Or: The Brits Cannot Make Pizza To Save Their Lives
For the past ten days or so, I have been in London. I thought I would have internet access, and expected to keep up with my regular posting and reading and whatnot while abroad. I was, alas, gravely mistaken. The hotel charged five pounds a day for wi-fi, and every network that I could connect to demanded a British Telecom password. It has been, I think, five years or so since I’ve actually had to pay for internet while traveling, and I found I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
Despite the lack of connectivity, the trip was quite enjoyable. A quick recap:
- Time loses meaning on international flights. I was subjected to eight hours of travel across the pond, but ended up twelve hours later than when I started: and it didn’t feel like it took more than three.
- Fucking jetlag.
- Double-decker busses are awesome.
- Hanover Court has an excellent vine-shrouded hall that I’m planning on stealing as the setting for some grand fight in some game.
- It is impossible to not walk across a multitude of graves when passing through Westminster Abby. The floor is carpeted with a patchwork of cobbles and black grave markers, and the walls are covered in monuments, statues and tombs. On the tour, it felt like the monuments went on forever, as though there were no end to the stone-cloaked graves and the battered statues and the endless inscriptions in both English and Latin. I’m basing the Grand Cathedral in Tahmoor off of that feeling, the monuments to the honored dead that go on forever, in a maze of statues and silent stone where the only sound is the whispering chant of the monks.
- The Yeoman Warder who gave us the tour at the Tower of London wins the coveted award for Most Awesome Person I Saw In England, for spending the entire time making thickly-accented jokes at the expense of himself and us.
- Second place in the Most Awesome Person I Saw In England contest goes to the gentleman who gave us directions the first day we were in London, while standing on a stepladder in full suit and tie, watering his flowerboxes.
- One of the high points was simply meeting up with Bov and just spending an entire day wandering around Winchester talking with him. After a week without internet, it was good to talk with a friend again.
- Watching Shakespeare in the Globe Theater is excellent, even when it’s raining.
- Camden Market is a crazy capitalist hipster-goth-punk multilevel maze, and I love it.
- You cannot get decent pizza in London for love nor money.
- Again, fucking jetlag.
And now I’m back, I’ve got high-speed internet, I’m catching up on what I’ve missed while I was away, and I have my own room and bed instead of sharing a narrow space smaller than my dorm room with both of my brothers. Tomorrow I will wake up late for the first time since leaving the United States and play video games and write and draw and meet up with friends and buy a goddamn New York-style pizza.
It’s good to be home.
Leave a comment