Jolly Old England

This post is also a few weeks past the actual events, but you'll forgive me my tardiness.

Anyway, a few weeks ago I flew to London to visit my very good friend Chris. He's been my neighbor in my dorm for the past two years, and I'm on the ballroom team with him (he's the senior member). I was very excited, for I had never been to London, and hadn't seen Chris in a few months, so it was to be an excellent weekend (and it was!).

I flew through Barcelona to Gatwick airport and took the Gatwick Express train into Victoria Station, that famous central hub for England's train system. Saw some very cheap train tickets to Scotland that looked tempting. Chris came and found me in the station, and I began my adventure in London.

Though Chris didn't really know how to get back to his place from Victoria Station, we decided to meander a bit before heading back. We saw the theater where Wicked is currently playing in London (which a few of my friends saw the next night), but it was just interesting walking through the streets and having to look in the opposite direction for traffic. It was very confusing for me, and I nearly got whiplash a few times as I had to keep turning my head quickly in the other direction as I remembered that Great Britain drives on the wrong side of the road. I was starved, so Chris and I pulled up in this little Londoner pub. We started things off with a pint of London's Finest ale, and I chowed down on a cheeseburger (yes, yes, I know. But I needed mmmmeeeeaaaatttt). From there, Chris took me past some very big monuments...that I can't for the life of me remember. Think of famous buildings near Big Ben and I was there. Seriously, drawing a complete blank. Anyway, I do remember seeing the Parliament building and Big Ben. That was really cool. Chris took some pictures, but I'm pretty sure he didn't post them *ahem ahem*. We crossed the Thames by way of Victoria Bridge (?) and walked along the south bank. It's a very nice little area, home to many street performers. We passed most of these by, stopped for a few minutes to watch some impressive footballers, then made our way up to the National Theater building. That sucker is big, and very modern architecturally, but I wish I could have seen a show there. Chris thought to get some tickets, but unfortunately there weren't any available while I was there. Oh well. Just means I'll have to go back and do it again. Anyone interested in coming?

From there, we hopped a bus back to his neighborhood. He lives just off of Denmark Hill. We posted up in his room (he's got a quaint little single). We chilled in there for a bit, I checked my email and Facebook and whatnot, then we headed off to this pub called the Phoenix at Denmark Hill. I fell in love with this place. I wish we had pubs like that everywhere. Chris and I walked in and we started off with some English cider. Of course, it came in a pint, as nearly everything does in the country. Now, technically, cider is only 4% by volume alcohol. Chris and I think they lie, or that maybe they concoct it in such a way as to be much more potent than normal drinks. We were both feeling a bit heady after just the first pint, though I blame my very long day of traveling. Soon after, two of Chris' friends, Jesse and Alex, joined us at the pub. I had another two beers with them, and at that point, I was speaking in tongues. 3 drinks was apparently enough to push me deep into the tipsy zone that night, but in my defense, I'd eaten very little, slept very little the night before, and spent the day traveling. I ordered the boys and myself a thing of nachos, which in the Phoenix are unbelievable. Not sure they were worth 5 pounds, but they were definitely some of the best nachos I've ever had. Jesse and Alex got a real kick out of my very poor drunken attempts (though totally unconscious effort)to mimic their accents (Jesse is Australian and Alex is British...I came out sorta Irish). We quit the pub relatively early, leastways for me, but Alex, Jesse, and I were all feeling hungry again. Jesse in particular was craving McDonald's. Couldn't stop talking about it in fact. So off we went to MickeyD's...second time that day I had American food in a foreign country I'd never before visited. I sat down with my classic chicken nuggets and barbecue sauce and enjoyed them as only the tipsy can enjoy highly fried foods. Chris and I retired after that, for my friend had a dance competition to leave for very early the next morning in Leicester (pronounced Lester...silly English).

Chris and I woke abysmally early the next day, somewhere around 5 or so. Chris had to get up earlier than me so he could prepare himself. We grabbed the bus to some square near the University of London (Chris participates as part of the University of London Dance Team, though he attends King's College). There, I met the rest of the team, who all turned out to be very nice. We crammed ourselves into a very small van (it felt very small at least...a dozen ballroom people with suitcases and camera cases and whatnot fitting into a minibus doesn't work) and headed up to Leicester, about a 2 hour journey. I slept the whole way. We got to the Uni of Leicester, and disembarked. The ballroom wasn't particularly large, but the competition wasn't supposed to be too big either. However, this year, many of the schools with teams had decided to use the Leicester comp as a warm-up opportunity, and it was packed mighty tight. I managed to get in without having to pay or anything by claiming I was the team photographer (even though I was wearing my Carolina dance jacket). I did spend a large portion of the day photographing though. One of the guys on the team, Ed, had this absolutely gorgeous camera with several different lenses. It was an amateur photographer's wet dream. It was gorgeous! I think Ed realized how much I was fawning over his camera because he let me use it for just about every photographing opportunity. By the end of the day, my arms and back were killing me though. That thing was a hulk. But it was totally worth it. Thanks Ed!

Seeing as how I hadn't seen or been around ballroom since I'd left, going to that competition was like a fix for me. Despite the early hour I woke and the fact that I didn't have much to do all day, I had a fantastic time. I just soaked in the atmosphere, the music, the people, the costumes, the dancing. English dancers are quite different from their American counterparts. Rather, it would be more appropriate to say there are a lot of differences that just had me doing double takes all day long. Also, they had different terminology for the levels which threw me off for a bit. Also (haha lots of little differences indeed) they refer to the cha cha as simply the cha. First few times I heard that I figured someone was just throwing a random agreement sound into their sentences. I was very impressed by the way Chris danced. He improved obviously within the few weeks he'd been dancing with his temporary partner Alisa, who said she danced prechamp back in the States. She had the competitive spirit and the performing down, but there were some basics that even I realized she didn't have down pat. All in all, for only having 3 weeks to work together, Chris and Alisa did fairly well. Didn't make it to any finals (I don't think) in the regular competition, though they made it to cha cha finals in the Team Dance. Chris also completely dominated the salsa fun dance, he and a girl from another school named Chloe. I think that helped calm him down a bit, because he danced better afterward. He only competed in Latin, which was probably good for him since he spent much of the standard part of the competition napping in the dressing room. All-in-all, much of the team did very well, and I can't wait to get back to Carolina to dance again. We didn't end up getting back to London until very early, and Chris and I didn't actually end up going to bed until after 5 (we watched a great episode of The Office though).

Sunday started off very late. We both slept til 3 in the afternoon, and took our sweet time waking up and whatnot. We hopped the train back into the city and decided to do some more sight-seeing, while there was a little daylight still left. We checked out this really cool museum, I don't remember which one, but it had this Cold War exhibit. Chris and I were both very intrigued, and we spent the last half hour that the museum was open looking at propaganda, old scientific ideas, videos, a reproduction of Sputnik, fashion ideas (can you say closet Trekkies?), and loads of other stuff. It was really cool as I'd never really seen that side of the history of the Cold War. it was a nice immersive (yes, I know it's not a word...but I was immersed) experience. Walking through the rest of the museum (which opened right off the Underground which was neat) was also really interesting. There were dozens of sculptures of classic figures, originals I believe, but I'm not entirely sure. Seeing as how sculpture is one of my top three favorite forms of art (behind the written word and photography), it was very nice. Once we got kicked out of the museum, Chris decided to take me to Trafalgar Square (awesome!) and some other squares that I barely knew the names of when I was there, so please don't fault me for forgetting. In one of the areas, we listened to a pretty good opera singer belt out some show tunes (opera tunes, of course) but escaped before she asked us for money (we're poor college students, what do you want from us?). We also visited Chris' favorite tea shop and we picked up some hot chocolate. Chris found some good ideas for Christmas presents. After that, we headed back to Denmark Hill, stopping by the Phoenix for dinner. We ended up chilling there for three hours chatting, he sipping on a beer, myself on mulled wine (good stuff let me tell you). We had plans to check some other stuff out in the morning before I headed back for Sevilla, so we decided not to make it too late of a night. We went back to Chris' room, and he skyped C-money (that's Carissa, our team captain and Chris' girlfriend). I got to talk to her too, and we all chatted for about 2 hours. It was nice to see/talk to her again. We crashed relatively early that night.

Monday, my final day in London, was a rainy, dreary day, and we woke up at a reasonable hour for once. I packed quickly, we grabbed some breakfast at the Fox (the pub Chris frequents) and it turned out to be quite tasty. The bacon wasn't quite Spanish quality, but it was still pretty good, and the rest felt like a real breakfast (not the very old morning toast). So that pleased me. We decided not to head straight for the train station because I still had plenty of time left before I had to leave, so Chris decided to show me Buckingham Palace. There was supposed to be a Changing of the Guard that day, but due to the damnable wet weather, it was canceled. So Chris instead took me through Hyde Park and some other parks around that area (supposedly you can walk through every park in London without really leaving the park system...or pretty close to it, we didn't have time to try). After that, things got a little sticky, as we got kind of lost searching for a way to Victoria Station. So we ended up walking through the pouring rain (thank god for my wonderful coat...Thanks again Mom and Dad!) until we found a bus that took us over to Victoria. Once we got there, he saw me off and invited me to come back for his other dance competitions. Apparently had one this past weekend and I was sorely tempted to fly back to London for it. Anyway, I hopped back on the Gatwick Express back to the airport.

There were some issues after that. Serious plane issues. Won't go into much detail since I don't want to get worked up again, but in short, missed my flight, had to fly into Madrid later that day and then take the speed train from Madrid to Seville. Got int about 8 1/2 hours after I was supposed to. But at least there was a funny movie on the train that didn't make get home in a grump, so in the end, it all turned out okay.

Also, somewhere along the way, I don't remember exactly when, Chris got me a sausage roll. It's this thing called a pastie that's big in England. And it was delicious!