Day 10: The Day of Half-Sneezes

Ugh, don't you hate that? When you feel a sneeze coming on, and you get all ready for it, and wait for the moment right after when it feels so good, and then it doesn't follow through? And you're left with that uncomfortable unresolvedness, and your eyes water and you just feel like your favorite team was about to make the point but at the last second botched it? That was the majority of my day today...in fact....ah ah ahhhhhh...boo. No dice.

I woke up at 6 this morning, thanks to The Plague, and had to twiddle my thumbs for a while because the museums I planned on visiting don't open until 10. On Fridays museums are open late, so I was hoping to get a thorough visit of two of them.

My first stop was the Victoria and Albert Museum. While I waited for the doors to open, I watched this cool sign. The V and A parts turn upside down, and the ampersand turns 180 sideways, so it reverses the sign. Clever and cool.








The V&A is an arts and design museum, and is supposed to have am amazing collection of textiles and period clothing. I arrived in great anticipation....

And found that whole section closed. Color me disappointed. I wandered around for a couple of hours, but was too tuckered to stay much longer. I did like this statue of Diana:




Not only is it Diana, but since she's missing her bow, it kind looks like she's "droppin' her shouldah" like the hip hop dance. Classic.

In the ladies room I overheard a British mother and her young daughter talking. The little girl asked, in her cute little accent, "Mummy, why are there two buttons for the loo?" The mother answered "Because, darling, the small one is for when you pee and the other is for when you poo. It conserves water." To which the little girl replied, "Oh! That's clever! (pronounced cley-vah!") Never has potty talk sounded so sweet.

I next went to The National Gallery, and while normally would have been there forever, could barely stay standing in each room. I forced myself to at least see the highlights, and actually unexpectedly saw some of the paintings that were very important to my big, 50 page group paper on the Reformation and Counter Reformation from my undergrad days. That was totally unexpected, and like walking into a room and seeing a close friend you haven't talked to in 5 years. We had nice chats and fondly reminisced about the good old days!

I also stopped by The National Portrait Gallery, which was wonderful. Both museums are in Trafalgar Square which celebrates the victory of (one armed) Admiral Lord Nelson at the battle of Trafalgar over Napoleon. (He wasn't stopped for long however. It wasn't until Waterloo did the Duke of Wellington finally put a stop to my favorite little emperor.)

Here is Nelson's column (with Big Ben and St. Paul's in the background!)





And you can see his sleeve is pinned up.


There was also this giant ship in a bottle, which I have to say is a less impressive thing to see when it's massive.


And here is the Olympic countdown clock. It was vandalized during the riots but they cleaned it up pretty fast.


A statue of George Washington with a pigeon hat!


There was a guy dressed up as Queen Elizabeth II, which I though was hilarious. And I wanted to take a picture so I pulled out some change, but all I had were pounds and then pennies, and of course I didn't want to give away my pounds! I didn't think he'd notice that I gave him just a few pence, but here you can see him pushing his mask back to see how much I threw in. Needless to say, this was the best shot I could afford.

I thought about going to Apsley House, but since I was so close to Covent Garden I decided to walk over. I was so unimpressed! Perhaps I was there at the wrong time of day or the week, but even though there were tons of people, there wasn't much to see or do. I did get a suitcase though. $30 for a rolling suitcase! I then thought I'd go to Fortnum and Mason, but didn't know where it was. Have a great map on my iPod that works offline and can locate major landmarks but for some reason this incredibly famous shop doesn't show up. While I was standing there, looking it up, I experienced a rare, completed sneeze, and heard a "bless you!" It was a pedicab driver, who offered to look up directions on his phone. He said he'd take me there for £5, so I agreed. We talked about New York and London, and he was from some crazy country and I could barely understand what he said. It was also raining, but I took this picture.


He gave me a little advertisement for a launch party, and I figured out later that he started a group that organizes parties (like, hip hop deejayed crazy parties) and this was his first one. He wanted to know my opinion about the flier, since it was his first time doing this. I told him it was fine, to be polite, and he insisted that I tell him what I really thought because he really wanted some honest feedback. I told him that I was not the kind of person to ever go to a party like that, so I probably wasn't a good judge for this kind of invite. But since I'm from New York, and that must mean I'm an advertising genius, he continued to ask me what I really thought. So I told him that it lacked information about his company, used crude imagery and didn't make use of the back of the paper, where more information could be written. He got very upset and said, "Well, you've broken my heart. I mean, most people say it's fine, just to be nice."

Meanwhile, he basically drove me around the block, and it cost me £5. I still couldn't find Fortnum and Masons, so took my suitcase back to the hostel and repacked my treasures into it. It just fits! I tried to rest a bit but a big group had just checked in and were getting settled in the room. I went downstairs and looked up Fortum and Masons on the computer, and had an hour before it closed, so went back into town and got there with about 20 minutes for shopping, which was fine because any longer and I might've come away with a sterling silver tea set. At least I did get another compliment on my signature!

I felt terrible but hated to go back to the hostel so early. I thought about seeing a movie, but couldn't buy a ticket. Everyone's credit cards here have a chip at one end, and they don't swipe cards hardly ever. And it's not the chip like some cards have, I think it's called blink, where it just hovers over a reader. You insert the short end of the card into the machine for it to read the chip. Anyway, all the movie ticket machines only took those cards and it wasn't worth it to figure out how to get a ticket. So back I went to Swiss Cottage. When I got off the train I saw a man bleeding profusely from his head coming down the long staircase. On either side of the stairs are escalators in either direction. The station attendants had hurried down the escalators to head him off at the bottom, and I have no idea what was going on. I have certainly never see someone bleeding in New York!

There's a middle aged woman staying in my room, who must be the chaperone to a school group. She got on my bad side when she unplugged my iPad without asking and moved it so she could sit on the floor by the door and watch shows on her laptop while it was plugged in. (We only have one plug in the room, which hasn't been very hard to rotate usage of.) Although clearly American, she does like to curse in German, and just now my occasional sniffles and throat clearing must be annoying her, because she tried to get me to take some of her medicine. Never mind that I already have enough pills in me to tranquilize an elephant...

I am desperately wishing I was back in New York, not because I'm particularly homesick, but because a hostel is a miserable place to be sick, and being sick in London with all the things I still want to see and do is like going into outer space but staying tied to a chair so you can't float around!

And I'm tired of stealing wads of napkins from restrooms and cafes. Tissues are just so expensive here!

Thanks for the flood of comments! They're like little strings of love that let me know you're there. Xoxo.