Go to London

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London holds a special place in my heart (aww). It's full of history but at the same time is alive and modern. Skyscrapers stand next to historic monuments.

The Tubes are so efficient, timely and convenient that I enjoyed riding them even when I had nowhere to go. We stayed at the Astor Quest Hostel at Bayswater, around the corner from Hyde Park. The hostel was insanely cheap: 10 pounds a night, including breakfast. It's an artsy, modern rendition of a preserved, hundred-year-old building that is London's first hostel. Bayswater is on the Tubes' Circle Line, so most of your attractions are a 15-minute tube ride at most.

Most nights we cooked pizza at our hostel and drank a six-pack on the front porch. Because of the shitty exchange rate, food and drink is too much for most American kids to pay. This Malaysian guy, who was kind of strange, played awesome acoustic guitar on the porch every night, and the front-desk guy from South Africa was cute and came out to have a cigarette once in a while.

We packed our day so full of tourist attractions -- five nights wasn't enough -- that we hadn't much time to sit back, enjoy and mingle with the Britons. We only went to Soho, the club district, one night. We chose a jazz club, where we danced with a bunch of older women and gay men to a live version of "I'm Every Woman." For last-call we swayed to "No Woman No Cry" with a British guy, then talked with he and his friends about our U.S. ancestors being their country's rejects (i.e. those crazy Puritains). Londoners like to party at a bar like that until about 2 a.m. then go to a dance club.

Tourist shit

What London activities did I partake in, you ask? Westminster Abbey, the Eye, a Jack-the-Ripper walking tour (highly recommended), a day-trip to lovely Leeds Castle, the Titus Andronicus show at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre (the coolest thing I ever did with my life), the Tower of London, the Tower Bridge, and everything else apparently doesn't matter because I can't think of anything else.

Westminster Abbey is at, duh, the Westminster Tube stop, next to Parliament, Big Ben and the London Eye. The Globe and the Eye are a quick walk across the bridge on which Monty Python's skit took place, in which they teased a Scotland Yard officer by enticing him to sit in an armchair. The abbey houses tombs of Queen Elizabeth I, Chaucer, Dickens, Darwin and Newton, to name a few. Don't let the entry fee scare you away.

The Eye costs 40 pounds (80 USD) and is not worth it. I'd have paid 40 dollars, but 40 pounds for a ferris wheel, even the world's tallest, is rediculous.

Jack the Ripper

In the Jack the Ripper London Walk you follow the murderer's very footsteps and learn more than the Johnny Depp movie could ever teach. This was my cheapest activity and the most fun, next to Titus. Tour groups meet at the Tower of London, where the first murder was committed, at I think 6:00 nightly. We picked up a brochure for it at the hostel (another benefit of hostels: they usher you to unique events not published in travel magazines). The tour's founder, and one of the guides, Donald Rumbelow, is internationally recognized as the leading authority on Jack the Ripper. Other notches on his belt include: being Britain's most distingusihed crime historian, the former Curator of the Police Crime Museum, a two-time Chairman of the Crime Writers' Association, and the author of the the best-selling novel The Complete Jack the Ripper. I'd say this guy knows what the hell he's talking about.

Our tour guide, while not Rumbelow, was an absolute expert. He was funny and to-the-point. He led us through Old London and through a beautiful Victorian market where the blood-covered Ripper disguised himself as a butcher to escape from the police after his final murder. He explained all of the possible theories throughout the tour, and at the end he told us why they were false and gave evidence to support the theory he believes in.

The London Walks, to me, beat any bus tour. Walking in the footsteps of a criminal, I learned and got exercise and felt I was part of an investigation.

The Globe

Titus is hilarious. As groundlings, we were part of the show, and the cast flew through us so that we had to jump out of their way. The actors, the set and the interpretation were fantastic. To feel like a groundling in the authentic reproduction of Shakespeare's theatre and to be able to look up to a sight identical to that which play-goers saw is priceless for any fanatic like myself. Emily and I could hardly breathe afterward and decided to walk home to let reality sink in. I couldn't sleep that night. Over-dramatic? No.

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