london, united kingdom: long live the queen!

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phew!!! just wanted to let y'all know that teresa and andy finally made it
london. in fact, we are completely done with our london touring segment.

we could easily go on and on about how much we've seen and how much fun we
are having... but we don't want to bore you too much, and we are actually
pretty damn tired. we finally found an internet cafe after walking our
asses off around the city. its past midnight and we leave for amsterdam at
6:45AM in the morning, so we need some shuteye. nevertheless, we want to
give you a quick update:

yesterday, we arrived EARLY morning after our painful 12 hour red-eye
flight from SFO. we immediately hit the streets. first stop was st.
paul's cathedral. for tourism? no, no, no. for mass!! what triumphant
Catholics we are! (yea right. but hey, we had to thank G for a safe
flight). we wanted to climb the dome in the cathedral after mass, but
unfortunately they don't allow it on sundays. (more on the dome climb
later).

then, we jammed over to the Tower of London. on our way there, T and A
noticed how dead the streets were. i guess the brits over here still
recognize the day of sabbath as a TRUE DAY OF REST. well call us pagans!
we worked our asses off. the tower of london was truly awesome, to say the
least. the highlight, of course, are the crown jewels -- a series of royal
crowns decorated with some serious bling bling from africa. we're talking
a diamond that's almost 200 carats!! queen victoria's crown had over 300
diamonds and other precious stones. as andy shook my head thinking about
how ridiculous this was, he looked over at teresa and her eyes were fixated
on the bling. i quickly changed the subject.... it didn't work. i tried
to pull her away, but she growled. never mess with a girl and her
diamonds.

besides the diamonds, we saw a bunch of original armor suits worn by many
inlcuding henry viii. i particularly liked henry viii's suit because he
had a thick metal shaft that protects his...er.... crown jewels (nyuk
nyuk). you can check out a 360 view of the tower of london at:
http://london.travelape.com/attractions/tower-of-london-and-crown-
jewels/360.html

next up was the London Eye. yo ishan, thanks for the tip... this was
friggin cool. its the world's biggest ferris wheel giving you a birds-eye
view on London - literally. i can't really explain the experience. check
it out if you're bored:
http://www.ba-londoneye.com/default.asp

the next morning we went to the british museum. normally, andy doesn't
really like museums because he walks around and gets hot. this time was
different. in a nutshell, we saw all the cool things those bloody british
bastards stole from other countries. the coolest was the rosetta stone
which allowed scholars to crack the language of hiero. check it out:
http://www.ba.dlr.de/ne/pe/virtis/stone1.htm

then we hit up went back to st. paul's cathedral for the dome climb. if
any of you know about andy's fear of heights, you can imagine how much he
was trippin on the dome climb. we climbed 355 feet to the top of the
lantern. check it out:
http://www.stpauls.co.uk/rindex.htm

now here's when our trip turned out to be pleasantly serendiptous. we saw
the Queen and Prince Charles! we went over to the westminster abbey to
check it out, and lo and behold the royal family was going to service. i
got pictures and video clips. pretty cool.

buckingham palace was pretty tight. changing of the guards is overrated so
we skipped out on that. the palace is beatiful... a true dream house.

we finally ended our tourism in london by doing a "london night walk". per
my brother steve's advice, we went on the jack the ripper tour. it was
VERY interesting. basically we learned about his story while walking along
the paths he walked, and saw the places where he murdered different
prostitutes. hella cool. kinda eerie too since most areas were pretty
seedy. check it out:
http://six.clicksimple.co.uk/index.asp?ParentID=10&ContentID=#55

thats all for now folks. i guess this ended up being pretty long anyway.
you can probably tell how excited we are. before we go, we'd like to share
a couple of random thoughts:

random experiences:
teresa saved andy's life. well, kinda. its really confusing out here with
the traffic flowing in opposite directions. so when we were crossing the
street, andy looked left and saw it was clear. teresa pulled him away at
the last second before a taxi coming from the right nearly swiped him.
hahhaha... thanks T.

the best food in london isn't british food... well according to dummies,
there's no such thing. so instead, we had indian food, which is supposed
to be the best in the world outside of india. and hey, they were right
(although we've never been to india). food was bomb.

its a trip seeing asians speak with a british accent. i guess this sounds
ignorant of us, but still a trip seeing a chinese dude saying "trousers...
telephone box... fancy... bloody... etc"

demographics in london are similar to the bay area. lots of blacks,
whites, and some asians. and since the euro trend is popular back in
california, you could almost never tell the difference.

the subway system is the shit. makes bart look like child's play. it
takes you everywhere in less than 5 minutes. only thing is, you get sick
of hearing "mind the gap.... mind your head.... mind the step". but i
guess its how the bloody wankers show you that they care.

we saw protestors near parliament. of course, they were screaming for
peace, not war. they had multiple anti-bush signs. since we were worried
that not many wankers would fancy americans, we started showing our
canadian pride. i'm sick of those bloody americans, aren't you?

its not fun trying to roll your wheely luggage on cobble stone streets.
don't these brits know how to make paved streets? helllllllooooo??? geez,
why can't they get with the times. and learn how to speak english good! i
mean, like us americans!

until next time friends. mind the delay.

cheers,
A & T

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