Final London Post

My time in London is officially over. I leave tomorrow morning for Heathrow airport. The experience has been more than I could have ever asked for. Everyday has been such a new and different experience. I didn’t get to do a lot of the things I would have liked over here, shame on me for missing some of those (Tate Galleries, Tower of London, etc.) You just can’t do it all. Some people who live here have never even been on the London Eye. I’ll be back some day. This last week has maybe been one of the most fun for me. Just a lot of wandering about and hanging out with friends here.

Thursday was my last day with the museum. Wow…Just wow, that is about all that I can say. It could not have gone any better. Everybody was very pleased with my research and they are going to keep me updated on how the exhibit does while traveling. Thursday night David and Rebecca took me out and about the town as a fairwell. Went out to the pubs because that is what they do here. It was fun though they took me to what seemed to be every little subculture you could possibly find in London. A gothic pub, a historical pub, a cocktail bar, the player’s lounge, it was a lot of fun and we had DELICIOUS pizza at Rosso Pomodoro. I’m a bit sad I don’t have any pictures from that night but I had fun just enjoying it and not worrying about being a tourist. This will be a smattering of my wonky week of end of London fun. Here are a couple of pictures of me at the British Museum.
Friday afternoon we had our sort of CAPA farewell reception at Doggett’s Coat and Badge. We had a British BBQ and it was quite tasty, minus the stupid pigeons. It is supposed to be one of London’s oldest pubs. Here’s Ben and me standing in front of it on Blackfriar’s Bridge.This will be a very small portion of the pictures taken on Friday. After the BBQ Ben, Casey, Laura, and I went down to Canary Wharf and walked around. It turned in to sort of a photo shoot and it was a very nice afternoon. This is a little something we would like to call our Christian rock band album cover taken on Canary Wharf by the Thames.

Here I am just looking out over the Thames, the waves kept getting me all soggy.Friday was a day of being youthful and rambunctious. Instead of walking around this fence we decided to climb it. I was very successful as I’ve climbed many a fence in my life…city boys not as much. I went fine, Ben got on top but is scared of heights so turned around and walked instead. After climbing the fence on to the ledge you had to jump down about seven feet to get to the sidewalk below. Casey tried hard but ended up sitting on the pointy bars. This was originally a picture Laura took of us but then Ben did some altering to make us silhouettes. He does nice work.Later, we strolled down the waterfront and came upon a little park. Casey and I found some sort of a spikey nut thing on a tree and decided to dissect it to see what was inside. Ben was not interested. The insides were kind of like a purplish colored hard boiled egg, weird.At the park there were all sorts of fun things to run, jump and climb on. Here we are on a bouncy teeter-totter sort of thing. It felt like a rollercoaster because of the spring action.I took this picture on our way home from exploring. The Camberwell Kebab and the Co-operative food store have been my main sources of sustenance since coming to London, they are just a short walk from my flat. The guy at Camberwell Kebab knows my order and makes it when he sees me coming. Yes, I would like extra burger sauce on those chips!
The girls wanted to be hennaed so I designed Laura’s (on the right) tattoo and then put it on her and used a design Alisa found and elaborated on it for hers. Good fun, getting henna done really excites people which seems funny to me as my friend Alice and I have been doing it forever. I’m just glad I can do it for people for almost free instead of having them pay the $20-25 they would have had to pay to have them done at a festival.
Today Laura and I ran around and finished a few last errands then came home to pack. This evening we decided to take out London the same way we came in, so we went down to the local and had a drink and sat around chatting a bit. We’ll miss you BarBarBlacksheep, we’ve seen you a lot.We all sat around on the couches and had a good time, a lot of recalled memories from the trip and saying our favorite quotes from each other.
I would love to come back to London some day, maybe the British Museum will have me back. I can’t wait to see my family tomorrow! They are picking me up from the airport. I’m ready for home and not wearing the same few shirts over and over again. I’ll be spending my first week in the sun trying to get my usual tan for them summer and some much needed sun. Can’t wait to see you all and tell you the stories that couldn’t fit here. Thanks for reading!