Day Two: All By Myself, Don’t Want to Be

(I’ve decided to try and name all of my blog entries after our memorable taxi driver music from the previous day… this particular song just happens to perfectly match my day)

Note: Obviously my effort to blog each day that evening was a lofty goal I wasn’t going to come close to reaching – seeing as it is exactly a week later. My bad.

Given the great weather in London (Sunny and highs in the lower 10 degrees Celsius, fools!), I was really excited about venturing out into the city in the broad daylight.

Originally, I was planning to go on an early morning run, but my ankle was still bothering me, and I wanted to exert my energy site seeing. Additionally, cough cough, my butt didn’t get out of bed until after 9 a.m.

I forced Justin out of bed via loud banging in the bathroom at roughly 10:30 a.m., mainly because I didn’t want to waste our day sleeping. You can sleep in America, you lazy American! (Granted, in the paragraph before, I also would be considered a lazy American, but that’s beside the point.)

After Justin got ready, we headed out down the same path we took the night before. Once we got over the Waterloo Bridge, Justin started feeling sickly, so unfortunately, we headed back to the hotel. Literally, at one point, I thought he was going to hurl. And given the fact that the one time I’ve seen him puke I almost followed suit, this was not a good sign for me either. After some room service for lunch (where Justin had the same food for EVERY meal while we were in London – poor guy and his food allergies), I headed back out without the better half. Because, let’s face it, I won’t be spoiled by a party pooper :) Plus, Justin really did need his rest and needed to get some work done.

I had two goals in mind on this particular excursion – must see Buckingham Palace, and have to go to Harrods. As an avid shopper, it’s my duty.

Seeing that this was a self-guided tour, with really no idea where I was going, I walked through St. James Park, where a lot of tourists are – oddly enough – looking at squirrels. Seriously, I have never seen so many people so excited about feeding dumb squirrels. I later found out that people in London and other parts of Europe don’t see squirrels that often and think they’re pretty awesome. Ugh – live in Texas for a minute and you’ll see more squirrels. Although I must say, London squirrels are big and grey. So slightly different than our poo poo brown ones here.

Buckingham Palace is just past St. James Park, and it wasn’t quite as regal as I was hoping for. I expected it to be bigger, I guess. The front gates were pretty spectacular, but really, there are nicer looking buildings in London (including our hotel). I stopped in the gift shop and bought a few items (including a spoon set for Justin’s grandmother), and kept walking.

At some point, I notice that the sun is setting, which is odd, because it’s only 3 p.m. After some interesting turns, and a few moments where I thought I was lost, I made it to Harrods at dusk. By now, my ankle is killing me (I had sprained it the week before) and it is pretty dark outside. It took me roughly two hours to walk there – whoops – so much for Harrods looking like it was relatively close to our hotel. Stupid tourist map.

Harrods is interesting, as it is HUGE. I walked in a side door, and went through a huge make up section, then through the food section, purse section then back into the food section to get a few things for my mom and Gran. After that, I headed upstairs where I saw bed linens, rugs, Christmas stuff and a pet department. And that wasn’t even all of it – I still had several more floors to go! My ankle was really killing me by now, so I headed back to the hotel via taxi.

Sidebar One: London is expensive. A bar of soap for my grandmother was the equivalent to $12. A small box of chocolates are $20. Conclusion: the dollar sucks. In fact, there were even travel agencies in London advertising “Shopping Excursion Trips” to NYC.

Sidebar Two: After I got back to the hotel, I needed to get ready for Paris – I was getting up at 3:45 a.m. to catch the 5:21 a.m. train. Lesson learned: never take NyQuil ever again, as it causes my heart to race and won’t let me fall asleep. And for anyone who knows me, me NOT falling asleep easily is quite impressive.

Sidebar Three: BBC owns. During the course of the trip I was able to hear more cussing, see more boobs (in a respectable fashion) and laugh louder than I ever had on regular American television. Conclusion: Americans are self-righteous prudes and/or British are vulgar whores. Kidding! (well, not about the American part)