Our second day in London was very very long. So long, in fact, that for me, it hasn’t even ended. Allow me to explain.
(The view out my hotel window this morning.)
We woke up bright and early Friday morning for a coach tour of London, which basically involved us all sitting on a bus trying not to fall asleep while a tour guide told us very interesting things, such as where the phrase “bottoms up” comes from. In case you were wondering, during some war the British navy was drafting people by going to pubs and just dragging drunk guys out. In order to prevent people from leaving, they told them they had already accepted wages from the navy because the officers would put a shilling in the bottom of your drink and if you drank it you had accepted it (or something) so the pubs put glass bottoms in the pewter mugs, and before you took a drink you’d say “bottoms up” to check and see if your friends had shillings in their mugs and could therefore be drafted.
There, now you learned something intelligent from this ridiculous blog.
(Look guys I'm in front of Buckingham Palace zomg.)
We got out of the bus at several notable places
like Buckingham Palace and Hyde Park.
AND as we passed the royal family’s special exit, got to see Camilla in the front seat of a car. She waved at us and smiled. It was very exciting.
(This is where Camilla's car came out.)
Other notable places we drove by and stopped at included this brownstone apartment building on the Thames WHERE apparently Pip lives with Herbert in Great Expectations. Needless to say I was the only one on the bus who thought this was awesome, but that in no way lessens the awesomeness of it.
(Somewhere inside this building Frankie and Ben are throwing a pile of bills in the air.)
More fun history trivia--during the Blitz on London in WWII, Winston Churchill had people who specifically were hired to throw German incendiary bombs off of St. Paul's Cathedral to protect it, because Churchill thought it would cause irreparable damage to British morale.
Outside of St. Paul’s Cathedral there are these large metal balls you can take artistic pictures of the cathedral’s reflection in, so needless to say everyone was doing that and looking stupid.
This is my roommate Jenn.
The coach tour ended in Covent Garden, where we were set free to wander and eat lunch. A large number of us went to a very nice pub called the White Lion, and then sort of split off into groups. We discovered this very intense “edgy” couture doughnut shop that had ice cream with lots of obscene names for flavors. Their logo is this picture of Prince Harry sticking his finger through a doughnut suggestively, and the doughnuts are called “Dirty Harry’s Doughnuts.” I asked them if Prince Harry knew they existed. They told me probably not.
I love that in Europe you can do shit like that, and have a doughnut shop with ice cream flavors named after sex positions and suggestive pictures of governing monarchs. It’s very cool.
After that I took the tube to Notting Hill with Amanda and a girl named Savannah. They have lots of cute touristy boutiques that sell any kind of dumb shit you could imagine with the Union Jack on it, and also novelty condoms which are actually really hilarious.
This was an ID card holder that I was particularly fond of.
It cuts right to the point.
After Notting Hill, Savannah and I went to Westminster Abbey to hear
the choir with a bunch of our group (it’s the only way to get in for free).
It was absolutely gorgeous, and I’m just perpetually in awe of the fact that this is where every coronation has happened...you can imagine it, and I was very taken with it all.
I know that I mentioned it was very very very cold in London, but I would just like to add that it was at that point, below freezing, and we were exhausted and jetlagged, so we went back to the hotel and I fell asleep for like an hour shivering in the room watching the news about how all these homeless people are dying in the cold. I woke up when my roommate got back around 8, and it was determined that we were going to the clubs in SoHo with our friends Karnig and Alex and a bunch of girls, affectionately known as “some of the blonde girls” because there are 13 girls on this trip that have platinum blonde hair. Which is a lot of girls out of like, 50 people. There are probably about 6 guys in the AIFS group. Karnig and Alex are two of them. And it was decided on their part that we were going to a gay club.
Jenn and I have a lot in common, including being women in the film industry, too much luggage that we physically can’t maneuver, and the fact that we have spent way more time in gay bars than the average straight girl. Getting together this group of people we’d all promised to meet was ridiculous and involved lots of running around and going up and down the elevators and meeting people in the lobby. We eventually wound up fitting 12 people into someone’s tiny room with a few bottles of alcohol and 15 minutes before the tube closed.
Look at this hot mess.
Me: Is it good? You laughed after you took the picture, that’s a bad sign.
Nick: It’s as good as it could be under the circumstances.
Then we got this whole stumbling clusterfuck onto the tube and by some grace of God ended up where we were trying to go.
This place, The O Bar, looked like the nicest club in the SoHo square and had three stories.
We got in after throwing a bitch fit about the cover charge and getting in half-price, and it was A) tiny, B) what we soon discovered was the only straight club in the square. We are talented. The O Bar was very fun though, even though it was a straight club where no one was like getting’ down and dancing for real. Except for us. At least me and Karnig and a few other people. I’ve very rarely been at straight clubs and I realize why they suck other than getting hit on by creepers--NO ONE CAN DANCE!! At gay clubs everyone is well dressed and fierce as fuck and can dance crazy well. And if you’re just trying to dance and maybe occasionally down martinis, as I do, gay clubs are the way to do it. We had to leave at 1:30 though, which was about when everyone was getting bored with it anyway. I don’t know how many of you watch SNL and are familiar with Stefon on Weekend Update, but one of the joke things is like “This club has everything: broken glass--“ Apparently he’s talking about the O Bar, because by the end of the night, the floor was covered with broken glass and it was time to go. But why? You might ask.
I may have neglected to mention the 3am wakeup call we were supposed to be receiving. To leave the hotel at 3:45am. For the airport. To move to France. Our chaperone, James, who was a badass middle-aged British man and yelled at us for not partying more, told us not to sleep last night during out little orientation...he was like, “Just go out and come back by three, you can sleep when you’re dead!”
Which is what we did. And of course it took us that long to get on the right bus and make our way back to the hotel, in the sub-zero temperatures.
(Major struggles to find the right night bus to Gloucester. Operating theory is that it only comes if you're Harry Potter.)
We did it though! Came and packed and left and only some of us were still drunk (not me) (to clarify) now I’m writing this on an airplane as I watched the sunrise.
We’re landing in France soon, so catch you then! I’ll actually have internet and can post this...
(Look at that, no sleep, went out dancing, put together as fuck. Like a boss.)
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