Carnival!

Notting Hill Carnival! The part of the year when the Caribbean takes over London. Apparently the biggest street festival in Europe. Amazement. Picture this: massive floats covered in everything from feathers to colour-changing jaguars, stilt walkers, gigantic feathery headdresses, sparkles, samba music and dancing in high heals, caribbean food, coconuts everywhere all crammed into the streets of North Kensington. Also, lots of dancing, grinding, scantily clad sparkly women who were perhaps a bit too old and jiggly to be doing either of the former activities. Only in London, I suppose. Yep. That about sums it up. I can pretty much end the post now, and let it continue from here with only photographs.

Brighton!

Brighton! Tons of bright! Right, got that out of my system. Anyway, after nearly a year of dreaming about the pebble beaches of Brighton, which rest less than an hour away from rainy London, we finally did it! A 45 minute train ride from Clapham Junction took Anne, Ulfie, and me to the sunny Brighton seaside and far away from the overcast, suffocating skies of London. What a refreshing, rejuvenating, and exhausting day.

Yesterday was a sunny and warm day in Brighton. Windy, of course, but it is a coastal city so what can we expect? Though it's a small city, it's packed full of happy, friendly and colourful people, interesting shops, and yummy food. Oh, and sea gulls. The place is chock full of gulls. But it doesn't detract from the beauty or serenity. Moving on, right. So anyway, we went to Brighton for the day. After getting off the train, we walked straight to the pier. We gawked at the masses of sea gulls (doing bizarre and amusing things), smoothed over the pebble beaches, and soaked up some long overdue sunshine. On the Brighton pier, yummy carnival food, carnival rides, and tourists. Also surprisingly yummy Asian cuisine. Oh, and what are apparently Brighton's best milkshakes. Unfortunately I didn't try one. Don't fret, it's at the top of my list of things to do on my next day trip to Brighton.

Ulfie, our fabulous tour guide, lead us from the pier to "the dome" where we stared, heads cocked, at a strange and out of place building which slightly resembles the Taj Mahal. Interesting, especially considering it's location on the southern England coast. After "the dome", we went to "the lanes." Now, if my life were a movie, this is the scene where, prior to shouting "action!" the director would certainly have said, "cue ridiculous masses of friendly people!" The lanes=the busy shopping alleys of Brighton. Narrow streets, weird shopping, crazy people, all jammed into a street barely wide enough to permit one-way traffic. But, again, don't get me wrong it's part of the culture and allure of Brighton. And I want to stress the friendliness of the locals. When we wandered into a hat shop (of course, a hat shop) and, after Anne bought a fabulous new hat (logically), we asked the shop keeper if we were, as we had thought, anywhere near the famous Banksy "Kissing Coppers" graffiti, the shop keeper smiled widely and said something along the lines of "Yes, in fact I'll show you!" She then left her shop and accompanied us to the street where she pointed and enthusiastically directed us the rest of the way. See what I mean? Brighton's got some seriously friendly people.

We went up the road to the Banksy. We took photos, obviously. I crossed something off of my bucket list, and we headed back down the hill towards the beach once again. After further wandering through "the lanes" we made it back to the pebble beach where we parked our bums and attempted to capture seagull behaviour on camera. I think I got some decent shots with the oh-so-reliable LC-A+, but didn't finish the roll so I'll have to wait to confirm this. We refilled our depleted stores of Vitamin D, watched the waves come in and out and even had the supreme opportunity to view a local hairy and rather large man in a speedo wade out into the waves. Awesome.

So by now it's been five hours since our arrival and the sun has taken it all out of us. Our return train wasn't scheduled for another four hours. We figured we wouldn't last, so we walked back to the train station, slipped past the ticket inspector and onto the earlier train. I should mention that this is the second day in a row that Ulfie and I have traveled illegally. I hope this isn't the beginning of some sort of vigilante traveling streak. Probably not. Thus ends the tail of our sunny day in Brighton. It was perfect. I even got a sunburn, which has by now faded into a lovely golden tan. Finally my shoulders and chest match the colour of my forearms.

Lessons learned: (1) don't wait nearly a year to experience something so easily accessible and so wonderful, (2) sneaking on to a "peak time" train with an "off peak" ticket is actually much easier than it sounds, and (3) vigilante travel induces unnecessary stress, but is strangely exhilarating.

Visitors!!

Lately we've had a lot of visitors, especially what with the Olympics and all. Patrick's dad came to stay with us for a week, along with some of Patrick's friends from Holland. It was nice to have so many people in the flat, it helped the flat to start to feel more like a home. Plus, now that the school year is over and everyone's been booted out of halls, Ulfie is our newest houseguest. She'll surf the couch for a couple of weeks until heading back to Bangladesh. But, we don't want to think about that yet.

Winding up the school year also means saying bye-bye to friends. Sadness. Terry headed back home about a week ago, but before she did we got together at a pub to hang out. We drank, laughed, sang with the musicians, and played the dumbest game ever invented. I think Terry said it was called "ei", like the sound you make when someone slaps you. I wonder where it got the name...

So during this time of visitors, we obviously did Olympic things and wandered around the city an awful lot. I feel there's more city wandering to be done in the coming weeks. My brain is off and I'm bored already, so I'm sure we'll find things to do in the coming weeks to entertain ourselves. Ulfie's leaving in a few weeks, so we need to see everything there is to see starting with a day trip to Brighton on Wednesday!

The Olympics!

London 2012! Bright pink posters, closed streets, congested tubes, and ridiculously happy people with foam fingers and megaphones. Oh, and a sudden influx of my fellow countrymen, the fun, outgoing, and obvious of whom were wearing American-flag capes. Free high-fives for everyone!

On July 28, we went to the men's team gymnastic at the O2 Arena, which was temporarily called the North Greenwich Arena. The whole floor was pink. Our seats were up high, but not so high to require binoculars. Jess, Ulfie, Anne, and I enjoyed watching our boys in blue flex their muscles on the six apparatuses (apparati?)

The next day, Sunday, Patrick and I went all the way to the Olympic Park to see Team USA vs. France face off in some basketball. Awesome. Entertaining. Fun. And the best part: seeing Lebron in real life. MmmmMMm. Yah, just like mum said, it's like he's wearing the batman suit. The game was a good one, even though everyone always knew who was going to win. The only down side: all of the Kobe fans in the audience. Barf. And it also seemed like there were way too many people there with really good seats who knew nothing about basketball. There should be a minimum basketball IQ required for the good seats. All the no-know people can sit up in the nose bleeds.

So a week later, on Saturday I got to go again to the Olympic park to see the men's semi-finals 10 meter platform diving! It was way more exciting than I thought it was going to be. Sometime during the wanderings around London that I did the week before with Patrick and his brother I purchased an American flag to wear as a cape. I didn't think diving was our sport, so I decided not to bring the flag. Foolish decision though, as we took 3rd place in the diving semi-finals and later that night won the gold! Shame on me for being a fair-weather USA fan. Next time I'll support them all the way.

So the post is short, and the pictures are few, but it's been an long time since the whole Olympics hype began and I am honestly out of enthusiasm for it. I'm glad it's over and I'm glad that all of the tourists are heading back to their homes. I'm looking forward to the tube returning to normal occupancy, and the bus routes to run as usual. I'm proud of team USA for winning overall, and even though I'm living across the pond, I'm still proud to be an American!