London - Day 9

Date: August 27th, 2009
Distance: None
Country: England
Song of the Day: The Scene's Out of Sight - Actionslacks

London. Where to begin. First off, Wren and Hooke were right. They should have made a grid of the city after the great fire. It is actually strange to be in a city where an event from almost 350 years ago still have relevance. The people here seem to take that in stride when you drop "the great fire" into a conversation. As history tells us, a new grid of streets did not replace the old carriage lanes here. So getting around the city is a bit confusing. You can't actually go straight anywhere. Instead you zig-zag around. It is like sailing into the wind. You have to keep tacking to get to where you want to go. In addition the streets end quite frequently. Sometimes it is just a curve in the road. More often it is a round about or interchange. Then you have five or six roads to choose from, and none of them are marked very well. So you guess and hope you are going the right way. Frankly, it gets annoying after a while. Maybe if you live here long enough you just get used to it.

It does have a good feel to it though. The love the brick buildings around. Very pretty. It doesn't feel as tall as Manhattan or Chicago. Yes, there are tall buildings here, but mostly it sticks to four stories or less though. Holdovers from the age before steel. It is like miles on miles of wonderful eccentric old buildings.

Biking around in the city is actually pretty fun as well. Usually the traffic is moving slow enough that you get around much faster than the cars do. You can't be squeamish about riding with other cars and buses about, though. It is pretty cool to be biking along next to a bus at eye level with all the passengers.

Went to the Tower of London today. I had really wanted to go since reading The Baroque Cycle, which has a large part of the second book set there. It is an amazing place. You can practically eat the history with a spoon. The original tower was started by William the Conqueror. After that it was expanded by Henry III and Edward I and made into a concentric castle. It is still just called "The Tower" even though it is actually a castle. Just amazing to walk though a thousand years of history. I won't try to recount everything, but I will say I spent a very enjoyable day here. It was pretty expensive (£16), but well worth it I think.

After that it was back into town for a curry dinner and some mango lassie. I was also able to get in touch with Dasha, one of Badger's friends. We are going to try and meet up tomorrow.

-Dravis