London - Day 2

In which Jay rides the Tube and does the tourist thing.

Up and at ‘em as we tried to recall anything from the night before (not that we were that drunk – but that we couldn’t quite remember all the funny things that made us laugh so hard). Time to hit the town. We strolled to the Tube. On our way I learned that there aren’t too many grocery stores as we know them in London. Mostly they do all their shopping in convenience store sized grocery stores. This means that Mike has to shop more often – but because there are a lot of these sprinkled throughout, it is easy to do. It made buying fruit on the go very easy – but what wasn’t easy was trying to discard anything in London. There are no trash cans anywhere! I had to carry a banana peel around for half an hour. Damn terrorists.

I was tickled though to see painted on the ground at every crosswalk the words, “Look to the right” Being one of the last places on earth that still has people driving on the left, they decided to continually remind pedestrians which way the traffic will be coming from!

Now the Tube. The most complicated transit system I had ever encountered was in Toronto – and that’s dead simple. I had no idea that there were so many routes! You can get to almost anywhere in London via the Tube. To keep the flow moving, most people use what’s called an Oyster card. Basically you prepay $X onto this car and then simply press the car at the entrance (and exit) every time – simple and quick (and you can load up your Oyster card online!). A famous phrase in London is Mind the Gap. Many of the Tube stations are on a curve and when the subway stops, there sometimes is a pretty large gap between the train and the platform.

Day 2 was a day of walking though. It was unexpectedly blue-skied that day too! We saw a lot of the mandatory tourist-y things like London Bridge, Big Ben, the Eye and 500 works of Salvador Dali. Ok that last one isn’t mandatory – but we did see that. It was very interesting collection of Dali paintings, drawings and sculptures. It was great to learn about his influences and even some of the meanings to his art.









We walked all over. I saw a small peek at Buckingham Palace, but had no interest in getting closer. It's so neat walking around and everywhere you look it's interesting architecture! Every street seemed to want me to take a picture of it! In one park I found this weird floral arrangement dedicated to those worshipful barbers...weird.

Mike had to duck into work for a couple of hours so I meandered around by myself. I stumbled upon a really old cemetery Some of the graves had people that died in the 18th century. It was a bit creepy but mostly interesting as I tried to read the faded epitaphs.

After meeting back with Mike, we headed home and Mike made a truly fantastic meal that included herbs from his mini potted garden outside his back door.

Mike had a ticket to a see a band that night that he wanted to see – but he only won the one ticker from iTunes. I stayed home and read a book I bought that day about jokes and why they’re funny. I also read this book that Mike had about a London street artist named Banksy. This guy is amazing! He does stencil paintings on public walls (so yes, graffiti). All his works are either funny, have a social message or both (mostly both). I was mesmerized by the talent, humour and audacity that this Banksy had. Mission #2 now became the quest to find an actual Banksy in the streets somewhere. Here are some examples of what Banksy does (found on the Internet - not in real life...yet):