The Best Monday

First of all, apologies for not doing better at updating this blog...I'm pretty terrible at things like this though...I've probably mentioned that somewhere.
Monday morning Kirsten and I went to the Borough St market, which is full of fresh produce and bread and meet and fish and flowers, but also delicious street food. I tried the best Scotch egg I've ever head (egg wrapped in meat and fried). Then we decided to spend the day in Hyde Park/Kensington Gardens.  We were searching for the Peter Pan statue, which is supposedly where J.M. Barrie used to sit and write. First go through we missed it, so we went and got some lunch to have a bit of a picnic and try again. We eventually found it and sat in the grass next to it and ate. Very British of us.

We took a detour on our way back to Southwark and got off the tube at Covent Garden. The first thing we came upon was a street magic show, which is so amusing that we actually spent a good 20 minutes watching the whole thing. Another point of interest was a temporary, Brazil themed bar with a giant sandbox with palm trees and chairs to simulate a beach. Naturally, as soon as we got our shitty, over-priced cocktails and put our feet in the sand it started to rain, so we decided it was time to head back to the hostel and take a nap in preparation for our night out.
One of the few things I was insistent upon doing on this trip, even if I went alone, was to go to The Savoy. I've been on a 1920's kick the last couple years, and you can't pick up a book from that time period or after without it mentioning The Savoy. It was THE posh place to go for lunch or tea or drinks, or for wealthy people to stay (its a hotel). Afternoon tea would've been a dream, but it started at 50£ and the thought of what that is in dollars forced me to accept that drinks would be the better option. So Kirsten and I went to the American Bar, so named because it was the first American style bar in London. Definitely a London in the 20's landmark.

It definitely lived up to expectations in terms of poshness...the only comparable hotel I've been to was the Ritz Carlton in the Grand Caymans. The American Bar itself was very smart and vintage, but not overdone. Its also considered a jazz bar, so there was live piano for the evening. The drinks were pretty expensive, but amazing, and there was the novelty of it, so I think we both thought it was totally worth it. We also were given unlimited peanuts, snack mix, and olives, and I think we did a decent number on them. I actually enjoyed olives for the first time in my life, which only further proves my hypothesis that nothing can be bad in London. We ended up staying there much longer than we'd initially planned, but it was worth it, because we discovered after the fact that we had been sitting next to Sir Tom Jones for a good part of the night.
After leaving the fanciest place in the city, we went to McDonalds and took our cheeseburgers down the street to the tube and went up to Camden Town, which would be the London equivalent of Underground Atlanta. Yes. Savoy, McDonalds, Scottish brew pub: a glorious/mad progression. I really enjoyed the brew pub though- its called Brewdog and they're based in Scotland, and they make my new favorite IPA. Its called Punk IPA, which I admit is why I tried it, but I loved it. I also smuggled my glass out under my fancy jacket (we were a bit overdressed...I went all out fancy 20's wise for The Savoy).

We got on the tube to go back to the hostel just before midnight, and we ended up having a fairly eventful ride... At the stop after us, a group of maybe 10, 15 young people got on and gave a full on awesome a cappella performance. It wasn't a planned thing, it was just people singing and dancing around for fun that happened to be really good at it. Everyone else in the car gravitated to where they were and got in on the fun. There was one girl wearing a giant sun hat, which she was also using to hide the jug (we'd say "pitcher") of Pimms and lemonade that she was trying to finish through a straw, and I couldn't help but be a little jealous. They ended up getting off at London Bridge with us, and as our hostel was having karaoke night at the bar we tried to get them to come back with us. It turned out most of them were graduating from somewhere in the morning, which is what had prompted their celebration, so they wanted to get to bed. We, however, were now energized and warmed up to sing, so we went to check out karaoke.
We were surprised to find our Australian friends from the night before, Menno and Scott, at the bar, because they had moved to a different hostel, but it turned out they decided to come back to check out karaoke. To make a long story short, we all did multiple songs, including "Ignition," which I ran upstairs to get my sunglass for. Drunk Rachel needs sunglasses to pull off the gangsta vibe. It was a blast, and we closed down the bar about 3 AM. We stayed up hanging out for a quite a while after that, and I hardly got any sleep, which I think played a roll in me waking up with a sore throat in the morning... Thats really what I get for not taking anything to bulk up my immune system for international travel, and for not eating very healthy, and for drinking a lot. This isn't the first time its happened, so you'd think I'd have learned my lesson. We had breakfast and then checked out of our hostel, because Kirsten was going back to Scotland that night, and I had wanted to "live" the rest of my trip in Bloomsbury around where I would've lived if I'd gone to UCL. I'll stick all of that in another post though...

A nice, blurry shot of Menno and Scott at karaoke. They took videos of Kirsten and I, but I am NOT posting them on here...