9-10-2011

So I've developed a pretty ridiculous habit of running. This trip has actually been kind of hard on my obsessive compulsiveness since I only found the time/energy to run twice the whole time with the lack of routine. Well, those two runs got me super close to my 300th mile with the Nike+ app on my phone, and I figured where better to break 300 miles than somewhere far away? So, I picked Hyde Park as the perfect place. It really is a perfect place for running. Being in two really big cities made me really miss seeing green and trees. That picture is of Nicole considering trying to climb said tree. For the sake of being nice, I'm keeping the pictures of her attempt for myself to laugh at, but this is her deciding that it was a lost cause. It was a lot easier for me to climb in my silly runny clothes. Hyde Park is pretty awesome though, I would totally go there to sit on benches or to feed birds if I lived there. I was always under the impression pigeons were dirty birds, but this one took a bath in front of me to show me that they do care about hygiene. Lots of people run in Hyde Park too. Lots of people run in London in general, but it's so good in the park that they were setting up for a huge 5k while we were walking around. I asked Nicole if Adidas would let me run their Woman's 5k Challenge, but she didn't think that they would. I called discrimination. Look! We saw an animal. Coming from an area where deer sleep in our yard and they've seen bears in the woods, it was weird not seeing animals the whole trip. This park has lots of organized birds.

After the park, we decided to go visit another animal that I'm fond of. Look at these trains. Lots of trains. What kind of animal could we find at such a station? Yup, we're at Paddington Station, and we found the bear. The story of Paddington Bear pretty much sums up Nicole and my relationship, except she's the bear and she looks after me. I did however buy a very expensive coat last year specifically because it reminded me of the one that Paddington Bear wears.

On to more British stuff. This road is named after mushrooms, or maybe mushrooms are named after this road, or maybe our cat is named after mushrooms. Whatever the case may be, we've arrived at the Portobello Street Market in Notting Hill (like the movie). This was fun because it was more affordable antiquey stuff. Lots of stuff. Even weird stuff. Nicole found stuff she liked, and I found stuff I like. I like how this woman looks very much. I was also fond of the side streets and the more daily life looking parts of the market. Most of all, after the market, I was the most fond of more treacle tart. Since we stay living like kids with no parents, we can have desert before dinner and not get in trouble.

9-9-2011

I posted previously about the factory from the Pink Floyd album cover. Well today we got really exploring (read lost), and ended up really close. It's kind of cool that there's so much stuff to see everywhere that you can go sight seeing even when you don't know where you are. This is back along the Thames as the street performers were getting ready for the day. We found a photobooth. It was here right by the London Eye. We also found stuffed cupcakes.

Stuffed cupcakes would normally be the strangest thing I would see in a day, but not today. This is Camden Town market. It reminds me of the Troll Market in Hellboy II. They have Taxidermy, vendors with metal signs (hi, Tiff!), and collections of strange British toys. They also have fish that eat your feet, and crazy gothic kittens. This area actually used to be horse stables, but now it's home to a weird mix of every obscure subculture you could imagine (including a store that was like going back in time to a rave set in the movie Hackers), plus an antique mall, plus a flea market all at once. It makes for a very eclectic and interesting experience. The space is really cool and old feeling, and they have tons of street food. If you've even heard about my blog before, I'm sure you already know that street food is a pretty big deal to me. I managed to dodge a bullet with the punk rock leather jacket pins on Carnaby street, but finding first pressing 2Tone singles was more than I could say no to. I'm pretty sure it shocked the aging skinhead dude running the shop when a scrawny Asian kid with long hair that looks 12 started actually talking to him about obscure ska records and artists. Shocking like finding a pirate castle.

Oh, so I posted in Paris about how tourists love seeing the hiphop dance and street performers upside down. Well, this guy wins. I actually though about giving him some of my coins, but I though it was too cool that we had a variety of four totally different pound coins. I think we ended up spending them on pub food though. This may look like fish and chips, but don't let it fool you. After going out of our way to eat the most authentic local foods we could find, Nicole broke down and ordered the "vegetarian fish and chips." That's battered and deep fried haloumi cheese, and may be one of the best things we ate on our trip. Without a doubt one of the best things we ate on our trip was treacle tart. This is Harry Potter's (and my) favorite food, and within a few nights of returning home, I was literally talking in my sleep to Nicole about it. Nicole and I talk to each other a lot.

9-8-2011

So I showed our hotel from the street, but this is what the back of it looks like. Here's a picture of the room. Total dive right? My undeducatedness pictured this bridge when I thought of the London Bridge. It's not the London Bridge (more on this later). This picture is however from the London Tower, and this is me defending it. Nicole didn't realize she had mud on her paws and got the crown jewels all dirty. The guard didn't really care. If he did, he probably would have shot us with this gun. I think it's sad that they clip the raven's wings so they can't fly, but that sign in the background explains that ravens bite, so maybe it's good that these ones couldn't fly. When I was a little kid I would always want to go to the art museum to see the armor, then get bored and tired when my mom wanted to see the paintings. I still think that armor is cooler than paintings. Especially with crazy disco lighting. This is Nicole and my armor. Hers is on the right. James Bond guns. Whatever, even after five years in art school, if you don't agree that armor is cooler than paintings, this will persuade you. Agree with me or we'll chop your head off. This is so much money you have to weigh it. This was Sir Walter Raleigh's stuff before he got beheaded. He didn't think armor was cooler than paintings. This is ancient graffiti that prisoners carved into the walls. None of my spots run this long.

We found a boat! We actually got lost and found lots of boats, but I really liked this one. I liked getting lost and seeing different parts of the city. We actually kind of did this a lot in a lot of places. Our lostness was productive however because it led us to this pub. I really like pubs. Every one we went to was very different but similar. They all had food though and this was a really good meat pie. I would also have said that this was the best fish and chips we had, except there were bones in part of it that totally skeezed me out.

There are two Anthropologie stores England. Nicole found them both. This three level one with plants growing on the walls was pretty worth seeing though. This chair is pretty cool, but not nearly as cool as this broom. We found Hamley's, an amazing toy store and home of the most extensive collection of Harry Potter wands we found in all of London. More than just wands, and the life sized broom, they also had the Sword of Gryffindor and some of the Horcruxes. If I were rich with no decorating sense (single), my house would be full of stuff like this. This is a squid that swims in the bath. I'm still pretty shocked that I didn't bring one home with me.

We eventually ended up on Carnaby street again for some weird Fashion Night Out thing. The event was actually pretty lame (other than the the really good DJ spinning northern soul at my favorite store), but it was fun because we saw all sorts of fashiony people getting ready for it. There were fashiony people everywhere. They all liked to pose but pretend they weren't posing. Pretending not to pose real hard. I'm not sure if this is fashiony or not, but pink hair is definitely a thing that's happening. I like this random snapshot of a random street because it reminds me of what we saw the most when we were randomly wandering around everywhere. There's not much that I can say about this snapshot, but whatever it is, I really like it. I can't say much about whatever the hell the BBC has on the outside of their building either, but I can't say that I like it. I might like this. We ended up back at more fashiony model stuff. I don't know that I would call this fashiony or modely.

9-7-2011

Continuing the documentation of our daily free breakfast, in addition to toast and jam, today I discovered that there are also digestive biscuits! It's important to eat a good breakfast before going sight seeing all day. Taking pictures (with other people's cameras) is hard work. Horses. This is Buckingham Palace by the way. I just didn't want to put the typical touristy building pictures on here.

Messenger hipsters look the same no matter where you go. This is Trafalgar Square I was a little bummed out that there aren't swarms of pigeons there anymore, but I guess I'm happy that I didn't get pooped on (I'm speaking from experience). The monument is too tall for one shot. Oh yeah, we had just gone to the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery, but ironically for a place all about pictures of people, you aren't allowed to take pictures in there.

Now you are allowed to take pictures in Hackney, but considering it's recent news making as the cool place to riot and go looting, I was a sissy and kept my camera in my bag. Well, really I wasn't a sissy for being dumb enough to go there in the first place, so maybe I was smart enough to keep my camera in my bag. In any case, the only picture I took was of the Burberry Outlet Store which ended up being a big let down. Kind of like the lack of rioting and looting in Hackney that we went to see.

I mentioned before that both Paris and London are full of shops full of things I'm specifically interested in. This one was pretty extreme. I didn't really take any pictures of the cases full of every kind of camera I've ever wanted, mainly because I was shy, but also because I was seriously considering selling organs to buy a Leica (I'm still not sure I made the right decision). To try and distract me from my camera lust, Nicole took me to the British Museum. The Musee d'Orsay is in a cool converted train station, but equally cool architecturally, this museum has a giant glass ceiling that connects its separate buildings. The buildings are full of ancient old stuff like holy cats, fancy hieroglyphs, statues that are this tall, and more holy cats. People in Paris and London both like drawing sculptures. In preparation for Paris, I really wish I ordered one of these from the late night infomercial that promises to teach you other languages. I don't think that this is the French version though. I liked how this room looked, like we should be smashing the floor with Indiana Jones or something. I bet this would have fit me since it's sized for Asian people.

I've already forgotten what this fancy building was, but I'm pretty sure it was just a random fancy building that we passed while chasing dragons and walking down Fleet Street. Johnny Depp made a musical about making meat pies out of people on this street. I tried not to think about it when I ate my meat pie yesterday, but it was pretty cool to think about while we were walking down the street today.

We did a lot of walking this trip. We rode trains or walked everywhere, which makes you very tired and hungry. I'm understanding this pub thing more and more every day. They're the best place around to sit down and eat food when you're tired. And there's beer there. I had more beer even though I don't really like it since I still think that's the right thing to do in pubs. Another thing I don't really like to do that I figured was the right thing to do since we were at a pub was eating fish and chips (with my beer). I really don't like fish. I eat sushi because it's raw and tastes good, but I'm pretty sensitive to any form of cooked fish as being fishy. Well, much like rude French people, and London only having gross food, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I really really like fish and chips. I like fish and chips way more than I like beer. These guys sitting next to us liked hearing themselves talk way more than they liked beer. And they liked beer a lot. I should point out that this was all at a super cool pub called the Cheshire Cheese that's been around since forever.

This is a literal tourist trap. The whole time we were in London, I felt that traffic was out to kill us and sang Nicole the Smiths song about ten ton trucks and a double decker bus killing the both of us pretty much every time we crossed the street. This is the only solid proof I have that this theory is valid, but it's pretty solid. I was going say that I wished Cleveland had a river we could walk along at night because I really enjoyed the Thames and the Seine, but well...yeah, Cuyahoga...step your game up. All three places have rivers and I have 20s from all three places.

9-6-2011

In addition to Mod stuff, I've gone though various stages of obsession with British bands my whole life. From when I was a little kid and my mom made me listen to the Beatles, to getting a tattoo about a Smiths song not that long ago. So I was happy to see this Clash reference even if it was being misused as an advertisement. Now just like how Paris has a bad reputation for being full of rude people who hate Americas (which we didn't really experience at all), London also has a reputation for being grey and rainy all the time. I would like to point out that this is untrue. It's actually quite tropical with palm trees growing everywhere. Yeah whatever, London's notorious reputation as an umbrella killer is actually pretty well founded. Everywhere I looked were broken or horribly injured umbrellas. Umbrellas aren't that interesting to look at though, so we went to go look at art at the Tate Britain instead. They had a pretty great exhibition on Turner's paintings, but I thought it was pretty awesome to see his sketchbook, and pigments, and palate. Granted, this was all under glass unlike our experience at Sargent's studio, but it was still really cool. This mirror was actually really cool too, but it doesn't look as dimensional in pictures. Awe, then we came into this room devoted to the late Lucian Freud who had sadly died only two months ago. Freud was a painter we discussed a lot when I was first learning to paint in college for his incredible paint handling. The other painter we talked about a lot at this time was Sargent. Really though, look at this mark making. His paintings and light quality look so good from far away, but his brushwork is almost like Monet. Clearly I saw a lot of paintings that I liked a lot. Nicole found at least one painting that she liked a lot. I'm not really sure what this guy likes, but he was pretty crazy to talk to.

After museuming, we decided to go to the museum of department stores. This is Harrod's. They literally sell everything. Including unicorns. Both the window glare and animal people reminded me of Deyrolle. We actually spent a long time just looking at their window displays. I probably looked like this.

Ok, so our trip to Paris was pretty much perfect and I did everything that I wanted to do, except for a few things. Deyrolle was closed when we went, so I didn't get to go inside and buy a framed butterfly, and I totally forgot that I wanted to eat onion soup (and didn't really see it on any of the menus to even remind me). The biggest regret immediately upon leaving, was that I cheaped out on ordering something made with truffles (I still stand by the decision that I'm way too poor to order $50 risotto though). In any case, Harrod's kind of had two of those things covered. The weird taxidermy, and at least getting to see the biggest truffle I've seen in my life. They sold all sorts of little truffle stuff too, but look how freaking huge that mushroom is. If it were a white one, it would probably be worth more than my car. Lots of things in Harrod's are worth more than my car. Their escalators alone are relics from ancient Egypt. They also had a super creepy stature of Princess Diana that I really dropped the ball by not photographing. I think I was being shy of security guards, and genuinely creeped out by it.

Food picture time! London has great fast food. They have a large variety of premade walk-up places that have good (and sometimes healthy) food for cheap. Way better than the options we have back home. Plus their yummy food comes in convincing packaging of it's quality and cultural authenticity. Each box is like a little passport for a meat pie.

Another thing that London beats America for is antique stores. We're pretty lucky to find junky knockoffs of antique jewelry in the U.S. at all (and we go to a lot of antique stores). Everything is real in London. Real like really expensive, but real like they can trace history and makers of each specific piece. It's all super fancy too. I think Nicole was bummed out that she didn't get anything, but I think it's important for her to keep all of her internal organs at this point in her life. Speaking of internal organs, Nicole encouraged me to go visit a store to help destroy my liver. That's a long list of ways to pollute your bloodstream and I would like to try them all.

So back to the weather out here. We already established that Paris in the rain is romantical. Let me also point out that London in the rain is just plain miserable. Like Biblical flood level downpours. It's no wonder why they hangout in pubs all the time. This was actually our first pub experience and it was really great. Another criticism of London is that the food all sucks. This isn't true either. I really like bangers and mash, and pretty much every pub has the best mustard I've ever had in my life (other than Happy Dog black truffle mustard...but truffle anything is cheating). One thing that I don't like is beer, but I felt that it was only good and right to drink beer at a pub while in London for the experience.

9-5-2011

Our hotel was a "Bed and Breakfast." The "bed" part refered to two super hard matresses that felt like sleeping on a dog bed pad, and the "breakfast" translates to toast and jam with a little yogurt cup. I've never eaten so much toast in my life. This is the street our hotel was on. It looks a lot nicer from the outside. This store looked lovely from the outside. Yay! British stuff! We found Dr. Who figures and the second best collection of Harry Potter wands we would find this trip. We did lots of shopping too. The stores out here are just kind of more specific to my interests. Like they have entire stores devoted to obscure nerd shoes and running really far. You can even buy secret society people's appendages. We found my people's hood (the lanterns and funny symbols, not the trattoria). I took lots of people pictures in London too. And stuffed animal pictures. Nicole and I wandered into the total tourist trap of the Rainforest Cafe, but how could we resist going somewhere with an animatronic snake? More touristy, I remember my mom had to explain to me as a kid that Piccadilly Circus wasn't really a circus when I told her I wanted to go there. Even as an adult, I kind of wish that it was a circus, but it did have this store with a funny name where I bought all together too much Lonsdale stuff. I was pretty excited to randomly walk by a random gallery hanging a pretty important photographer's show on the way to Carnaby street. I've been interested in Mod stuff for years so this was fun for me. I'm also interested in ginger beer, but back to Mod stuff, I shopped my Face off. This wasn't entirely selfish though, because for a good reason next month (hi, Jen!) I need a suit. It's incredibly difficult to find a good suit in the U.S. for me since I'm the size of a malnourished American twelve year old, and most suits are cut to fit people who eat McDonald's every day. Amazingly, the first suit that I tried on here fit everywhere except the sleeves. I guess being the size of a short-armed British person is better than being the size of an American skeleton. In any case, I was sent to Franco Italian Tailor. That's his real name I swear. His sign wouldn't lie. Yay! More mod stuff! The socially awkward junior high schooler still living inside my brain told me to stick those all over my clothes, but I managed to leave with my dignity. Besides, I think this subculture is now more applicable to my current interests. I think stuff like subcultures and fashion are part of why I like taking people pictures so much. It's interesting to document how people dress and present themselves in public. I tend to present myself like a perpetual juvenile when it comes to immature bathroom graffiti.

This post is atypical. I typed for too long without posting a picture of food. This is all the moneys I have left after shopping today.

9-4-2011

So on the plane to Paris, they were playing the Woody Allen movie Midnight in Paris. I wouldn't call the movie great, but it was "cute" to see before actually coming here. One of the thematic elements was how romantical Paris is in the rain. Paris decided to be real romantical for us the morning we were leaving. It really is pretty like this though. Pretty like tiny marzipan vegetables. Pretty soon it was all memories and stories to tell and we were ready to depart to the next place. This is Gare du Nord. It's a really famous movie set where the movies like Oceans Twelve and the Borne movies were shot at. It's also were I ate my last high school French class word. This is a brioche. It tastes like fancy bread. After going though customs, we headed for our train. I was really hoping that this train would take us to Hogwarts or Narnia, but after speeding though the French country side and though some fancy tunnel (no pictures because I fell asleep), we arrived at the Olympics. Unfortunately, we were a year early so we decided to have breakfast instead.

Now if you've read my blog at all before, you know that I like food. I like eating food, talking about food, and taking pictures of the food that I eat and talk about. Paris was great for this because pretty much all their food is photogenic. We aren't in Paris anymore. Don't get me wrong, that Shepard's pie was tasty, but...well...at least this bubble and squeak breakfast was a bit more visually attractive. Aston Martins are visually attractive, but even James Bond gets flat tires.

After breakfast, we got to our hotel too early to check in, so we decided to go shopping to kill time. Time is a very important part of this story. Nicole's favorite store is Anthropologie. We've been to them in pretty much every major city we've been to in America, but this one is special because it also has exclusive European designers (or so Nicole says). I say it's special because it has scenic little stools where I can sit and look at a waterfall while Nicole shops. More importantly, it has free wi-fi which was a rare commodity in London. While looking at said waterfall and enjoying the internet connection, I decided to research if anything there was anything of interest close by. There was. I got really excited because I found that John Singer Sargent, one of my favorite painters of all time, lived and worked a few streets from where we were (from 1901-1925). After finding the address, I started rushing Nicole so we could go see the house and take pictures of it. This did not go well. It's really not worth rushing a shopping girl. It went even worse when had to stop in this shop to look for an umbrella since it was raining. Finally, we were on our way and searching for the little plaque that tells you where famous people used to live. I asked Nicole if Olivia Wilde lived there too because I would also like to visit her house. This did not go well. We started to get close to the address and I started to get little kid excited. For Nicole and I, seeing painters' studios is a little bit like catholic people seeing all the churches we saw in Paris. As I was just starting to take a picture of this door...it started to open up and the woman who now lives in the house came out. Through all my rushing Nicole, to umbrella searching, to exactly how quickly we were walking, all of this was somehow timed down to the second. Things get a little bit blurry at this point, because I got really really embarrassed for getting caught taking a picture of someones door. I kind of remember blurting out a string of nonsensical stutterings and stumblings asking if is was really S-s-sa-argent's s-s-st-tudio?! Somehow my nonsensical rant (and creepy long hair) didn't scare the woman too badly (probably because Nicole looks trust worthy), and she confirmed that we were in the right place. Even more amazingly, she told us that she would buzz her husband because he would probably like to come talk to us about Sargent. The next thing we knew, we were being invited into the house and up the stairs into their private residence to see Sargent's studio and living space. See the big framed sketch in the upper right? That's an original concept sketch for the Boston murals that he painted from 1895-1919. All the other paintings were by the current resident who was a very prolific and accomplished painter in his own right. These are paintings he made in various places all around the world. He was really the most hospitable and interesting person we talked to this entire trip. His wife was very nice as well, but he anecdotally told us that she normally isn't so friendly and often tells him not to talk to strangers. He was actually surprised that she let us in, but since she did, he was glad to tour us around the studio/home and showed us things like this palate that belonged to a very famous British painter, and this arch that was the property of John Singer Sargent. I don't think words or pictures adequately describe how totally surreal this experience was. We saw signed letters from Sargent and Prince Charles, heard about Sargent's ghost haunting the house, and stories (with magazine pictures as proof) about Princess Diana posing for a portrait in the very spot where we were standing. It's hard to describe, but seeing the light quality, it really just kind of made sense to have a studio in this space. It was like magic. Sargent probably mindlessly looked out this window all the time. Not wanting to overstay our welcome, we reluctantly went back down the stairs and left one of the most interesting and exclusive places I'll ever go in my entire life. And none of this would have happened if Nicole was even a few seconds faster or slower trying on dresses at Anthropologie. Thanks, Nicole.

As we were leaving it began to really set in that we were in London and surrounded by all sorts of historical British stuff that I has always heard about but never seen. See the factory down the tracks from our hotel? That's the factory from the Pink Floyd Animals album cover. We saw it every day for a week. No big deal. As interesting as London stuff is, I'm going to jump back to Paris stuff quickly and mention this little package. This was our last ration of cookie time. It got smashed up on the train from Paris, but they were still good. Really good. If anyone knows where to get these cookies around here, please let me know. Life hasn't been the same since finishing these last ones. Here's some more weird Europe stuff. This is very London stuff. We were going to take pictures inside of it, but it smelled like pee. More random London stuff. They just have buildings like that randomly in the mix. Here's a random Westminster Abby building not too far from our hotel. This sculpture reminds me of the Jay Z and Kanye Made In America song. Fancy. Really fancy. Look! British hippies Camping by a big clock!. Look at that clock and the moon. It's really pretty here at night along the big river. We walked along the river a lot this trip, but this was the first time going there for me. It was also the first time I encountered these. Then we encountered this eye and a random carnival. Nicole and I like carnivals. Especially carnivals that blast techno music like some weird carnival rave. We don't really ride the rides though. We mostly just eat the food. This is skateboard graveyard on the Thames. Speaking of eating, our search for food tricked us and looked like we were in Paris again. We chose Indian food instead. Sorry Paris.

9-3-2011

This guy isn't just a street musician on the metro. He's a cutthroat business man who wanted change for pictures, then demanded bigger dominations than the coins I gave him. In fairness, I probably only gave him like four cents at first. I'm not sure it was worth it.

Nicole and I have a collection of photobooth pictures of us from different places we go. I'm starting to collect pictures of the photobooths where we take the photobooth pictures for our collection.

Hey look, it's The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame! I'm not sure who this guy is or if he's been inducted or not. This reminds me of old spy movies. The Louvre is pretty much art overload like a shower 1,000 art history books all falling on you all at once. Before totally blacking out, I took pictures of winged sculptures that I remember from classes like Cupid and Psyche and the Nike mascot. I try not to take too many pictures in museums, because it pretty much defeats the purpose of seeing these masterworks in real life if you're only viewing them though a tiny screen and not really looking at them for real. Art overload causes craziness. My eyes were popping out of the back of my head and people looked like they were made out of vegetables. Nicole started making oaths with Horatii until she passed out from art exhaustion. At least she had a nice ceiling to wake up to. This picture reminds me of being in school. I miss those times.

This is the Jardin des Tuileries. It was nice seeing a bit of nature in all the buildings. Nicole and I like walking around trees. I also liked this antique looking Bentley and this quiche lorraine from a cafe. Nicole likes French fries and ham. Not everyone looks cool on a Vespa. Paris is so fancy. I already miss just randomly seeing buildings like that on every other corner. Of course I already miss the food as well. And not having to drive and just taking the Metro everywhere. This French lady followed me back to the hotel. Nicole chased French cats whenever she saw them.