So my parents got home from work on Thursday (July 2) evening, and we headed out to Dulles Airport. We were even earlier than usual, I think, with something like five hours to kill before our flight. I was planning on getting some reading in before the flight, but my family decided to get food (my suggestion of waiting for free dinner on the flight were unceremoniously ignored). We weren't very efficient about this though, I think we ended up walking the length of the terminal some four times before finally deciding on a place to eat (I don't remember what it was), even though there were maps and directories of the terminal posted just about everywhere listing the shops in the terminal. It actually reminded me a lot of a mall, and I had the brilliant idea of playing CTF at Dulles someday.
Anyway, we got on our flight, and I decided not to sleep at all. I watched Dragonball Evolution (an ok movie, not one I'd recommend though), two episodes of Friends and the Office, and then random pieces of the other movies playing. The flight was like 8 PM to 4 AM US time, and England is something like 5 hours ahead, so by the time we got out of the airport, it was around 11 AM. At this point we encountered the Tube. For those who haven't been to Britain, this is actually pretty pro. It's London's extensive metro system, and there are stations pretty much everywhere, it's really hard to get stuck somewhere in London without a station within a quarter mile radius. Anyway, we bought tickets that let us use the Tube and the red double decker buses as much as we wanted for the next three days. We got on the tube and, in an hour and a half, with just one line transfer, we disembarked and walked to our hotel, which was pretty ideally situated very near all of London's tourist sites. Unfortunately, this was about the only thing ideal at the hotel. The people there were very nice of course, but the hotel itself was ridiculously spartan. There was no elevator and narrow staircases, which was pretty annoying for my dad who was recovering from a leg clot. When we reached our room, though, we were in for an even bigger surprise. We had one two person bed, two single beds, a decent bathroom, a TV, and two small cabinets. Sounds decent right (excepting the lack of phone)? Ah, but here's the trick: there's no ground space left. No joke, you cannot walk around here at all. You basically take off your shoes when you get in and jump from bed to bed. I had known beforehand that the Britain was not going to be as......well, lavish, as the US, but I really hadn't expected this. Don't get me wrong, the place was clean and well kept, it was just small. Next time we might try booking hotels a little further away from the city.
My dad's plan, as it happens, called for us to spend that whole day touristing, meaning that I was not to get any sleep until that British night (here I began to regret not sleeping on the plane >_>). We go out and stop at a Burger King for lunch (we were advised that Brit Burgers were somewhat better than the American equivalents). The food was alright, about the same as an American BK. While we were eating, this one boy came in begging and, when he didn't get anything, he left and his family, who had been waiting outside, came in begging as well. My father was kind of shocked at this, but apparently it's not uncommon in downtown London (where we were staying). After lunch, we set off, taking the metro down to Embankment, which is this scenic river crossing. On the opposite side, a bunch of random performers were doing their stuff for donations and it was very relaxing to walk along the shore like that. We passed the London eye and decided to come back when it was less crowded. We reached another bridge and crossed it, finding ourselves at Big Ben. We kept going, past Westminister, to this random square where people were protesting Iraq and Sri Lanka and stuff. We kept walking (around this time Dilip got irritated because we weren't "doing anything") and walked through trafalgar square and picadilly circus. Then we bought ice creams on the street (damn those were good) and took a bus to Hyde and Green Park. These were two really nice, adjacent parks with lakes and gardens and stuff in the middle of the city. We had a nice walk and eventually crossed the park, coming back to Bayeswater, where our hotel was. We then decided to catch a bus to go see Marble Arch. We get on the bus and it takes off. As it's doors open at the next stop, I see my dad getting out hurriedly. Confused, we run out to tell him that this isn't our stop, only to see my dad standing stunned on the roadside shouting "Thief" and this guy running away from him. I'm not entirely sure what went through my head at this point, but I ended up jumping off the bus and sprinting almost immediately after this guy, yelling at the top of my lungs, "YOU ASS". In retrospect, I probably should've shouted thief instead, but as I said, I wasn't really thinking. I don't remember much about this guy, except that he was of a fairly stocky build and Middle Eastern coloring. He wasn't particularly fast, and I was gaining on him, but he ended up running out across the street just before a truck crossed, and by the time I had gotten behind the truck, he had jumped a fence into Green Park and gotten away. Not sure if that was unfortunate or not though, since I have no idea whether or not he was armed (and I wasn't for sure). Anyway, I turned around to see my brother running towards me, in tears (just frightened, not hurt) and my mother running behind him. I started shouting to them in Tamil, saying that he got away, and a couple of Tamilian Muslims nearby stopped to talk to us. Anyway, my dad checked his stuff and found that he had everything. Apparently the guy had only taken my dad's wallet and, when he realized he was being pursued, chucked it (I didn't notice this for some reason, but somebody on the sidewalk found the wallet and gave it to my dad). This British girl, college age (she was really attractive too) came to talk to us about it, and she was really nice and told us where to report the incident and how we could catch the guy (all buses and trains have CCTV cameras, so police can track any crimes that occur on public transport. We set out for the Marble Arch and we reported the incident to the police there (my dad had this compulsion to "tell the story right", i.e. as a narrative instead of a crime report, so it was always funny to watch the officers listen to my dad for a minute or so before realizing he was reporting a crime). We looked around at the Arch for a while and then headed back to dinner, which we took with us to the hotel and ate.
The next day and the day after that were fairly straightforward. We saw most of the British tourist attractions, including the London Eye (big ferris wheel that goes really slowly and lets you see London), Madame Tussauds (Waxworks Museum, mainly to laugh at ridiculous hordes of people rushing to take pics with the various celebrities), Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace (I found out that my mom really hates royalty), Wimbledon (we didn't get to see any pro matches though), and some other stuff I don't remember atm. I just wanted to describe one thing though. On the last day, we decided to go to Greenwich for the lulz. We just went walking around and ended up sitting down on the grounds of the University of Greenwich. I realized just how much I needed sunny, open spaces after the cramped atmosphere in London, and so we spent a couple of hours there, just playing around with some of the college students in the massive park behind the school.
Now for my observations. First off, you can always distinguish British Girls from American (read: white) Girls (using facial features, though I haven't really thought about this enough to explain it). Second, these facial feature differences make British girls in general a lot more attractive than American girls.
More serious things now: the British are a lot more socialist and, in general, conscious of preservation than the Americans are. This said, the public settings (in London at least) also indicate a lack of common courtesies which Americans have come to expect. Free use of bathrooms in stores and free water at restaurants are two examples that come to mind immediately, but what I'm trying to say is this: In America, where we are all still, by and large, relatively conservative, we hesitate constantly to help people on a large, mass scale, but our actions indicate a personal touch, a care we show for the people we actually encounter. The British have a really good handle on the massive care, but, at least in London I feel, they've lost out a little on individual kindness. I suspect my thoughts are wrong actually, and that what I'm describing is actually the difference between city life and suburban life, but I'm not sure.
Anyway, London was interesting. I want to go back and visit Britain someday and stay somewhere outside of the city.
Our trip from London to India, and what happened there will be left for another day.
