London

So, on Saturday the 19th I finally made it to London. I took an hour long train ride from Brighton to Victoria Station in London and it only cost 10 pounds (14 pounds after online fees). When I got to London I was within walking distance of the building above, the home of Queen Elizabeth II, Buckingham Palace.



To get the cheap fare I had to get to London a bit early, and I was too early for the changing of the guard. As you can see there were only a few people hanging around the Victoria Monument in front of the palace.



So to kill some time I decided to go see the Canadian monument commemorating Canada's aid to the UK during the first and second world wars. I thought it would be big and memorable, but instead it was just this little disk and a small waterfall behind it. It's nice there was a memorial, but I thought it would be bigger. There were also memorials for campaigns in India, and for Australia. Both were bigger.



By the time I got back to Buckingham Palace there were lots more people standing around Victoria memorial and in front of the gates, so I settled in to wait for an hour before the changing of the guard started.



The Scottish Guards were those on duty when we first got there. There were only 2 people on guard at first, but then a bunch of them came marching around the Victoria memorial and into the yard in front of the palace.



Behind the Scottish Guard, came the Scottish Guard band. It seems like each set of guards has it's own band that follows them around.



Afterwards the Welsh Guard came around the Victoria memorial and into the yard. You can tell it's the Welsh Guard because of the green and white feathers in their caps.



The Welsh Guard also had it's own band. But now that we had both bands there, it seemed like they decided to have a battle of the bands. The Scottish and Welsh bands switched back and forth playing songs from the Jackson 5 and Eric Clapton. I didn't recognize many of them, but the Canadian lady in front of me said that's what they were.

While they were playing guardsman were marching around in front of the doors.






Once all the music and marching was done, both bands, the Scottish guards, and most of the Welsh guard marched out of the yard, around the Victoria memorial and down Pall Mall. Leaving only two Welsh guards guarding at the doors of Buckingham Palace.



After watching the changing of the guard, I walked through St. James park which was really quite naturalistic. I remember reading somewhere that the English prefer much more natural gardens compared to the highly manicured gardens of the French. This is a pretty good example of that I would say.



After heading through the park I walked down to Westminster Abby. Like most other historical places in England, they didn't want me taking pictures. So I only got a few from the outside. It was quite interesting as I saw gravestones for Lewis Carroll, Lawrence Oliver, and the Bronte Sisters.



Once we got outside we were allowed to take pictures. This is the cloister area of Westminster Abbey.



And this is the cafe the erected in the cloisters of Westminster Abby. If they can erect a cafe in the cloister, how come we can't take pictures? I swear it's got to be because they can make money selling postcards.



After taking an audio tour through Westminster Abby I headed over to Westminster Palace. I never knew that was the name for the parliamentary buildings. I guess that's why the building seems so ornamental. I can hear Craig cringing from here at my lack of knowledge of English history.



From the park behind Westminster Palace I got a fairly good look at the Thames and the London Eye. Trips up there cost 30 pounds each and, from what I've read, aren't really that good. The Tower Bridge is further up the river, but you can't see it from here.



After wandering through the park I started heading down the road towards Trafalgar square. On the way down the street I passed this nice looking horse with a slightly frightening sign that the horse may bite and kick passers by. Nevertheless, people were still lining up to stand beside them and have their pictures taken.



Then, at the end of the road, I ended up at Trafalgar square with a man standing atop a very large pillar. It looked like Napolean, but I can't think why they'd put Napolean at the top of a plinth in London.



And on the other side of the plinth is the British National Gallery. It's free to visit, but they charge a few pounds if you want to take the audio tour. I figured I"d get the 60 minute tour and then get another one if I wanted to see more. Turns out the tour they gave me had almost every picture in the collection, but just gave me a list of the most important paintings. Like everywhere else though, they wouldn't let me take pictures while I was inside.

So I started going through the list of 30 paintings or so, and stopped at any others I thought were interesting along the way. There were images by Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian, Van Gogh, Picasso, and many others. I figured that doing the 60 minute tour would take long as I always fly through museums, but just by stopping at random paintings I was rushing to finish the tour 3 hours later to get done before the closed. The audio tour really helped, I think it's the first time I've been to a museum where I actually stopped and looked at most of the paintings.



After seeing the national gallery, I noticed that St. Martin in the Fields was right next door.



When you go in, it seems like a fairly normal hall. Albeit with a pulpit in the middle. And there's a strange window at the end that I'm sure must symbolize something. But it does sound good. There was a girl there practicing for the performance that evening. I took a video but it didn't get any sound which is really too bad, because it was really nice.



After getting some dinner, I walked up to Piccadilly Circus. I found these painted elephants up and down the street. I think they were for some charitable cause, but I can't remember what.








On the way back towards Victoria station I stopped on the other side of the horse museum to take a look at the horse grounds. I think they practice riding in formation or some other guard changing stuff here.

Brighton Marina

So on Saturday the 12th I didn't have anything to do because I had to stay in town so I could see the USA vs. England World Cup game (score was 1-1 by the way). So instead of just hanging out at home I figured I should go out and do something. So I headed downtown to see what I could see.



While I was walking along the beach, I noticed that there was a tiny little train station. The train said it would take passengers to the Brighton Marina. A few days earlier Huw had told me that he had spent 30 minutes walking out there so I figured taking the train would be much faster.



Once I got to the marina I walked along the break water. From the break water I could see the entrance to the harbor itself.



Apparently a lot of people enjoyed fishing from the edge of the break water. I even talked to a few Brits who had just come back from Vancouver. Apparently I was good luck because they had been fishing for four hours before I came and hadn't caught anything. But while I was talking to them, they caught six fish. I'm sure it had nothing to do with the fact that they'd just moved to a new part of the break water.



While walking on the eastern break water you could see a huge building up on the cliffs. I was told later by someone at work that it's a fancy private girls' school. I couldn't find it on Google Maps, so I guess I'll just have to believe him even though there's a girls school near there but not at the same place I saw the large building.



The other interesting thing you may have noticed is that apparently Dover is not the only city with large white cliffs. There's even a windmill out there for some reason. I'll have to go there some day.



Some of the boats here were really nice, although most of the nice ones for sale were over 100k.

Lille France

So on Saturday I took a bus day trip to Lille, France. It seems that the bus company here in Brighton does interesting day trips to different places around the country and to other countries. There's a trip to Sluis in Holland and one to Bruge Belgium. There is also a trip through southern England on a canal boat. All of these seemed really cool, but this France trip was the only one that was available on a weekend. Almost only one on a weekend for the whole summer. Although my boss said it might be okay if I take a vacation day or two. So we'll have to see what happens.

Well, of course to get from England to France we have to cross the English Channel. We didn't take the chunnel, but instead got to go across on a ferry. Hooray for ferries. Not only did I get to take a ferry, but we left from Dover. I wanted to go see the famous white cliffs of Dover, but many people have told that Dover was really not worth visiting. Now I get a visit to Dover incorporated into my visit to France.













Unlike the ferries in Vancouver, the harbor here is kept safe from the sea by a large break water wall (I don't know what it's really called). Here are some pictures of the break water wall as we went by.






The ferry was very similar to those ferries we took back in Vancouver. There were multiple levels for cars, buses, and trucks. Along with multiple passenger levels. They had a crowded restaurant just like the old ferries, but they also had duty free shops and gambling, which I don't remember on any of the Canadian ferries.



But completely unlike the ferries in BC there is absolutely nothing to look at once you get out to sea. It's just water, endless water. As far as the eye can see.



There was nothing to look at until we got to Calais. Unfortunately, it was pretty cloudy and misty in Calais so most of my pictures didn't come out.



After another few hours on the bus we got to Lille. The train station we stopped at seemed to have a very weirdly shaped building next to it.



But once I walked into town I found many more pleasant looking buildings.



The main problem I had is that, after I had a very tasty French baguette sandwich, I had no idea what there was I should see in Lille. So, I used a little ingenuity. I found a bookstore and found a travel guide book. Of course it was in French, but I managed to get something out of it. It turned out that the Palais-de-Beaux-Arts was given 3 stars vs. the citadel (an old fortress) so I bought a map and headed to the museum.

Unfortunately, even with a map you need to know which direction you're facing and in France, with all it's tiny little streets with no street signs that's no easy feat. Luckily I stopped a woman and asked her, in French, in which direction I could find the museum. She pointed me along a street and told me to keep going until I found the guy on a horse.



So this was the statue of the guy on the horse. I don't know who exactly he was, but I love how Europe, or at least France, has huge statues in the middle of the street.



It turns out that we ended up in Lille on a very interesting day. It was the day of their gay and lesbian pride parade. There were lots of interesting people from a guy dressed in all black leather with 7 inch platform shoes, to almost naked men dancing on a float going through town, to a guy dressed as a jester with a sex blow-up doll attached to him. This is apparently the headquarters of the parade.



But behind the parade was the Palais-de-Beaux-Arts. I wandered around the entire building looking for an entrance. I skipped all these small entrances I thought were back doors that had accidentally been left open. But it turns out that the big door in the center of the back side of the building was actually the door that was accidentally left open and all the ones I had skipped were ticket taking doors. Well, after I figured that all out I went in to see the Finoglio exhibit.



I don't know exactly who Finoglio is and his pictures were fairly nice, but I didn't spend enough time looking because my feet were hurting. Not only that, but they only had these dozen paintings by him, and I'm sure he had more paintings than that.

I think paintings are usually wasted on me. Instead of having an art history class in high school I'm thinking that all patrons to a museum should take have to take a class first about the art they're about to see. Of course, given how much other people like classes, and how few patrons most museums have, I can understand why this hasn't been implemented.




Like the Louvre, the part I liked was the rooms full of statues. Although this room was blocked by a wrought iron door I was still able to look at it through the bars.




Although they do have some statues you can look at.



They even put some of their statuary into their stairwells.



But they did have some famous sculptors too, these two marbles are by Rodin.



The rest of the museum was full of paintings, who knew? It was setup like the painting rooms in the Louvre. Lots of big rectangular rooms with many huge canvases stuck to the walls.









Some of the art was simply amusing images of people carousing.




But there were famous paintings too like these images by Monet.



After finishing up at the museum I went down the high street and had a nice French lunch. Well, my idea was to have a French lunch but I had a Flemish lunch of rabbit in beer sauce with fries. Unfortunately, the Flemish don't seem to be as good at food as the French are. But I guess I still got to experience something new which was good.

There was also an exhibition on the high street of magician pianists! I took some pictures but they went off at the wrong time and are just confusing. There were two guys. One was playing the piano for a while when the second game barreling through the crowd and said that since he had a number 2 on his chest, and the guy currently playing had a number 3, that number 2 should play.

While number 2 was playing number 3 started doing magic tricks. Some were just acting in time to the music. He took #2's sheet music and ripped it up. Each time #3 ripped #2 stopped playing. #3 also did a bunch of traditional magic tricks with doves.

But the best part is that during the magic tricks #3's number fell off revealing a #1. So #2 and the new #1 started fighting for the piano. #2 was playing with both hands, but had to use his right hand to block the attacks from #1, so #1 started playing the right hand while #2 was playing the left hand. It was quite entertaining.



As I was walking back to the bus I passed a nice gothic cathedral, so I put down my slurpee at the door and wandered about. These things are much less fun without audio tours that tell me all about the building. There was supposed to be a guided tour that started at the time I got there, but it seems they forgot, and I wasn't sure if I had enough time before the bus left to get a guided tour anyway.






Well after the cathedral I walked back to the bus and did the whole trip in reverse. Taking the bus back to Calais, the ferry back across the Channel, and the bus back from Dover to Brighton. I didn't take many pictures of the way back because it was basically the same. The one interesting thing was that instead of the ferry pulling out of the docks, it backed out instead.

All in all it was a long day. Not only due to the fact that it started at 4:00 in the morning and I got home at midnight, but due to the fact that my feet were really hurting. I think it was all the walking. I mean, I'd spent the previous evening trying to find the right bus stop and then walking home to see how long it would take to get to that bus stop so that I could know when to leave in the morning. You see, the bus left so early I couldn't take another normal city bus to get to the stop in time. It turns out that it takes an hour to walk from the bus stop to my house. So after walking around for an hour and a half, I walked the hour home. I then got up the next morning and walked the hour back to the bus stop. Then I spent 4 hours walking around Lille. It hurt way too much to just be fatigure, so I figured it must be a blister or something. By the time I'd finished walking around France I thought maybe it was blisters on blisters on blisters. It turns out I was almost right.



That's one of the half dozen blisters I found on my feet when I came home. Yep, that's taking up two thirds of the bottom of my foot. I didn't know blisters could be that big!