Sonntag, 12. Oktober 2003
London: Day Seven
Immediately after waking up, Jessica asked me to go with her and her friends to the Old Spitalfield Market. She and Greta told me, that this market was some sort of Flohmarkt we have in Germany, so used+new clothes and stuff.
So I got dressed and showered quickly (well, to be honest: the other way around), and went with Jessica to the bus station nearby. Weather was quite good again, but compared to yesterday we had some clouds, it was a bit colder and a lot of winds were flying about. We had to meet with her friends near Liverpool Street, and soon got off the bus because the traffic was actually slower than we would have been by foot.
We accidently met her friends just on the way to our meeting point, and found the old market quite soon. Inspite of what I would have thought, it wasn't in the fields, but inside a huge area with roofs on it. Inside the building (looking like a train station) there were loads of tiny shops with mostly clothing. Around all of those stands were real shops selling new items. So we decided to split up and meet again half an hour later and I explored the area on my own.
I soon got bored, because most of the shops sold really cheap-looking things, or stuff really off the mainstream. I took quite a lot pictures, because the clothing style was really representative to what I found everywhere in shops and on people in London. Even the shops selling gadgets and candles and the likes kept nothing for me, or something I could buy for friends, so this was all a real let-down.
Jessica and her friends wanted to look around some more, after we met again, so I guess they didn't take the turbo-route like I did. So I had to decide whether I would go back to Jose's home, go to the office were Jose was, or go to the city. About 0.5 seconds later I decided to go to Picadilly plaza once again, to take pictures of what I couldn't do yesterday.
But I was completely awestruck by the huge banking buildings around Liverpool street; the catched my gasping in a way that I couldn't withdraw from them. With my face kept upwards towards the huge and impressive buildings (and every once in a while taking pictures) I went through the streets, spotting one building after another I wanted to see. Some time later I was completely lost inside areas with glass-buildings and nobody walking this area apart from me. So I thought, this must be the Banking District then.
I followed some walking signs which guided me first to the Museum of London. Having arrived there I found out, that the building looked to modern and uncomforting to me, so I instead followed the route to St. Paul's.
Arriving there, I found myself on a place where only chinese people where taking pictures, telling me I was completely wrong here. I quickly took some pictures of St. Paul's on my own and saw, that the River Thames was around. So I took a look at the map to see where I was heading to, and decided to drop by the Tower of London and the Towerbridge.
I followed more of those impressive buildings and went by the River Thames until I finally arrived at the Tower of London. Here as well where loads of people around, and I wasn't any more interested in actually going inside the Tower. So I just browsed around the tourist shops and looked at some posters about the Tower, which did the trick for me.
Nearby was the Tower Bridge which I crossed, and where I found the see-through cage of that man who is currently not eating anything. I don't know neither his name nor his mission, but I took some pictures as well. I saw how much his cage, hanging in mid-air, was moving according to the winds and thought I couldn't even stand half an hour inside that thing. But he just happily smiled.
Ah, I almost forgot to mention: I finally took the first picture for somebody else on the Tower Bridge! I was kindly offered a camera to take a picture of some 6 or 7 people. A small step for those people, but a giant leap for me, having done what nearly every other person wandering earth has done before.
Now I went straightly to the London Bridge, where my final destination for this day was to be found: The London Dungeon. When I saw the queue, I read a sign telling that from this point on I would have to wait for 30 minutes. I calculated if I had enough time for this, to be home before 8 o'clock, where barbequeue was to be served - and having the possibility to phone-call Emba on my way home. At half past 4, I thought this ought to be possible.
But because my stomache was having some objections, I first went to the next McDonald's. A real sad thing, because I saved up all my hunger for a possible Subway around here, but didn't find any. Geez, now I had to buy me some Chicken Flatbed Bread-Whatever Mc and then tried to find back to London's Dungeon. Of course I went to the completely opposite direction, crossing the whole trainstation nearby, whilst searching for a litterbox. No easy task at all, I had to carry my McDonald's bag with me for around 15 minutes before having found one litterbox, which was accidently just in front of the Dungeon.
I immediately enqueued, listened to some boring german tourists behind me, and waited. Lucky me, because waiting was enriched with some tombstones standing around, having really funny captions. Of course I forgot all of them, so you just have to believe me. While waiting, I read that the entrance fee was about 13 pounds. Great, for that price I could stay a whole day at Germany's Phantasialand! Ah, well. What else to spend my money for?
Now I was finally inside. Having seen all the puppets in the entrace, I thought this would be worse than Phantasialand's pappmaché. But what I found instead was some really well-made gory puppets and wax-figures in the beginning. First, all visitors could run around freely and discover some corpses and knifes, and whatever.
Then we came to an area, where we were guided from room to room by changing live actors, performing really good and scary. They were interacting with the audience (about 20-30 people) and telling stories of the room they were guiding.
One of the most funny rooms was a court, where 2 people of the audience were put in front to be accused. One girl for running around in Cambridge naked and farting so loud, that some windows of a church nearby shattered. And the other was was just to be accused of another crime, but only got to his introductory sentence: "What is your name, and where are you from?" - "My name is Garry and I'm from Australia" - "Aaaah! GUILTY! If we put you there for penalty, you should be staying there". Again, the actors really performed great, the atmoshpere was really good, and funny though.
The guidance continued like that, going from witches&wizards to the black plague over to Jack the Ripper, with some sort of water-ride in between. I can really tell you to go there as well! Cost is high, but you'll have your fun! Even more, when you're not on your own.
So after I got out, it was already about 18:30 o'clock, so I quickly went to the bus station and went home, where we had a nice barbequeue with friends. In between, Jose+Jessica+Frederic and me went to a pleace nearby, where someone dropped his old MacintoshPlus PCs (3 of them), and Jose picked them up to transform then into a Mini-ATX server later. Some hours later, I dropped dead to bed.
We accidently met her friends just on the way to our meeting point, and found the old market quite soon. Inspite of what I would have thought, it wasn't in the fields, but inside a huge area with roofs on it. Inside the building (looking like a train station) there were loads of tiny shops with mostly clothing. Around all of those stands were real shops selling new items. So we decided to split up and meet again half an hour later and I explored the area on my own.
I soon got bored, because most of the shops sold really cheap-looking things, or stuff really off the mainstream. I took quite a lot pictures, because the clothing style was really representative to what I found everywhere in shops and on people in London. Even the shops selling gadgets and candles and the likes kept nothing for me, or something I could buy for friends, so this was all a real let-down.
Jessica and her friends wanted to look around some more, after we met again, so I guess they didn't take the turbo-route like I did. So I had to decide whether I would go back to Jose's home, go to the office were Jose was, or go to the city. About 0.5 seconds later I decided to go to Picadilly plaza once again, to take pictures of what I couldn't do yesterday.
But I was completely awestruck by the huge banking buildings around Liverpool street; the catched my gasping in a way that I couldn't withdraw from them. With my face kept upwards towards the huge and impressive buildings (and every once in a while taking pictures) I went through the streets, spotting one building after another I wanted to see. Some time later I was completely lost inside areas with glass-buildings and nobody walking this area apart from me. So I thought, this must be the Banking District then.
I followed some walking signs which guided me first to the Museum of London. Having arrived there I found out, that the building looked to modern and uncomforting to me, so I instead followed the route to St. Paul's.
Arriving there, I found myself on a place where only chinese people where taking pictures, telling me I was completely wrong here. I quickly took some pictures of St. Paul's on my own and saw, that the River Thames was around. So I took a look at the map to see where I was heading to, and decided to drop by the Tower of London and the Towerbridge.
I followed more of those impressive buildings and went by the River Thames until I finally arrived at the Tower of London. Here as well where loads of people around, and I wasn't any more interested in actually going inside the Tower. So I just browsed around the tourist shops and looked at some posters about the Tower, which did the trick for me.
Nearby was the Tower Bridge which I crossed, and where I found the see-through cage of that man who is currently not eating anything. I don't know neither his name nor his mission, but I took some pictures as well. I saw how much his cage, hanging in mid-air, was moving according to the winds and thought I couldn't even stand half an hour inside that thing. But he just happily smiled.
Ah, I almost forgot to mention: I finally took the first picture for somebody else on the Tower Bridge! I was kindly offered a camera to take a picture of some 6 or 7 people. A small step for those people, but a giant leap for me, having done what nearly every other person wandering earth has done before.
Now I went straightly to the London Bridge, where my final destination for this day was to be found: The London Dungeon. When I saw the queue, I read a sign telling that from this point on I would have to wait for 30 minutes. I calculated if I had enough time for this, to be home before 8 o'clock, where barbequeue was to be served - and having the possibility to phone-call Emba on my way home. At half past 4, I thought this ought to be possible.
But because my stomache was having some objections, I first went to the next McDonald's. A real sad thing, because I saved up all my hunger for a possible Subway around here, but didn't find any. Geez, now I had to buy me some Chicken Flatbed Bread-Whatever Mc and then tried to find back to London's Dungeon. Of course I went to the completely opposite direction, crossing the whole trainstation nearby, whilst searching for a litterbox. No easy task at all, I had to carry my McDonald's bag with me for around 15 minutes before having found one litterbox, which was accidently just in front of the Dungeon.
I immediately enqueued, listened to some boring german tourists behind me, and waited. Lucky me, because waiting was enriched with some tombstones standing around, having really funny captions. Of course I forgot all of them, so you just have to believe me. While waiting, I read that the entrance fee was about 13 pounds. Great, for that price I could stay a whole day at Germany's Phantasialand! Ah, well. What else to spend my money for?
Now I was finally inside. Having seen all the puppets in the entrace, I thought this would be worse than Phantasialand's pappmaché. But what I found instead was some really well-made gory puppets and wax-figures in the beginning. First, all visitors could run around freely and discover some corpses and knifes, and whatever.
Then we came to an area, where we were guided from room to room by changing live actors, performing really good and scary. They were interacting with the audience (about 20-30 people) and telling stories of the room they were guiding.
One of the most funny rooms was a court, where 2 people of the audience were put in front to be accused. One girl for running around in Cambridge naked and farting so loud, that some windows of a church nearby shattered. And the other was was just to be accused of another crime, but only got to his introductory sentence: "What is your name, and where are you from?" - "My name is Garry and I'm from Australia" - "Aaaah! GUILTY! If we put you there for penalty, you should be staying there". Again, the actors really performed great, the atmoshpere was really good, and funny though.
The guidance continued like that, going from witches&wizards to the black plague over to Jack the Ripper, with some sort of water-ride in between. I can really tell you to go there as well! Cost is high, but you'll have your fun! Even more, when you're not on your own.
So after I got out, it was already about 18:30 o'clock, so I quickly went to the bus station and went home, where we had a nice barbequeue with friends. In between, Jose+Jessica+Frederic and me went to a pleace nearby, where someone dropped his old MacintoshPlus PCs (3 of them), and Jose picked them up to transform then into a Mini-ATX server later. Some hours later, I dropped dead to bed.
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