunday roast. The whole family was there, Natalie, Suzy and Ben and we had a delicious baked chicken, roasted potatoes and parsnip, steamed vegetables and wine. They had something called HP sauce (Houses of Parliament sauce) that they consider very British but it tasted exactly like barbeque sauce. After dinner I did a video chat with Mom and Dad in Whitefish Bay with Alan, Ben and Natalie.
The next day I went to the city with Alan. We took a train to Waterloo station on the south bank of downtown London. We walked by the huge ferris wheel (its way bigger and cooler than the one recently built in Sevilla). We saw the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben from across the river Thames and then crossed the river and walked right by that building and Westminster Abbey. We saw the changing of the Royal Calvary (the uniforms that the guys wear was interesting). We walked through St. James Park to the Buckingham palace to catch the changing of the guards. We saw a marching band of guys in red suits and the tall black funny hats. We didn’t get there early enough to see the changing of the guards up close in front of the palace. There was a huge crowd there. The Queen was turning 80 less than two weeks later (on April 21), so there were was a lot of buzz about her upcoming birthday celebration.
We picked up some sandwiches and had lunch in Trafalgar Square, outside the National Gallery. The National Gallery, like several other art museums in London, is free. We spent a few hours inside and saw all kinds of European art from Gothic to Impressionist. We followed a big group tour (also free) and learned a lot of interesting things from a young art historian and also listened in on a workshop for a big group of little kids. The museum puts on lots of family activities like that one. The coolest paintings that I saw where some of the impressionist paintings, and a few Spanish paintings that I had seen in my art class earlier.
We visited the Tate Britain museum next, taking a double decker red bus to get there. We saw part of the temporary exhibit on William Blake and some other British art and then went to the train station to go back to Weybridge. With Ben we went to a local Indian restaurant. There are tons of Middle Eastern and Indian restaurants in London. Curry has become so ubiquitous in the UK that it has practically replaced fish and chips as the national dish. We had huge bottles of Cobra beer from India and big round crunchy flat bread with different sauces as an appetizer and then rice pilaf with three different curry sauces. It was a ton of food and all really good. We then went to a pub down the street where I had a pint of ale.
The next day I went into the city with Ben. We first went to the Tate Modern, which is a modern art museum in a plain looking brick building that used to be a power plant. The bottom floor had a room with a really high ceiling and tons of white boxes stacked in different shaped piles, some reaching as high as three or four stories. We saw lots of crazy modern art, a lot of Dalí and some puzzling abstract expressionism. Nearby was the Shakespeare Globe Theatre. It is a reconstruction of the original Globe Theatre that burned down a long time ago. It’s open air and really small and the stage was elaborately decorated with marble columns and a brightly colored balcony. On the tour we learned about the history of the place and how performances were put on back then. They put on plays all summer long and the tickets are as little as five pounds for the standing room right in front of the stage.
From the Globe Theatre, we walked across the Tower Bridge, walked by the Tower of London and walked through the downtown area where there were lots of banks and nice cafés. We walked through a food market that was closed and then to Covent Garden and ate at a restaurant that serves really good English food. I had a salad and the Shepherd’s Pie – minced lamb and vegetables. We took “the tube” to SoHo and walked around. It was a really interesting neighborhood, very busy and vibrant and was full of cool coffee shops and restaurants, a lot of theatres. There were also lots of sex shops that didn’t really fit in. And then, all of the sudden, there were Chinese-style arches and a long street full of Chinese restaurants - about 20 of them on one street. We were in Chinatown. We went into some small bookstores and I bought a couple books – it was the first time I was in an English speaking country so it was easy to find books in English. The eclectic mix of neighborhoods and people was cool to see.
We walked through some more famous parts of London - Leicester Square were there were lots of big movie theatres and Oxford Street which a big shopping street where we ran into the Apple Store so I went in and checked it out (its huge), Piccadilly Circus, and the Harrod’s Department Store. Harrod’s, and the neighborhood around it, was insanely rich. I have never seen so many nice cars and apartments in my life. We took the train back to Weybridge and stopped at a fish and chips takeout place. It was called “Mr. Chang’s Fish and Chips.” I got a steak and kidney pie and some battered cod – the typical British fast food. The next day Alan and I went to a grocery store where I bought some food for my Spanish family – British tea, Scottish shortbread biscuits, orange marmalade (made with Sevilla oranges!), jam, and honey. Alan, Ben and I traded music – I gave them some British music that they had never heard of and they gave me a few albums of their favorite British bands. I watched TV, read, and ate a cornish pasty. I think I had a well-rounded gastronomical experience in Great Britain – meat pies, fish and chips, curry, tea, a Sunday roast, etc. A lot of it was different variations of meat and vegetables baked in a pie.
The way British people speak is interesting. The language is really different in both vocabulary and pronunciation. Dialects in Spanish differ only in the pronunciation of a few consonants (hard or soft ‘j,’ hard or soft ‘ll,’ pronouncing c, z, and s with a lisp or not, etc.). But English dialects vary much more - the British pronounce most of the vowels very differently from the way we do, making their English sound totally different from the American accent. For example, the British say “tomahto” whereas we say “tomayto.” This leads to certain words, such as “Renaissance” and “aluminum,” to sound completely different when pronounced by a British person. It was often times really hard to understand them. They add the world “yeah” to everything the way some Americans say “like” all the time. I was asked a few questions that puzzled me at first, such as “Are you all loved up?” (Do you have a girlfriend?) or “How do you find that?” (Do you like it?). The store H&M is known as “Hennies,” one stone is 14 pounds (as in weight, so I weigh 11 stone 6), one pound (the money) is referred to as a “quid,” one cent is a “pence,” “topping up” is how they say “to recharge a cell phone’s SIM card,” if you want to order two fish and chips, its “a fish and chips, twice.” It goes on and on, I heard so many expressions that were new to me.
We walked out to his car, a sporty Audi TT convertible, and he asked me where I wanted to go first. I had no idea what I wanted to see, so he decided to take me on a whirlwind tour of London at night (it was about 10:30 pm). It was my first time in a car with the steering wheel on the right-hand side. I had been to two British territories before, the British Virgin Islands and Gibraltar, but in both places cars are driven on the left-hand side of the road and neither place uses British pounds. So this was my first time in the real UK. We cruised around on some highways and it was a really weird experience to be in the front left seat of a car and not be driving. We drove through Knightsbridge, past the Harrod’s department store, crossed Piccadilly circus, drove by Buckingham palace, crossed a bridge by Big Ben and stopped in the middle of the Waterloo bridge, where there is an incredible view of the Houses of Parliament along the river to the west, the London Eye to the south, and the skyscrapers down the river in East London. We drove to his house where I settled in and went to bed thinking “did that just happen?”
The next morning I had cereal! It was the first time in months (other than two mornings in Madrid) that I had cereal. I met Ben that morning - he was home from college on his Easter break. Alan wanted to take me to a town on the coast south of London, Portsmouth, where he lived for many years. We drove through the countryside for about an hour and stopped to pick up some food. We walked along the beach, ate lunch, saw some naval bases and a memorial to the British sailors killed in World War II. One of Alan’s great uncles was killed during the war and we found his name on there. There were little round manmade pieces of land scattered throughout the port. They were part of the naval defense that the British installed to defend against a French invasion in the 19th century. There were lots of giant ferries going to and from France. We stopped at two different pubs and I had a pint of ale at each one.
It rained on the drive back to London. That night Alan prepared a “Sunday roast.” Americans have the Sunday brunch whereas the British have a slightly different tradition - the Sunday roast. The whole family was there, Natalie, Suzy and Ben and we had a delicious baked chicken, roasted potatoes and parsnip, steamed vegetables and wine. They had something called HP sauce (Houses of Parliament sauce) that they consider very British but it tasted exactly like barbeque sauce. After dinner I did a video chat with Mom and Dad in Whitefish Bay with Alan, Ben and Natalie.
The next day I went to the city with Alan. We took a train to Waterloo station on the south bank of downtown London. We walked by the huge ferris wheel (its way bigger and cooler than the one recently built in Sevilla). We saw the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben from across the river Thames and then crossed the river and walked right by that building and Westminster Abbey. We saw the changing of the Royal Calvary (the uniforms that the guys wear was interesting). We walked through St. James Park to the Buckingham palace to catch the changing of the guards. We saw a marching band of guys in red suits and the tall black funny hats. We didn’t get there early enough to see the changing of the guards up close in front of the palace. There was a huge crowd there. The Queen was turning 80 less than two weeks later (on April 21), so there were was a lot of buzz about her upcoming birthday celebration.
We picked up some sandwiches and had lunch in Trafalgar Square, outside the National Gallery. The National Gallery, like several other art museums in London, is free. We spent a few hours inside and saw all kinds of European art from Gothic to Impressionist. We followed a big group tour (also free) and learned a lot of interesting things from a young art historian and also listened in on a workshop for a big group of little kids. The museum puts on lots of family activities like that one. The coolest paintings that I saw where some of the impressionist paintings, and a few Spanish paintings that I had seen in my art class earlier.
We visited the Tate Britain museum next, taking a double decker red bus to get there. We saw part of the temporary exhibit on William Blake and some other British art and then went to the train station to go back to Weybridge. With Ben we went to a local Indian restaurant. There are tons of Middle Eastern and Indian restaurants in London. Curry has become so ubiquitous in the UK that it has practically replaced fish and chips as the national dish. We had huge bottles of Cobra beer from India and big round crunchy flat bread with different sauces as an appetizer and then rice pilaf with three different curry sauces. It was a ton of food and all really good. We then went to a pub down the street where I had a pint of ale.
The next day I went into the city with Ben. We first went to the Tate Modern, which is a modern art museum in a plain looking brick building that used to be a power plant. The bottom floor had a room with a really high ceiling and tons of white boxes stacked in different shaped piles, some reaching as high as three or four stories. We saw lots of crazy modern art, a lot of Dalí and some puzzling abstract expressionism. Nearby was the Shakespeare Globe Theatre. It is a reconstruction of the original Globe Theatre that burned down a long time ago. It’s open air and really small and the stage was elaborately decorated with marble columns and a brightly colored balcony. On the tour we learned about the history of the place and how performances were put on back then. They put on plays all summer long and the tickets are as little as five pounds for the standing room right in front of the stage.
From the Globe Theatre, we walked across the Tower Bridge, walked by the Tower of London and walked through the downtown area where there were lots of banks and nice cafés. We walked through a food market that was closed and then to Covent Garden and ate at a restaurant that serves really good English food. I had a salad and the Shepherd’s Pie – minced lamb and vegetables. We took “the tube” to SoHo and walked around. It was a really interesting neighborhood, very busy and vibrant and was full of cool coffee shops and restaurants, a lot of theatres. There were also lots of sex shops that didn’t really fit in. And then, all of the sudden, there were Chinese-style arches and a long street full of Chinese restaurants - about 20 of them on one street. We were in Chinatown. We went into some small bookstores and I bought a couple books – it was the first time I was in an English speaking country so it was easy to find books in English. The eclectic mix of neighborhoods and people was cool to see.
We walked through some more famous parts of London - Leicester Square were there were lots of big movie theatres and Oxford Street which a big shopping street where we ran into the Apple Store so I went in and checked it out (its huge), Piccadilly Circus, and the Harrod’s Department Store. Harrod’s, and the neighborhood around it, was insanely rich. I have never seen so many nice cars and apartments in my life. We took the train back to Weybridge and stopped at a fish and chips takeout place. It was called “Mr. Chang’s Fish and Chips.” I got a steak and kidney pie and some battered cod – the typical British fast food. The next day Alan and I went to a grocery store where I bought some food for my Spanish family – British tea, Scottish shortbread biscuits, orange marmalade (made with Sevilla oranges!), jam, and honey. Alan, Ben and I traded music – I gave them some British music that they had never heard of and they gave me a few albums of their favorite British bands. I watched TV, read, and ate a cornish pasty. I think I had a well-rounded gastronomical experience in Great Britain – meat pies, fish and chips, curry, tea, a Sunday roast, etc. A lot of it was different variations of meat and vegetables baked in a pie.
The way British people speak is interesting. The language is really different in both vocabulary and pronunciation. Dialects in Spanish differ only in the pronunciation of a few consonants (hard or soft ‘j,’ hard or soft ‘ll,’ pronouncing c, z, and s with a lisp or not, etc.). But English dialects vary much more - the British pronounce most of the vowels very differently from the way we do, making their English sound totally different from the American accent. For example, the British say “tomahto” whereas we say “tomayto.” This leads to certain words, such as “Renaissance” and “aluminum,” to sound completely different when pronounced by a British person. It was often times really hard to understand them. They add the world “yeah” to everything the way some Americans say “like” all the time. I was asked a few questions that puzzled me at first, such as “Are you all loved up?” (Do you have a girlfriend?) or “How do you find that?” (Do you like it?). The store H&M is known as “Hennies,” one stone is 14 pounds (as in weight, so I weigh 11 stone 6), one pound (the money) is referred to as a “quid,” one cent is a “pence,” “topping up” is how they say “to recharge a cell phone’s SIM card,” if you want to order two fish and chips, its “a fish and chips, twice.” It goes on and on, I heard so many expressions that were new to me.
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