London; Just...Kinda Weird

After spending a week hijabed and locked behind blast walls, London, the last stop of my Georgia-Azerbaijan-Afghanistan-UK tour just seemed really strange and surreal. For one thing, it was a city, a proper functioning city with hot water.

 Why there was a giant ship in a bottle in Trafalger Square I do not know.

 Trafalger Square

The Christmas tree that Norway gives to London every year.

Also, Regent street was shut off to traffic for shopping and a mini carnival and there was some sort of Santa pub crawl happening.

There were Santas everywhere. In the above picture they'd stopped traffic on Picadilly and were singing the 12 Days of Christmas. Also there's no open container law in London so seeing hundreds of Santa Clauses running about swigging beers was odd. You cannot really tell from these pictures but some of the Santas were themed...there were Santas in president masks, zombie Santas, and we even saw two Santas wearing speedos, hats...and nothing else.

I did have a great time though, especially at the South Bank Christmas market:

Maybe a little blurry but quite the image nonetheless.

Discovering new drinks like the apple pie and custard martini

Sip martini, then sip the shot, swirl in your mouth and swallow. Complicated but yummy.

And exploring the Chrismtas market and ice skating in Hyde Park

Sadly there are no pictures of us skating because cameras were not allowed on the ice...so that they could have a staff photographer charge an outrageous 8GBP for a picture. After probably 20 years of not skating I did better on the ice than I thought I would; didn't fall once. Shocking I know. In four days in London it only rained once, and of course that once was when we were skating. And it didn't just sprinkle, it poured so we were skating through huge puddles.

I also went to a show called Uncaged Monkeys: In a Night of 200 Billion Stars...which was basically physicists being funny. Think Big Bang Theory but even more hilarious. And while I may have initially rolled my eyes at my friend when she said one of the guys was some sort of science heartthrob...I am now a Brian Cox convert. Also randomly in the program was a group called Feeding the Fish...I absolutely must have a pair of the pixel poi they use. MUST HAVE!! If anyone knows where I can get a pair please let me know. Tim Minchin also popped by the show...and if he isn't surreal then I don't know what is.

Also completely randomly...I showed up at Saint Peter's Sunday morning (the closest Catholic church to my hotel) all excited for Mass since I hadn't been in two weeks cause of the travel...only to discover Mass was in Italian. WTH?

So ended my first trip for the new job. It was the longest shortest trip I've ever been on and while I had some great experiences, I hope the next one will be a little more leisurely and will involve more hot water.