London!

I just got back from a great weekend in London with my good friend Claire O'Hanlon. I arrived on Thursday night (well, Friday morning) from Aarhus. RyanAir was, of course, delayed about 45 minutes. Then, when I got to the Stansted airport, the customs line was huge! I was lucky I was a non-EU citizen, because the EU citizen line was at least three times as long! I waited in line for about an hour, and the customs official then proceeded to quiz me about why I was living in Denmark for the summer, what I was doing in London, exactly where I was staying, etc. It was as bad as getting into the US! I didn't expect this at all from the UK, since all other EU countries barely care if you have a passport, let alone what you're doing in their country. Finally, I made it through, but behind me the line was still just as long, if not longer. I caught a train into London, and arrived at my hostel around 2 AM. Claire, great friend that she is, stayed up to meet me! We had a beer and caught up, and then went to bed.

The next day, we started out our trip by visiting the Tower of London, which is a historic royal fortress and prison on the Thames. The tours there are lead by the Beefeaters of gin fame (just kidding, they have been around for a lot longer than the gin!):
We saw a ton of cool things - the Crown Jewels, lots of old armor and weaponry, and the insides of the various towers. The oldest, the White Tower, was built by William the Conqueror. The coolest was the Bloody Tower, which was used to hold prisoners. There was lots of graffiti carved into the walls by various historic prisoners. Here is the White Tower:
There is a flock of ravens that lives in the Tower of London. The legend is that, when these ravens leave the tower, the White Tower will fall. Here are a few of the ravens.
They were really fat - our theory is that they just feed the raves so much so that they physically unable to fly away!

After this, we ventured out into the East End to eat some lunch at a very delicious hamburger stand that was recommended to me by an (ex-Yakima) Londoner. This area was really interesting because it had a lot of Pakistani and Indian immigrants. Claire had just been in India, so we stopped into an Indian sweetshop and she picked out some delicious Indian desert. Then, we went to Saint James' Park to enjoy them. We saw a lot of birds there (it's a wildlife sanctuary) and one overly-friendly squirrel. That night, we went to comedy show called the News Revue. It was a satire of weekly news events from all over. It was very funny, but unfortunately, Claire and I didn't know enough about British politics to get all the jokes.

The next day we started off with the British museum. We saw the Rosetta Stone - it was a lot bigger than I always pictured it!
There was way too much to see all in one day, but one of the cooler things we saw was one of the Easter Island statues.
Interestingly enough, it is thought to be these statues that caused the collapse of their civilization. In his book, Collapse, Jared Diamond (also author of Guns, Germs, and Steel) discusses what causes societies to succeed or fail, and Easter Island is one of the societies that he focuses on. Apparently what happened is that the various groups on the island spent all their time competing to see who could erect the largest statues. However, these statues were very time and resource intensive, so the islanders over-used the natural resources on the island, eventually rendering it unable to sustain life. This was a really interesting book, I would recommend both of Diamond's books.

After the British museum, we headed to the Cabinet War Rooms. These were the rooms used by the Prime Minister and the heads of the military during WWII. When the war ended in 1945, the people working there simply turned the lights off, locked up, and left, leaving everything completely as it was. They were reopened in the 80s, and restored to be a museum. This was the room where Churchill met with all the generals (sorry for the flash there):
It was also really neat to see all the maps and charts they used to follow the war:

After this museum, we headed home to cook some dinner. We celebrated the 4th hanging out with some Australian girls that we met in our hostel and drinking Brahma, Claire's and my favorite Brazilian beer (which we having been trying to find in the US for 2 years, to no avail). We ended up going out that night with the Australian girls and an Italian guy, also from our hostel. There was a huge gay pride festival going on in Soho, so we headed there for some great people watching. I have never seen so many drag queens in one place!

The next day, we started out at the Imperial War Museum. This museum chronicled all the wars of the 20th century. They had cool interactive exhibits that showed what it was like to be in the trenches in WWI or in the Blitz during WWII. They had a whole apartment set up to look like one during WWII in London. My favorite was this home bomb shelter, that doubled as a dining room table during the day:

After the Imperial War Museum, Claire and I headed to the nerdiest attraction of our list, the Royal Observatory, site of the Prime Meridian! Here I am, standing in two hemispheres at once!
We learned all about timekeeping and navigation. The observatory is up on a hill in Greenwich. There is a big ball on the roof that is dropped at 1 PM everyday. This was so that ships in the harbor could set their clocks to Greenwich Meridian Time without going all the way up to the observatory:
Finally, we pondered the eternal question, "When IS it time for the navy?"
After this, it was time for me to head to the airport. Claire and I said a sad goodbye, since we don't know when we will see each other next. However, my move to Chicago in a year bodes well for future Thanksgiving spent with the O'Hanlon clan in Pittsburgh. I made it back to Denmark fine - RyanAir was actually early, and customs consisted of nothing more than a passport stamp. Overall, it was a great weekend and it was great to see Claire again!