Nowhere [Wo]man

I hope everyone is enjoying my posts as much as I enjoy writing them. Composing these entries allows me to relive the last few days through my pictures and forces me to recall (almost) every event that happened on my trip. My latest trip was a two day trip into London. My friends and I stayed in perhaps the nicest hostel we've ever come across! Granted, the lobby smelled slightly like urine, but I'm happy to report that our room was urine-smelling free! We stayed in the Meininger so if you're ever looking for an affordable place to stay in London, I suggest Meininger!

We left Brighton at around 9:30 in the morning and got into London via train less than an hour after. From Victoria London train station, we took the Tube to Gloucester Road, where our hostel was conveniently located. We dropped off our backpacks in the baggage room because our check-in time wasn't until 3 in the afternoon and grabbed a bite to eat in a French cafe (see below for a picture of Jen and I stuffing our faces with a baguette sandwich). We chose take-away (what Americans call 'take out') and took the Tube to the Tate Modern.

Above is the group of girls I travelled into London with. I believe I took this picture in the Tate Modern. Below is Tammy, me, and Gaby sitting outside of the Tate Modern waiting for Nhu and Jen to arrive.

Our next destination stop was Abbey Road. We took the Tube yet again (We were getting quite good with the Tube as the day went on. We definitely utilized London's public transportation!) Abbey Road is located in Westminster, a posh, up-scale neighborhood where its automobiles do not like to slow down for stupid tourists trying to channel the Beatles. I was smart enough not to try to attempt such a thing and settled instead to take a picture of the famous crosswalk. I still do not know who I managed to capture a picture free of tourists and vehicles!

Once one crosses the crosswalk and walks a few meters down the road, one will be greeted by a wall with various drawings and writing addressed to the Beatles. This was my favorite drawing:

Here I am, caressing my favorite Beatle, John Lennon.

I mentioned earlier that we mastered the Tube as the day went along. Here is a picture on our way to some Tube station using the ubiquitous escalators. This escalator was especially pretty, well-lit, and clean.

After Abbey Road, we headed towards King's Cross station, which is home to Platform 9 3/4!

After the group of nerds, I mean 'we' were satisfied with our Platform 9 3/4 pictures, our stomachs demanded that we head off to Chinatown to eat! I had a soup noodle dish with shredded pork and green beans. It was delicious and I immediately missed pho! Add that and El Coyote to places I must visit on my return home.

The next day, we checked out of the hostel, stored our backpacks in the free baggage room yet again (a perk of Meininger) and headed off to Buckingham Palace to witness the changing of the guard. Gaby and I chose to sit on the grass near the palace because we didn't have a decent view. I later viewed Jen's picture of the event and it was just as I had imagined it in my head so I didn't feel left out at all.

We soon left Buckingham Palace and ventured towards the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. Sadly, there was an entrance fee for Westminster Abbey that none of us were too keen to pay for so we settled on taking picture of its exterior. The picture immediately below is NOT a picture of Westminster Abbey, but rather the Houses of Parliament. The two picture after it are of Westminster Abbey.

We waved goodbye to Westminster Abbey and headed towards Camden Market. I loved its atmosphere! Camden Market is London's most popular open-air market area. I bough a shirt/dress (haha, the girls know what I'm talking about) and a cute coat! Sadly, I didn't not capture the ambiance of the market with my camera because I was too busy perusing the stalls! Hopefully the link will suffice. All the shopping proved to be a workout and our stomachs began grumbling so we took the Tube to Hyde Park, one of the largest green spaces in Central London. We like our parks if you cannot already tell. Nhu had to leave us for Orlando Bloom so the rest of us bought some lunch and found a place to sit. The following pictures are of my park companions Jennifer, Tammy, and Gaby. They were not too pleased with my candid photographs, but to me, those are the best ones!

After lunch we took the Tube yet again to the London Eye! Finally, I can be in the same pod as BBMak had in their video!

One of the views from our pod. We were just beginning to rise.

View of the Houses of Parliament from our pod.

My best BBMak pose!

The line to get on the London Eye surprisingly wasn't too bad. Sure, it looked long, but each pod holds about 30 people or so and that is gives the passengers more than enough walking room within the pod. While on the eye, I couldn't help but think about the crazy ferris wheel ride (also known as the Sun Wheel) from California Adventure. If you haven't been on that ride yet, be sure to choose the swinging gondola not the stationary one. That ride is probably the scariest ride I've ever been on and that is no joke!

When we reached ground, Tammy, Gabby, Jen, and I went to Regent's Park to meet up with Nhu. The last photo is the gate into Queen Mary's Garden, which was breathtaking!

If there is one thing I learned from this third trip into London, it is that London takes great pride in their parks and they have every right to be. Each park that I have visited so far (St. James's Park, Hyde Park, and Regent's Park) is spacious as it is luscious. One cannot help but pack a picnic and spend an afternoon with friends and families in any of the royal parks. Basking in the parks also makes me want to ride my bike through the marked paths or even feed the ducks. It makes for a relaxing getaway from the craziness and chaos that can sometimes surround London. I had a wonderful two days in London and maybe I'll head into Central London once more before I leave!

Next weekend I'm going to spend Saturday and Sunday exploring Liverpool and Manchester, I can't wait!

Expecto Patronum!

Just a small update from the last post. Here's a picture from Cat's camera after the Feist show. See? She's as tall as the group of Asians (plus Gaby, haha)!


I also neglected to mention that I purchased the new Harry Potter book last Friday when while we were waiting for our Eurotunnel appointment. I swear I did mention it, but perhaps I forgot to add the picture? In England, there are two covers for the HP books, the children's cover and the adult's cover, respectively. I personally am partial to the children's cover because it looks more fun! The adult cover consists of a locket and a picture of J.K. Rowling on the back (yawn). Here is my copy:

This weekend is our London trip (we leave tomorrow morning) and sadly the weather is acting up again. I pray that the rain doesn't come! But I am excited to finally go on the London Eye! My BBMak fantasy is going to come true! Yay!

Sweet Spots

Hello wonderful family and friends! I'm back for another weekly installment. Last week marked the conclusion of session 1. My final paper, as I mentioned in an earlier post, was due last Thursday. However, Tuesday is what this paragraph will focus on. Tuesday was the Feist show in Portsmouth, which is a good two hour train ride from Brighton. Noah and the Whale opened for Feist and although I thought they were a pretty decent lot, I found it supremely annoying that they were sitting down during their entire performance. It came across as lazy and inconsiderate for their audience, especially for the vertically challenged ones like myself. But again, I did enjoy their music just fine, but it just prolonged the wait until Feist was to perform.


The show was amazing and it was great to see her in a small setting again. Feist is becoming extremely popular in North America as well as around the world and many of her L.A. shows are set in larger venues. Feist revealed that this was her visit to Portsmouth, which explained to me the size of the venue. Her set was energetic, passionate, and overall wonderful! After the show, our group decided to wait for her since we had to spend the night at the train station. The last train was scheduled to leave sometime around 10 in the evening and show normally don't end until after 11. We did get to meet her and she was wonderful. I knew she was a tiny person, but actually talking to her face to face and being able to look at her eye level made me realize how short she really was. She was about my height with short heels! Anyway, she introduced herself to all of us with a handshake and a "Hi, I'm Leslie." Of course we knew who she was! Leslie was very gracious and I hope to see her again soon!

On Thursday, a group of us got together and decided to have a nice picnic in the park. Gaby, Jennifer, Tyler, and I headed over to Sainsbury first to pick up a few items and then met up with Ulanda and Sam at the park. A few minutes later, Stella and Vy showed up with homemade goodies.

Strongbow is a cider that I enjoy very much. Four 2 liter bottles was a bit too much for a group of girls because Tyler decided to buy 2 of his own.

After our stomachs were content, I brought out my Uno cards and we played a few rounds.

Friday night, we took a coach into Amsterdam. Last weekend, we took the Eurostar to France, but since we booked the Amsterdam trip through Discovery Tours (and they are really loyal to their coaches, plus its cheaper) we had to take the Eurotunnel, which is obviously a tunnel that passes through the English Channel, but the tunnel holds coaches, cars and RVs and is put in an even bigger box! It might sound confusing, but it's really not. Perhaps I'm just really poor at explaining things for the moment. We arrived in Amsterdam Saturday afternoon. This next picture was located in the flower market.

We were informed by our very funny tour guide, Simon, that Amsterdam has a very large Asian population. I thought that was very surprising! We ended up eating at an Indonesian restaurant. I've never had Indonesian food before let alone seen a restaurant dedicated solely to that food. Gaby and I enjoyed a special little muffin before our lunch.

After lunch, Gaby and I stuck around the Indonesian restaurant while Stella and Jennifer went shopping. Our wonderful waitress, Mel, recommended a coffeeshop with really good rates (ahem ahem) so we purchased the goods and went back to the Indonesian restaurant to give her some company since she was the only one working the front of the house. In addition to her services (it's not like that, if you really want to know what I mean, email me) she gave us each a couple glasses of wine on the house! Gaby took the picture, it's a tad bit off. :)

When we left the Indonesian restaurant, Gaby and I hung out in the square for a bit partaking in local festivities, then headed off to the Sex Museum to meet up with Jennifer and Stella. The museum itself was not worth my 3 pounds and I was a bit underwhelmed. Don't worry, I didn't take pictures of the contents inside the museum.

Apparently, a lot of people in Amsterdam love to bike!

Later on that night, after we finally checked into our ho[s]tel, our group headed into the red light district. I did not enjoy it and I assume a lot of the girls on our same tour felt the same. I just felt so dirty walking through the streets. It is definitely something for the lads to enjoy, but I honestly felt embarassed and disgusted for the women working. I know I should respect their profession, but it's so difficult to find respect when you're in skimpy lingerie, dancing and attempting to lure customers through a window for all the world to see. For obvious reasons, I did not take pictures. Actually, I think one isn't allowed to take pictures of the girls in the windows. The girls and I decided we had enough after a couple of blocks and decided to consume some brownies instead. We left the coffeeshop and hung out on some steps in front of a closed store until the coach arrived. Of course, that time "hanging out" was accompanied with more local festivities.

The next morning we headed off to Zaanse Schaans, which is a typical Dutch village. There was also a cheese factory as well as several windmills! I loved the windmills and took a few pictures, but I chose only to post one for the reader's sake.

The cheese demonstration. After the cheese lady said her little speech, it was off to the free samples!

Zaanse Schaans concluded our trip into Amsterdam. Next, we headed off to Belgium into a city called Bruges. Bruges is a beautiful medieval city filled with Belgian waffles, chocolate and Kwak!

Behold, the wonder that is known as Kwak. Kwak is just a Belgian beer served in quite an unconventional apparatus.

I bought some cheese from Zaanse Schaans to eat while I continued my studies in England.

I also bought some Belgian chocolate!

Amsterdam was quite the experience. It wasn't as large as I thought it would be. A weekend is definitely enough to soak in the culture unless you really enjoy the local customs. The food was great however, oh did I mention that I had some Tibetan food as well? Although it didn't really seem that much different to me than other Asian cuisine. It was tasty though, I must say. I was a bit sad that I didn't bring some brownies back with me seeing that no one searched our bus. Oh well. My trip to Amsterdam can be summed up with a few lyrics of Regina Spektor's song Düsseldorf:

"In Amsterdam I got quite crazy

Might have been all the tulips and canals

Or it might have been all that hash"

Next weekend is London again and I can't wait! Abbey Road here I come!

P.S. I just wanted to thank those who have sent me wonderful things in the mail so far. A hug and thanks goes out to Ate, JC and Aaron. Thanks for the care packages guys!