London

I came down to London on Friday, and Ben and I met up with Jared after work. We went to a local pub around the corner from Jared's apartment, which is in North Greenwich, right next to the Greenwich Observatory, where GMT starts and the Prime Meridian is. Poor Prime Meridian: it's the lesser of the two global dividing lines. Actually, it's probably third if you count the international date line. Oh well. I guess it kind of follows the same story line as every British athlete or sports team in history. Tim Henman, the English national soccer team, the cricket team, the rugby team, etc.

Anyway, there are plenty of ales here, which I expected, and they're all quite good. The bad part, though, is that buying a beer for three pounds-fifty would be good if it was three dollars-fifty. But instead it's seven dollars. So I'm quite happy to get out of England tomorrow, if only for that reason.

Now for some pictures:

This picture needs no explanation. It's the one I promised you in the last post.


Jared, Ben, and I enjoying some cheap drinks, courtesy of Jared's bartender brother.



The obligatory Big Ben picture, albeit sideways, since I didn't want to fuss to turn it around.

The Tower Bridge, which would be a sweet place to hang out on, if you could get to the top.

A cyclist, but more importantly, Churchill, over my righthand shoulder. This reminds me of my favorite Churchill quote: "That is something up with which we shall not put!" Ah, teachin' the kids good ol' grammar. Goodonya, Churchie. (I forgot to add, Ben and Jared are from Australia, so it was like visiting two countries in one.)



And, to the benefit of us both, this is Reha, an architecture student at Minnesota. We met in the customs line after we landed in London. It was early, and we were both kinda grubby and tired, and helped each other navigate the airport, the tube, and get our bearings in a new place. She's Egyptian, and I'm Lebanese. Maybe we'll tour the middle east some day. I'm up for it, even if my mom is scared of me going. Reha speaks Arabic! Fantastic! Cheers, Reha! See you around the world somewhere.

So all in all, it's been a good few days. Two things that are oddly interesting though:

1) On Air India, the flight I took from JFK, all the flight attendants wore saris. Very cool.

2) On British keyboards, they switched the @ sign with the " sign. So to type quotation marks, which would make sense if they were over the apostrophe, you have to hit shift-2. Slightly annoying, but really bothersome when you're trying to type fast. Also, they have a £ sign over the three. I don't know if that will show up on your computers in the US, but it's a pound sign.

Off to Sevilla tomorrow. Cheers, as they say.

~GM