Adventures in London!

Now that the glitz of my big star-studded evening has faded, life is back to normal here in London. On Wednesday, we took our weekly field trip to the British Museum, which was basically about ancient history—the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, etc.—and all the stuff that Englishmen have essentially stolen from them in terms of artifacts. I’m not big on ancient history, so I didn’t find it amazingly exciting although much of it was interesting and we had a very quirky tour guide who kept us very entertained.

Afterwards, some of the people from my journalism class and our professor went on an optional field trip to see the play Complicit starring Richard Dreyfuss and directed by Kevin Spacey. It’s about a journalist and anonymous sources after 9/11. It was a really interesting play that I thoroughly enjoyed. I’m pretty sure this is kind of the preview of it, so I bet it’ll be in the States sometime soon.

Besides that it’s just work as usual. That Bafta red carpet event was a very once-in-a-lifetime experience, but hopefully I will get further opportunities like that. This weekend, my friend Alena, who I know from Harand Camp, came to visit for the weekend. She’s currently working in Paris then heading to Berlin. On Friday night, we enjoyed the wonders of pub food (surprisingly we found a place to eat because it was a Friday night and everything was packed). We ate at a wonderful pub called the Shakespeare, appropriately.

Saturday was an awesome day, probably one of the most fun days I’ve had since being here. We awoke early to go to Tkts to get cheap tickets to a show later that day. We met at a musical camp, so NOT seeing a show didn’t seem natural. We wanted to see La Cage aux Folles, but it wasn’t available, so we got tickets to see Sunset Boulevard in the afternoon. I LOVED it. I love the movie and the musical followed basically the exact same plot line, only with lots of singing in between. It was great. I would highly recommend it.

Before that, in the morning, we headed back to Portobello Market, one of our favorite places in London. It was just as it was last week—bustling people, lots of street food, and lots to buy. We got cupcakes from Hummingbird Bakery, of course, and then picked up some street food for lunch. I opted for buying what they called salmon sandwich for 1.50, however, to me it was lox (bagel, cream cheese, lox). So, I got a bit of Jewishness at Portobello Market, which I found incredibly ironic, but tasted delicious. We also bought a ton of fresh vegetables because Alena, deprived of cooking in Paris, wanted to cook for all of us on Sunday.

Later in the afternoon, we walked around the area our play was in—Piccadilly was close by, so was Covent Garden and Leicester Square, so we explored a little before stopping for dinner at the Japanese restaurant I like. We then took a nice long walk around London at night. Alena pointed out that London is really much smaller than it seems on the Tube, and she was right, considering we walked from Leicester Square all the way across the Thames in half an hour. So we saw London and the River at night and it was pretty gorgeous.

On Sunday we had a very adventurous day. Wanting to take Alena to exciting places, we decided to go to Brick Lane, which is outside Central London near the financial district, but is supposed to be a bustling market place with more offbeat type things. We started at Tower Bridge and walked across that and around Tower Hill in London. We then embarked on a bit of a long walk to Brick Lane and discovered a very large Bangladeshi community. We curiously explored the neighborhood and their grocery stores, but still wanted to fine the supposed Brick Lane marketplace. As the street meandered on, I was beginning to think that maybe we were a little lost. However, we did see a sign for an indoor marketplace on Sundays and that is what we got. It had cuisines from all over the world (which I unfortunately did not sample due to my fear of nuts), as well as very different cultural clothes, jewelry, etc.

Thinking that was maybe all to the marketplace, we continued to walk down Brick Lane, only to find even more marketplaces as we went on. After lots of marketing, we started to see a different type of street appear before our eyes. Hungry by that point, (the others had eaten more internationally cuisine) I began to see many bagel (spelled beigel here) shops. So I stopped a picked up a bagel and cream cheese, which reminded me of home and made me happy. After we left the very busy shop, we stopped to admire the front of the building, which proclaimed “Britian’s first beigel shop.” We announced our skepticism of this, but a very friendly bobbie (English for policeman) behind us said, “No, it’s true.”

“Really?” we asked. He then proceeded to tell us the history of the neighborhood, which was once a Jewish neighborhood, but is now dominated by Bangladeshi people, which was no surprise to us. He said that 50 years ago this was a very Jewish area with many beigel shops and over 100 synagogues, however now there are only three in the area. So, I apparently cannot escape my Jewish heritage, having inadvertently stumbled upon a great piece of Jewish history (complete with lox and bagels) without any intention of that. It made for a very interesting day.
We then left Brick Lane and went on the more difficult task of finding a Tube station. It took some time, but we eventually did and proceeded with the next item on our to do list—Kensington Gardens for a nice English Tea.

A long tradition has involved my Mom and I going out for Tea every year, therefore I was curious to go to a REAL tea in England. After the shock of finding out that a FULL English tea was about 12-14 pounds (a little too much for a traveler’s budget) we opted to order a pot of tea (well…hot chocolate for me) and a slice of delicious cake. The girls had Belgian chocolate cake, and I had a delicious sponge cake with strawberry-based frosting. I know, all you chocolate-lovers (most of my family) will think I’m crazy, but I prefer the simpler stuff. We ate at the Orangary, which is attached to Kensington Palace, and Princess Diana had a tie to it. I would definitely recommend it as a great place for a traditional English tea. No reservation needed, just go in and enjoy!

We explored further Kensington Gardens, which is quite a lovely place to go with a Princess Diana memorial and memorial walk, a Peter Pan statue and many ponds with no shortage of geese and swans. It was a very lovely, fun-filled day.

We then went back to the flat where Alena cooked delicious stir-fry for all of us. Monday was back to work as usual, although today I am invited to a launch party for a new television network. It should be a lot of fun, and I get off of part of class because of it. Sorry I haven't updated my blog in a while but the Internet is currently out in my flat and has been out for almost a week now, so blogging has been limited.