migblog

i am in london right now.

i'm staying at the hyde park hostel in bayswater, which is at the west side of town. it's decent; there's a nice little subculture of twentysomethings and under here, from all over the world (for example, you can hear german and a slew of other languages in the breakfast room, and one of our roommates in our ten-person suite is from malaysia).

there's a few things you have to know about london:

1. london is not a serif town.
every street sign and official document is in a sans font. it gives the city a certain character and some sort of extra zhoozh that only a sleek, chic sans font could give (even the computer i'm using is a very sans computer, if that at all makes any sense to you).

2. london is wonderful because of its drinking age.
two days now, and i've had three drinks. tomorrow, we head towards the pubs for a marathon beer event, and afterwards we're going clubbing (i'm not an alcoholic, no). but i do appreciate the fact that i'm nineteen and responsible enough to know where my limits are as well as to enjoy something alcoholic when i want it. so cheers!

3. london underground is fantastic.
the underground surpasses bart in efficiency, speed, cost, and character. there's almost always a train on the minute, and everything's really easy to navigate. with a week pass to all zone one stations, you can get around the city rather easily without having toshell the standard £2 every time. and it's all in line with the inter-airport express, as well as the railway to other cities in the region. this is why public transportation is fucking awesome.

4. london has a lot of things to see.
day one in london was spent doing what we called "tourist tuesday" -- basically, anything that's been on a london postcard, we've seen in person. starting from order of visitiation, we saw the tower of london, tower bridge, southwark and its surroundings, the gaia building, the millenium bridge, the tate modern, shakespeare's old globe theatre, jubilee fields, the national theater, the london eye, county hall, the house of parliament, big ben, westminster abbey, buckingham palace, and the tate britain. today, we headed towards leicester (pronounce: less-ter) square, trafalgar square, the national portrait gallery, the national galery,and the west end for a show (we saw chicago). tomorrow,we head to soho, and who knows where we'll be come friday.

5. london is hella expensive.
note how a meal in mcdonald's might cost $5. in england, the meal costs £5. now remember our evil friend the conversion cost, and you got yourself a $10 "value meal." the pricing scheme likes to be on the american side, and then you tack on £ instead of $ and everything comes into perspective just exactly how much things cost this side of the atlantic.

it's past midnight now, so i'll be getting to bed. no need for me to elaborate: it's been a long two days, but i've had the time of myself so far.

oh yeah. becca and derek say hi.

posted by Open Source Food @ 3:56 PM