Operation Exploration

Today was one of those days where you wake up with this feeling that something needs to happen. After about two minutes of thought, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I'd argue that taking matters into your own hands is always a good choice, but then you look at Abraham having an illegit son or K-Fed trying to raise his and Britney's kids and my point isn't really valid. But don't worry! In this case, it paid off really well.

The day didn't actually start out as planned. I overslept and got up at 10 instead of 9 because I woke up and shut off my alarm when I went off, which pushed back my five mile run to the afternoon. At any rate, since it was 10:30 by the time I had gotten ready and eaten brekkers, I decided to pop over to Buckingham Palace and rock out with the Queen and the Palace Guard. When I arrived at 11:15, the place was packed, complete with adults hanging like monkeys from statues and fences, police on horseback and the British flag flying high above the Palace, signifying to all that the Queen was indeed IN. One of the "bobbies" on horseback threatened to squash us all with her horse if we didn't move back behind the barriers before the Guard came through. Naturally, 95% of us moved and the remaining 5% just waited until she left and floated around in enough places that she wouldn't catch them in their sneaky ways.

The Changing of the Guard was pretty cool. All the soldiers in their grey uniforms, shouting orders and flipping their sabres around like majorettes, were solid and very impressive, as were their marching band counterparts fitted with their standard black poofy hats. Two very important details that you need to know about the COTG today: 1) It was so windy out that the wind blew the hat off of three different guards, some more than once. It was quite funny to see the one soldiers standing guard at the side of the gate goose-step properly to where the hat had fallen, then march it over to the soldier, put it back onto the soldier's head, then march back to his post. This happened not just once or twice; this happened FIVE times. Classy. 2) The marching band. Okay, I can understand wanting to have some international cultural relevance, but somehow I don't think that playing "A Whole New World" from Aladdin is going to make the COTG more reverent. Other selections featured by the band included It's Not Unusual, Sir Duke and my personal favourite...the Austin Powers theme song. Oh yes. They went there.

Shortly afterward, I got back to the flat, changed and went for a run in the opposite direction I usually go, due to the explorationization feeling coursing through my veins. It turns out that Regent's Park is beautiful, especially Queen Mary's Gardens. The flowers are already blooming and there are all of these off-shooting paths that go to small ponds and places like that; it was great. Sidenote: it feels strange to say that running five miles isn't a big deal anymore. In fact, three miles is pretty standard for me. Oh, how times have changed.

Post-showering and lunching, it was time for a trip to the National Portrait Gallery. There were lots of portraits of important people, including photographic portraits of Dame Judy Dench and other important women in one exhibit. Others visited included Charles I and the Civil War and the Tudors. British history is really starting to grow on me.

After walking out of the gallery, I wandered around Leicester Square for a while before meeting up with my friend Ce, who was visiting a friend of his in London while on spring break from Grenada. We stopped briefly into Sainsbury's to grab some dinner fixings and then split up; Ce and I went to Camden Town Station to meet up with Mary to go see Platform 9 and 3/4 in King's Cross, while Rachel went back to her flat to make dinner. Ce and I went back to Rachel's place after our quick outing, during which we saw an entire doubledecker BUS being towed away by some high-powered tow truck...didn't know they made those. Rachel's flat was pretty schnazzy, filled with scented candles and enough avant-garde art on the walls to make Sir William Orpen feel at home (haha, British art joke...I'm funny). We ended up talking about religion, a little politics (which THEY talked about) and finally settled on watching some British comedian at the Apollo before popping in Never Been Kissed, which starred a painfully awkward Drew Barrymore.

On the way to the Euston Square tube station, Ce and I were riding a bus with a lot of crazy and rowdy black teenagers in the back who might have been from Morocco. They staged a fake fight that was pretty obnoxious. The bus driver must have had some sort of secret signal or something that he flashed to police cars like the Batman searchlight sign or something because next thing you know, two police officers come running up to the bus doors and sprint inside, yelling something interspersed with a lot of "oy"s or something like that. They cornered one of the kids and made him get off the bus with two of the other ones; the rest dispersed at the next stop. They got off and Ce breathed a long-held laugh out of his mouth, as did I. All in all, it was quite the day (and night), which all goes to show you that it pays to be a Christopher Columbus for a day...minus the syphillis. I was going more for the explorations and discovering new territory thing.