London

Made it to London yesterday. The trip wasn't too bad although we did end up with a long wait in Brussels.

Thursday, our last day in Amstdam, we went to the Van Gogh museum. I thought it was more interesting than a lot of museums that just have a bunch of painting of people and Jesus because the work was set in chronologically and there were descriptions tying the paintings in with his life and what his influences were. Later, I went to the Anne Frank house, which was obviously really sad. It was weird to be in that space and know all the things that happened there although the annex was actually bigger than I thought it would be. I don't think anything would be big enough if you were stuck there though. At night we went to the Red Light district because "when in Amsterdam" and whatnot. It was bizarre, especially to see the guys who were there to "shop," not just look around like us.

We got into London around 2 yesterday and found our hostel pretty easily. The rooms are on the top two floors over the Green Man pub. The pub is nice and its open 24/7 for anyone staying at the hostel. They serve pizza any time and have cheap pints during happy hour. We mostly hung out yesterday, trying to get our bearings and meeting some other people from the hostel. We met some nice people in the pub but there were also a lot of creeps. One guy sat down beside me, gave me a mysterious piece of fruit (was it an apple? A pear? I have no idea, I didn't eat it) and started muttering about how unsafe America is because of black people. At this point I made serious crazy eyes at one of the bar tenders, who had offered to kick him out earlier, and he came over and told him to leave me alone.

Today we did another free walking tour. We were running late because our metro stop was closed and we had to find another one, so by the time we got to the meeting point the groups had already split up and left. We slipped into one of the groups and were very proud of our sneaking abilities until we ralized that the tour we had joined was in Spanish. We don't really speak enough Spanish for that so we slipped back out, found the other group, and joined them instead. It was a good tour and we saw Buckingham palace, parliment, and Westminster Abbey. Afterwards, the guide showed us to a traditional English pub and I got some fish and chips, so now I can say I had British food.

Tonight is kareoke at the Green Man. So that should be interesting. More on that later!

One of the guards at Prince Carles' house.

Our hostel/pub.

Pretending to be a gaurd.

Buckingham Palace