If we can’t be home in CA for Thanksgiving, we figured we would at least spend it in an English speaking country. That’s right; we spent our Thanksgiving in Jolly ol’ England. Ironic, eh?
This was a quick turn trip. Why? This place is pricy! Even with the exchange rate much higher against the Pound, London is still a very expensive city. For a day pass on their Tube, it set us back around 25 bucks. The same thing in Paris would be around half of that. A week in this city would send us to the poorhouse. We opted for a 48 hour tour de force of London instead.
Anyone who’s been to London knows there is no way you can really do this place in a day an a half so we didn’t even try. We set our sights on a few sights and focused our time on those. We hit up the London Eye (pix above is taken atop this huge ferris wheel), Tower of London, and Imperial War Museum during our time. We also were determined to see some of the shops we see on Sky TV (this is the only English language alternative to the Armed Forces Network here in Germany). The rest of the time was spent soaking up the English culture.
Speaking of culture, Londoners struck us as very polite folks. While they all seemed in to be in a huge hurry all the time, they were always polite. Also, I fell in love Englishisms: Words like brilliant, mate, cheers seem to make the English language more pleasant.
While England is definitely distinct from the US in many ways, London has much of the same stuff we would see in a big US city: Starbucks on every corner, Quiznos, Dominos Pizza, KFC, Krispy Kream, etc. Also, the diversity in London is similar to what you would see in a big city such as LA or NYC. While there was an occasional pasty white Brit running around, they were mixed in with a huge melting pot with Indians, Pakistanis, Eastern Europeans, Africans, etc. Finally, did I happen to mention how much Jen and I loved to be in an English speaking country? This familiarity was a great feeling!
Check out some of our pix:
Julia with the Kings Table Ale
Jen and Luke in front of the Tower of London's Martin tower (Where her Irish Catholic ancestors were imprisoned?)
Jen and some bloke standing guard over the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London
Ye ol Chap in the Imperial War Museum
No comments:
Post a Comment