uk 2012, part two, autumn edition--- london

warning:  MANY, MANY PICTURES. DEAL WITH IT *SUNGLASSES*

this holiday, i am telling you! our timing was exceptionally fortuitous! we were staying in bloomsbury during the bloomsbury festival! i mean, i can't even, it was so great!

so after a full english breakfast

and a bit of planning

we were out the door to take advantage of such awesome timing. our first outing of the day was to the petrie museum of egyptian archaeology. on our way, we cut through tavistock square garden and said hi hey hello to gandhi.

people were starting to assemble for the austerity demonstration near this liquid nitrogen sign.

i don't know why i didn't take any photos of the growing crowd. idk, it just felt like it would have been disrespectful somehow. (i do wish that i had joined the protest but i didn't feel like it was my place. if i had signed up, i would have been exploiting something important in the name of tourism? maybe i think about things too much? again, i don't know. but i felt like it would be a case where my being american would get in the way.)

ANYWAY, the petrie museum!

HOW HAD WE OVERLOOKED THIS WONDERFUL PLACE BEFORE?! it is amazing and WELL WORTH venturing onto the university of london campus to see! small but mighty, kids. use it as a supplement to the british museum's egyptian collection? hell, just go here! YOU WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED!

leff and i were the first people there and, as such, we had the whole place to ourselves the entire time. brilliant!

you know that i cannot resist the children's interactive parts if i am not being intrusive. (it is because i am six and easily amused.)

i now know how to spell my name! disc, bird, lantern, lantern, bird!

anyway, here is the part where i just hush for a minute and let you look at pictures.

pretty great place, isn't it? I HAD SO MANY MORE PICTURES TO POST. seriously, go to here. particularly if you are a nut about egyptian antiquities.

after petrie, we had a little bit of time to kill so we wandered around bloomsbury

before, ha! getting lost (we overshot by a block or two. oops) and almost being late for professor roger bowdler's tour of st. george's gardens. i am SO GLAD that we made it in time because this was REALLY exceptional.

what is now a park used to be a a burial ground serving the parishes of st. george the martyr queen square and st. george's bloomsbury. not a churchyard, right? because it was not attached to a church but it's around 300 years old and absolutely lovely.

a relative of cromwell's is buried here.

there is also an exceptional obelisk on the grounds but i do not have any decent pictures. sorry.

FUN FACT THOUGH! sid vicious had a photo shoot on this tomb! I KNOW!

here is the picture that doctor bowdler so kindly emailed to me. it is from either an old copy of mojo or uncut. i do not know the name of the photographer.

many, MANY thanks to doctor bowdler for both the tour and for sending me a copy of that photo! also, OMG I KNOW I LOVE IT WHEN WE JUST STUMBLE OVER PUNK STUFF!

after the tour, we were a bit peckish, so it was off to russell square for pieminister pies. leff had a cold chicken one

and i had a wonderful cheese pie.

pip has since told us that having a cold pieminister pie is tantamount to treason or something so YAY ME FOR GETTING WARM DELICIOUS FOOD!

SO MUCH was happening at the square! maths buskers! music! general british awesomeness! oh, to be a fly on the wall.

or, wait, was i a mosquito? does it really matter? YES I WENT TO LONDON AND WORE A GIANT INSECT HEAD! you are somehow not surprised but you are probably just as amused as everyone else was.

leff and i took a short break and ate some insect shaped gummies (we got some after i wore the insect head) while sitting in the park. this sticker and the helicopters overhead reminded us that we were not at the march.

this old tea shed did not, however. but it did make me want a cup of builder's tea.

WHAT I LIKE BUILDER'S TEA WHEN I AM TRAIPSING AROUND LOOKING FOR PLAQUES AND STUFF OH LOOK IT IS T.S. ELLIOT! HI HEY HELLO MR ELLIOT!

okokok. sooooooo, hold onto your hats, orwell fans, 'cause you're about to get ministry of truthed.

BAM IT IS SENATE HOUSE

GOD, I LOVE IT SOOOOO BEAUTIFUL SO DECO SO WHAT ORWELL WAS THINKING OF WHEN HE WAS THINKING OF THE MINISTRY OF TRUTH

leff and i had coffee inside. LIKE YOU WOULDN'T i almost plotzed when i found out it was open to the public. LOOK AT THIS DETAIL ON THE STAIRCASE LOOK AT IT

and here is senate house INSIDE OF SENATE HOUSE I CAN'T EVEN

i am in love with this building. i would MARRY this building if that sort of thing were legal in the uk.

and? nearby? PHANTOM RAILINGS BY PUBLIC INTERVENTION! YES I RAN THE LENGTH OF IT YES I MADE SOME BRITS LAUGH IT IS WHAT I DO OKAY

kick ass installation, isn't it? i loved watching how people would start to notice it as they walked past. 

we were going to make a quick stop by the british museum to see if leff would accidentally get too close to the mayan stone panels again but ARGH WHAT THE HELL TOO MANY PEOPLE so i freaked out on the staircase and gave leff that PANIC TOO MANY PEOPLE look of mine and bolted out the door. i took a picture of this protest sign while i was waiting on him to catch up to me. 

so, yeah, by this point in the day we were truly exhausted so we napped at the hotel for a bit before venturing out again in the evening to the welsh centre.

i think we read the description wrong because we were expecting welsh food and beer samples? but there was drama and poetry and, wow, we were WAY too tired to be able to sit and be respectful so, basically, we ran away and went to a shitty pub where the best beer we could find was 1664. but, hell, any pint in a storm, amirite?

we had not really been eating so we both got kinda' buzzed offa those pints. and you know what happens when we are buzzed and still jet lagged, right? OH HELLS YES FISH AND CHIPS

this just happened to be the chippy where we had been the previous year. we were STARVING and soaking wet and the shop was closing but the guy gave us left overs for free because we looked like sad puppies. it was nice to be able to pay him back this trip.

anyway, GORGE GORGE GORGE on fish and chips and then OMG THE SECOND TO LAST THICK OF IT and HAHAHAHA I FELL ASLEEP WHILE MALCOLM WAS TESTIFYING which, what?! how out of character.

TOMORROW! more bloomsbury festival action! the grant museum of zoology! VIRTUAL LONDON! SO MUCH MORE!! i CANNOT BELIEVE how lucky we were to just stumble onto this festival!