Trip to London, part the second

[thebratqueen]

Saturday was the day I gave many people reasons to kill me.

Here's how that worked.

Cin had decided that we should go to Portobello Road. I couldn't remember if I'd been there before or not. All I knew was that it sounded familiar and that if I hadn't done it I'd done something like it before. Cin was fond of it though and was full of plans as to when we should get there and how we should best handle the crowds.

Now for those who have never been, Portobello Road is this shopping area by Notting Hill (yeah, like the movie) where there are all sorts of little stores selling all kinds of things, but mainly - and here's the thing to be aware of - antiques.

Cin explained all this to me and what *I* heard was "Blah blah blah blah shopping blah blah blah farmer's market blah blah blah get up ungodly early on a Saturday but trust me."

So off we went.

We got there early enough by my reckoning, then started to wander.

Now for the record I would like to state that fairly early on I noticed that Cin was lagging behind me a bit, which suggested I was bypassing stuff she was interested in. So I asked if she wanted to lead but she said no, it was my first time, I could lead and she'd follow.

Alrighty then.

Walk walk walk walk walk. "That's all?"

To which Cin shot me in the face.

Okay, no she didn't. But she was tempted.

'cause here's the thing. Portobello Road, which I had been thinking of as like unto a flea market/street fair-y kind of thing, is apparently this marvelous goldmine of antiques where one could spend *days* pouring over all of the nifty finds. What *I* had seen as random card tables holding, say, more spoons than I could possibly care about (read: all the spoons on that table 'cause really once you've got the cereal to mouth mechanism in place I find you're pretty much done) were actually just the storefronts to these huge labyrinths of antique-filled cubby holes where you can find anything from thousands-year old furniture to never before seen original copies of Queen Elizabeth I's letter to the King of Spain where she actually uses the word "fuckhead", all for only five pounds (one hundred dollars, American).

A *normal* person going through Portobello Road could easily spend all day there and not see half of it. I managed to zing us through in exactly one hour.

Cin *really* wanted to kill me.

In my defense I did get us to a spot where there were very yummy crepes (or, as Congress now insists we call them, "freedom cakes") so there is that going for me. Plus we hit the Body Shop.

Ahem.

So we went *back* through Portobello Road, this time doing it properly, and Cin gave me an intro to the wonders of antiquing. Plus she totally showed up this guy selling antique guns by knowing more about them than he did, so I was able to have a proud moment of "I'm with her!", which was useful because my only knowledge about antique guns is "they exist". (This is very similar to my knowledge about Oxford, which I'll get to later).

Also we bought very tiny kites. Because tiny kites need love too.

***

After Portobello Road we met up with hampden (aka C), whom we regaled with stories of our trip thus far, then refreshed ourselves with lunch, then wandered around London on purpose.

During this bit of wandering we crossed over the Thames, saw the Globe theater, were amused by them selling plague rats (stuffed), and were frightened by the Tate Modern, which had a lovely replication of a sunset in fog except for the fact that the fog made everyone, to a man, turn to their partner about three steps into the building and go "Is it hazy in here?" and the yellow of the sunlight made me feel that God's wrath was upon me, so I didn't want to linger.

I was glad to find the Tate though because lucifrix had made me aware of an art exhibit which is basically a box made of see through mirrors (you can see out, people can't see in) where inside the box is a working bathroom. The idea is to play on the concept of whether people would actually feel comfortable using the toilet if it looked as though people could see them. Or something like that. Frankly the only part I could remember is "Be able to pee on artwork without getting arrested" so I figured if I was in the area might as well check it out.

Sadly I couldn't remember the *location* of said artwork, other than it was outdoors, which obviously narrows it down not at all. So C and Cin pretended not to know me as I marched up to the information desk and asked where the outdoor toilet exhibit was. The woman behind the desk claimed it was the *other* Tate, and then quickly disabused me of any notion that this was *official* Tate artwork because, naturally, the *actual* Tate artwork is not for being peed on. Just in case I was in danger of doing that to, say, the evil sunset on the odd chance that the actual ladies room had too much of a line or something.

So I thanked her for the info and off we went.

We crossed the Millennium Bridge, which thoughtfully did not collapse underneath us, and then Cin tried to find the Temple of Mithras using her expert navigational technique of "It's near St. Paul's. I think." Which meant that we spent about as much time finding the Temple of Mithras as we did Leicester Square, though since by that time we'd ruled out the Curse of St. Martins (our working theory being that since to date all the times we'd gotten lost involved using St. Martins as our starting point that clearly St. Martins resented us for not actually visiting it personally and therefore put a curse on us) we then had to blame the signs of London, which clearly hated us and wanted us to die. Or were at least not as co-dependant as signs in the US would be.

Because in the US signs, when there are signs, tend to be very hand-holdy. They'll say things like "Important landmark, this way" and then a little bit later "Keep going! You're halfway there!" and a little bit later "Go you! Now just make a left! Don't forget to breathe!" Whereas signs in London tend to say "Important landmark" with an arrow which then leaves you hanging when you walk halfway down the block and find yourself confronted with roughly 5,000,000,000 forks in the road, none of which have signs, and clearly your only conclusion is that the earlier sign was only narrowing down which hemisphere the landmark was in and in no way cared about showing you the actual landmark location.

Though this was somewhat of a moot point since the Temple of Mithras had, by our final reckoning, only one sign and that sign was actually *at* the Temple of Mithras, which lead us to conclude that sometimes the signs were just out and out snarky.

During all this, though, Cin and I managed to make C want to kill us.

Some backstory.

Prior to the trip to London Cin and I had been inundated with helpful messages from UKers regarding the weather situation. If I had to sum up the messages into a single whole, it'd be something like:

"HOLY FUCKING CRAP IS IT COLD HERE!"

Only said more politely and with an English accent. In other words, it had been made expressly clear to us that taking a trip to England right now was like unto taking a trip into the Antarctic, only it wouldn't be as clean though on the plus side it would have less attacks by untrained sled dogs. *Seriously* cold. *Bitterly* cold, is how I believe one person described it.

We checked out the BBC weather reports, did the temperature conversion, found the result wasn't as cold as *we* would think, but were willing to spot everyone on the possibility that the damp weather made it feel colder, and packed accordingly.

Then we actually got to the UK.

Y'all? Are pussies.

Okay, okay, not a fair statement. I get that huge drops in temperature are huge drops in temperature, and if you're not used to them then yes, they feel cold. I personally want to slap every person from Minnesota or Buffalo who gets all "People are fussing about twelve inches of snow? Why in *my* town we get three feet before breakfast and *still* go to work on time!" because it's just not a fair comparison. However in the interest of helping out travelers I think what would have possibly been more useful is "It's very cold *for us* right now" and not "Jesus God Timmy's nose just *snapped right off his face* and was *eaten by wolverines*! Lo' it is the end times!" because it just wasn't *that* damn cold. Compared to what Cin and I have gone through this winter it was downright tropical.

So already we were skeptical on the weather front and had, however politely we could, asked C about it accordingly. C then tried to insist that no, really, it had been cold. Honest.

Then we had precipitation.

It was during the snipe hunt search for the Temple of Mithras and, in the interest of accuracy, white stuff began falling from the sky. It was, actual size, this big: .

C: Hail!
Cin/Me: Where?
C: The white things? Falling from the sky? Do you not notice them?
[Cin and I look around]
Cin: You mean the sleet?
Me: I could spot you a freezing rain, maybe.
C: It's hail!
Cin: Sleet.
C: Hail!
Me: No, see, hail *hurts*.
Cin: Right. It's not a proper hail unless it dents your car.
C: You are besmirching my weather.
Me: [catching "hail" in the palm of her hand] God it's so *cute*! Look how little they are!
C: This is why nobody likes Americans.

On the odd chance that there was doubt as to why nobody likes Americans, I also sealed the deal later by marveling at the concept of congestion charges.

C: You see, in order to cut down on congestion in certain areas, you're charged five pounds for entering it. You go into that area and then must pay the fine by midnight that night.
Me: And people *do* that?
C: Yes.
Me: Why?
C: Because there's a fine.
Me: Yeah, but you've already been to the area. Why would you pay for something you'd already gotten?
C: Because you would.
Me: But why? This is like handing out books to people and then expecting they'll pay for them sometime later.
C: But they *do*.
Me: But that makes no sense! Why would you trust that people would pay for something they already have? You should charge *before* they come in.
C: People pay. If they don't then they have to pay eighty pounds later.
Me: If you wouldn't pay five you're sure as heck not going to do eighty later. How on *earth* does this actually work?
C: It *does*!
Me: Hand to God this would never go over in America. Y'all are way too polite, I'm telling ya.

We then made our way to Piccadilly Circus, which may have been the moment that I decided if I ever owned a rodent or wrote a story about one I would name it Piccadilly, though Cin and I hit the Piccadilly Tube itself often enough that it could have been any of those times as well.

Regardless, we wanted to hunt down some dinner, and if you think that Cin and I learned our lesson from the *first* time we mistakenly thought the other one was leading, then clearly you don't know us well at *all* because sure enough we did it again, only this time with us assuming C was in charge and C, for some god unknown reason, assuming that Cin and I knew what we were doing.

Even so we had some lovely Thai food, then sent C on home.