England: Day I (London)

Monday, July 11^th:

An Evening at Buckingham Palace:

            Another awesome day in the books! London is a sweet city. I woke up late this morning and took a taxi to the airport, had lunch there, and hopped on my plane to London. When I arrived, Max was already waiting at our hotel, the Hamiltons Hotel. He was jetlagged, so he rested while I planned the next four days of sightseeing and fun. I finally got him out of bed in time to go get some early dinner and a drink at a place called The Albany. I ate some Shepherd's Pie with chips and salad here while we sampled some local drinks. My friend Chris Burt from Cornell, who works in London, came to meet us at The Albany and show us around a little bit. We took the Underground, which is the most efficient subway system ever, over to Buckingham Palace for a few minutes before we took a cab to find another bar. We settled on a place called The Coal Hole, which ended up being one of the oldest pubs in the city. We tried some other British beers here, such as Titanic and London Pride, before Chris went home (he had to work the next day) and we went to another bar.

A Clock Tower in Western London:

            While looking for this other bar, O’Neills, we were told that we weren’t allowed inside one bar because we had shorts on, which set the tone for some of the night life in London. Pubs close at midnight or earlier in London, and nearly everything you can get into later requires a club membership or a large cover charge, and is most often than not a club. Anyways, we found O’Neills with the unneeded help of a street girl who tried to hustle money out of us for the information we already had, and went inside. O’Neills was recommended to me by friend Matt Collins, and in typical Collins flavor it was a bar of mostly Americans and people crowding the room dancing to (pretty bad) local music. Nonetheless, we had a good time there and left to go home to sleep around 2am.