London: England = English

It is said that you can not really appreciate something until it is gone. Well, the ease of being surrounded in English is something that, for me, is gone. (Although it is incredible how much English is used in the Netherlands.) So, as you can imagine, I was pumped to go to London, where one can correctly assume that the since the name of the country is "England," they speak "English."

If you know your geography then you might know that England is not connected to the European continent, so instead of taking the train we decided to take an airplane across the channel. The airplane ride from Amsterdam Schiphol to London Luton Airport took less than one hour. The bus ride from London Luton to the good stuff in the heart of London took more than one hour: longer than the airplane ride.

So, we hopped off the bus in the heart of London on Friday afternoon. We had the address of the Central College of Pella, Iowa owned hotel called the Vandon House, where my friend Travis Gibbons is spending the semester. We also knew that this place was just a tad bit south of Buckingham Palace. So of course on our little trek to our weekend residence, we did the true tourist thing and stopped at the palace to snap a dozen pictures. My take on Buckingham Palace, after seeing hundreds of other gorgeous buildings since arriving in Europe, is that it is not really a standout building. It is impressive, but it is average compared to the other impressive buildings I have seen. Since Travis was a bit busy doing some sort of R.A. work, he pointed us in the direction of some major sights and bid us fairwell.

We walked all over London and saw quite a few sights that afternoon. We saw Westminister Abbey, Big Ben, the London Eye, St. Paul's Cathedral, and a recreation of the Globe Theatre. I was most impressed with Big Ben; I figured it was just going to be a clock tower and wouldn't really be that much of a sight, but I found it fascinating.

The Irish among my readers will know well that Friday was a special day. The Irish have a patron saint, and his name is Patrick. Apparently, he is so important that he gets his own day. If you knew the previous geography fact about the location of England, then you probably will also know that Ireland is really close to England, and so there are a few Irish Pubs in London. (And even if it weren't, the Irish have a mission to place at least one Irish Pub in every city in Europe. I'm not kidding, either, I think every city I have visited so far has had at least one Irish Pub.) Travis took us to one of these pubs, the most impessive in London, called Maxy O'Conner's. The pub is five stories high and pretty deep, but even with its massive capacity we still had to stand outside in what the English call a "queue," or what North Americans usually refer to as a "line," for over an hour. But it was worth it: once inside we were in a green world. Everybody was wearing green, and the atmosphere was incredibly festive. It was quite the experince. I couldn't help but think of my fellow soccer players, Sean and Ryan, or my former roomate Lucky, and how much they would love to be where I was at that moment. They may have described it as "Irish Heaven."

Saturday, Travis put on his hypothetical tour-guide hat and took us around the city. He was basically a wizard of the Tube, he was hopping from train to train in the subway and I had no idea where we were going, ever. Somehow, we ended up at Kew Gardens, which was something of an Arboritum. Then, we saw some park near St. Paul's Cathedral. It's in a movie that Dustin really likes, so that was pretty cool for him. Then we went to London's art museum. It probably has a name like "National Art Gallery" or something, but I do not remember it. That place was incredible, and incredibly it was free. I thought it was the most impressive gallery I have been to so far (topping the Rijksmuseum and some podunk museum in Leeuwarden). Oddly enough, I'm beginning to identify the type of art that I actually like, and the other art that I am not so impressed with. Maybe some art enthusiasts would punch me in the stomach, or hang trash from trees in protest, but I have found that I can be completely content walking right past "masterpieces" that I know I won't find as impressive to get to some lesser known paintings in the style I like.

Saturday night we went up the London Eye. The London Eye is the biggest ferris wheel in the world. I read on an information packet that it is the largest "Observation Wheel" in the world, so maybe people are trying to distance the Eye from the fact that it is just a gigantic ferris wheel. Well, despite their efforts to disguise that fact, I knew it was a ferris wheel, so I wondered in the back of my mind if it would really be that cool. I have been on ferris wheels before and have been disappointed, but the thing about the London Eye is: it doesn't overlook the Sioux Empire Fair. No, it overlooks London, and it was really cool. It is one of the coolest things I have experienced since coming to Europe, actually.