I have been in London for exactly one month and I thought this could use with a little upgrade. Whaddya think?!

Brighton Beach Memoirs

Brighton is having an identity crisis.

My friend and I discovered this over the weekend when we visited the small beach town for a little day trip. Everyone who heard I was traveling asked if I was going to Brighton to explore the night life. I could only shrug when asked, because I didn't know Brighton was known for it's night life. When I thought of Brighton a crazy clubbing scene did not immediately come to mind.

What did come to mind was a lot like what we found. Brighton Beach is an English beach, which means it's cold, grey, and rocky, with a lot of old glory. There's a beautiful pier, built in 1899, that stretches out into the ocean that reflects the grandeur Brighton once had. It is sad to walk along the beach and pier now. The glory hangs in the air above the white pavilions on the pier and leans on the white wrought iron railing stretching along the walk. The ugly, cheap carnival rides lay abandon and forgotten in the off season, and only the kitschy souvenir stands and "ye olde sweet shoppes" stand open. I hear it can get quite crowded in the summer time, but there was no one there to appreciate the pier and what it has become this weekend.

The personality of Brighton embodied is the old remains of the West Pier.  Off the rocky beach there is a large iron skeleton standing alone in the middle of the ocean. It is a haunting sight, but you can almost make out how grand the pavilion was and how enchanting it must have been when it was first built in 1866.

Remains of the West Pier

Once you leave the coastline, however, Brighton takes on a completely different look. The North Laine area in the downtown of Brighton is home to many artsy, "hippy", gay rights movements. It's a funky little area with multiple boutiques, independent coffee houses, and small event venues. At night, the main road turns into a strip of clubs and pubs that draw all of the young people out. This part of town evokes almost the opposite feeling than the beach gives off--downtown Brighton is very much alive and thriving, making a new name for itself.

The Village Underground

In my last post I mentioned that during Open House London this past weekend I visited a place called the Village Underground.  It sounds like it might be something spooky, but it is definitely not.

The Underground is the London subway system. It is commonly called the Tube (pronounced: tchoob) because that's exactly what it is: a network of tubes running beneath all of London and much of the surrounding areas.

It even looks like a tube!

The Village Underground is not under the ground--in fact, it is quite far above the ground--and it is not even near a Tube station. No, the Village Underground is actually an artists' studio. A group of artists took old, unused Underground cars, had them lifted on top of a warehouse, and converted them into work spaces.

It is a very cool project, and a great idea for recycling the unused space. The insides of the train cars are the perfect sizes for desks along the windows and are fully equipped with electricity, internet, and other things required of an office.

The outsides of the Underground cars provided the perfect reusable canvas for the artists. While we were visiting, some guys were spray painting one of the cars.

This place was just so cool! Haley and I felt like squares there with our cameras and our conformist clothing and our unimaginative ideas and our impressionable minds. Some guys with dreadlocks and gauged piercings were there playing records I'd never heard before with Bob Marley-esque vibes, and electro indie undertones. These artists could not have been older than thirty (because people that old just can't be cool enough to do this kind of thing), and they had already done something with their lives. What have I done? Certainly nothing as cool as PAINTING A SUBWAY CAR.

THIS guy. (please also note the ironic rooster weather vain)

Please don't misunderstand me, these artists are not hipster scum. No, unfortunately my mocking tone is rooted in true jealousy and not simply hatred.

The Village Underground is located in Shoreditch, which is a neighborhood of London known for it's indie art scene. It's the home of the Anti-Design Festival (the counterpart to the "highly commercialized" Design Festival).  My friend and I walked there and we passed a lot of independent art studios and show rooms with some really interesting street art pieces. We also passed a lot of genuine graffiti. I am actually a big fan of graffiti, it's one of my favorite part of cities.

Maybe this weekend I'll head to the junk yard and find myself an old Tube car that I can convert into an office...

I have fallen in love.

This is probably coming as a surprise to most of you. You didn't see this coming. Well neither did I. And some of you might be thinking "she's so young, she doesn't know what love is!" Oh, but I do know what love is.
 It is true. I am in love.

Let me start from the beginning. I first saw my love a few weeks ago when I was in search of a grocery store. The Tesco I was looking for was not where GoogleMaps told me it would be, so I was lost. And that is when I saw my love. I passed my love on the street and could not stop staring.

My love's name is Pancras--St. Pancras, actually. My love is the patron saint of children, jobs, and health...but that is neither here nor there. My love's middle and last names are International Station.

Yep, I'm in love with a train station (you all thought I was serious, didn't you?). And you would be too if you had been to Open House London this weekend.

Open House London is a weekend once a year when many of the architecturally significant or sustainable buildings of London that are usually closed to the public are open for tours.  There were over 750 buildings open this year, from government buildings, to offices, to private residences! But since you can't tour 750 buildings in two days, my friends and I picked the two most interesting sites on the list--Village Underground (more on that later), and St. Pancras International station.

St. Pancras is just up the street from my apartment, right next to King's Cross Station of Harry Potter fame. And the story about me getting lost on the way to the grocery store is true. I thought this building was so magnificent that I had to show my architecturally nerdy friends, and, well, they fell in love with it too. So when we realized that there would be tours of this marvelous building during Open House, we decided that WE HAD TO GO.

So we did. And it was one of the best decisions we've ever made. The inside of the train station is just as amazing and beautiful as the outside. The front, the grandiose castle, is actually a hotel (a Marriott to open in spring of 2011), and the train station is in back. Both structures were designed by William Henry Barlow in 1867. St Pancras just barely escaped demolition in the 60's and was restored in 2007, when the EuroStar moved there from Waterloo station.

Our tour guide was from the marketing department for the company in charge of the restoration of St Pancras International, so of course he talked it up. But, baby, did I fall for it hook, line, and sinker. Sam (that was our tour guide's name) talked about how the company was putting the romanticism back into taking trains, how St Pancras is becoming Europe's "destination station". As rightly it should be. There is no Macdonald's or Starbucks in sight in the station. Instead they have a champagne bar, farmer's market, artisan food shops, and designer stores from around London. The restoration kept all of the original architecture and artistic details in tact, and worked the beautiful wrought iron trussing that supports the glass roof and the below-ground brick arches (originally used to store barrels of beer) into the new lower concourse.

The whole experience made me want to buy a ticket to Paris right then and there, just so that I could sit at the champagne bar next to the train tracks and wait for my High Speed train to Paris (pronounce: Pair-ee) to pull in.

Some day it will happen. Until then I will have to be content staring at my love from across the street.




...Sorry this post is so long.
I JUST LOVE IT SO MUCH-OK?! GEEZ!!!

If you go to google.co.uk, you will see a lovely little illustration depicting what I can only assume is supposed to be a Clue-esque murder mystery scene. This is because today would have been Agatha Christie's 120th birthday.

BUT that is not the only birthday the UK is celebrating today.

Today is MR. BEAN's 20th birthday!!!
Ah, Mr. Bean. That loveable, clumsy little British character, developed and portrayed by Rowan Atkinson. If you ask me, it should be this birthday that Google should be honoring with a title illustration.

Here's a pleasurable little Mr. Bean clip for you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4cmrMJul1g

For more Mr. Bean, YouTube is celebrating with full-length episodes. They've got their priorities straight!



Today really should be an English holiday,  don't you think?!

Merry Wives of Theatre

I went to see The Merry Wives of Windsor last night. But this was not just any performance of the Shakespearean comedy. This was a special performance. Because I got to see the show performed in the Globe theatre!

...Ok, so it's not really the Globe, it's a replica because the old one burned down a long time ago. But still! It was cool.

I went to the show for my "Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Stage" class. Our "seats" were standing room only in the yard of the round theatre (yep, that's how they spell it here). We would have been called groundlings in Shakespeare's time, and our tickets would have cost only a penny. It was a really great experience, and was made even more authentic by the fact that there was a 45 minute downpour as soon as the show started. The show went on of course, and being an open-air theatre, all of us groundlings got soaked.  But it only added to the fun.

 The show was great! Some great comedic actors filled the roles, and the actresses who played Mistress Page and Mistress Ford were amazing.

It was a fun show, and a really cool experience that I would recommend to anyone traveling to London!

The Mighty Thames and Its Watery Ways

This weekend was definitely a "London: f*ck yeah!" weekend.

If you don't know what that means, let me break it down for you. There are some days when you just want to say, "really, London? Really?" (like when you want to go on a picnic in Hyde Park but a torrential downpour begins as soon as you get off the tube). But this weekend was not like that. This weekend was basically awesome.

Because this weekend was the Thames Festival. And this might be the greatest thing ever invented (although, I've not yet been to Spain and I hear they throw some pretty great festivals).  The Thames Festival is a weekend of food, drink, and merriment thrown by the mayor of London, along the River Thames. Tons of local artists, craftsmen, bakers, brewers, and all other types of merchants set up booths that stretch through the heart of London along the south shore of the river.

One of my favorite parts of the Thames Festival was the Feast on the Bridge. From noon until 22-00 (that's 10 PM) the Southwark Bridge was shut down to traffic and long tables were set up all along the bridge for people to sit, eat, drink, chat, and otherwise enjoy themselves. It was definitely one of those things you had to experience for yourself to understand, but it was amazing to say the least. Picture for a second, if you will, that you've just bought the best smelling sausage and onion sandwich cooked fresh, and a half-pint of award-winning Welsh cider (which is kind of like a cross between beer and soda, but with more alcohol) in the other hand, and you are sitting at a huge table with complete strangers in the middle of the River Thames, but it doesn't matter that you're eating with strangers, because you're all there for the same purpose, to enjoy good food and to enjoy the life source of the city (the river), and you're all Londoners.

That is not all that was great about the Feast on the Bridge, though. At 7 PM everyone gathered in the center of the bridge to raise their glasses and toast the Thames. And the River definitely deserves a toast at least once a year, because London would not exist if the Thames were not there. Anyway, it was a nice gesture.

My second favorite part of the Thames Festival was definitely the performance stage in front of the Tate Modern.  This performance stage, one of three at the festival, was called the Lady Luck Jive Stage. And it was swing dancing, from noon to 10 PM on both Saturday and Sunday. There were DJs and live bands playing jive and lindy hop, and an "al fresco ballroom" open to everyone who wanted to swing dance no matter your skill level. I didn't have a partner, so I didn't get out there and dance, but it was so much fun to just watch. I have to say, the old people were the most fun to watch! They were having so much fun--and they weren't half bad. Many people got really dressed up for the event. Women with s-curls in their hair and high-waisted skirts danced with men in fedoras and saddle shoes. I was very impressed.

The weekend concluded with a "night festival" on Sunday night. A parade of beautiful floats, lights, music, costumes, and dancing made its way along both shores of the river and ended with tons of fireworks set off over the river.


Why doesn't New York or San Francisco have a festival like this?! They both could really use one. Maybe I should look into starting it...



I must credit the fabulous Haley Johnston and her beautiful camera for the wonderful pictures.