England Day 12-13: London..."I feel like a sardine!"

Today I took to the city, but this time I was riding solo.  Ray had gone into his company's London office so I decided to go do my own thing... Easy right?  I had scheduled a few meetings with some local professionals, one being way north of the city and one on the more western part.  Needless to say, I had my work cut out for me.  Trying to navigate the underground, as well as some above ground trains was relatively easy.  I found it much more difficult to maneuver my way through the people, buses and cars.  Every step I took, every move I made (just like the Police song), I was dodging people left and right.  I avoid one collision to be faced with another potential one.  And that wasn't even rush hour… Coming back this evening was even worse.  I boarded the train when there looked to have only been a handful of people seated and by the time I got on, I had managed to barely sneak my way into an area right in front of the inner car door.  Luckliy this meant, I got a little fresh air; but realistically it meant that at every stop, I would just get squished deeper and deeper into the nonexistent side of the train. A few stops later a man boards the train. He looks around at all the madness; people squeezed every which way, the temperature inside the train increasing exponentially with every passing second.  I could tell he was not a local Londonite… He then blurts out, “I don't know how people do this everyday… I feel like an f***ing sardine!!!”  He was so right, it pretty much smelled the same too.   That being said, some of the sights I saw throughout the day, helped make up for this madness, at least a little. 

Here’s two from Whitehall Gardens, where I picnicked for lunch. 

Couldn’t miss the London Eye view from the street.  

An Air Force WWI monument.

 The big guy… Big Ben & Parliament

And Westminister Abbey

Despite the tube mayhem, I did manage to 

find my way home, just in time for Ray to get back.  We head off to grab a pint and dinner with the London crew.  

Here’s some of the London crew, plus Erik from home.  I can’t even begin to explain how nice it was to see a familiar face after being out with the masses all day long.  

Pepe made a lot of new friends, including Spud the dog…And I must say, I love the name. Though Pepe had a hard time with all the smoke in the air.

The next day, Erik, Ray and I head off to 

do a little sightseeing, before we leave 

London and head to Amsterdam.  

We meet up at Big Ben.

 And walk to the eye. What a cool experience that was! Some of my friends did it that last time I was in London and I chose not to.  Ever since then, I have been really wanting to do it.  It was so worth doing.  It takes about 30 minutes to get around, but you get to see an amazing ariel view of the city.  

We say our goodbyes to Erik (who btw gave us some great travel tips on some of the places we were headed next) and hopped on the train to Gatwick Airport. Apparently, we should have listened a little better to Erik saying we needed to leave way before we did.  We got to the airport and literally had to run to catch our flight.  It didn't help that our bags got stopped in security, using up a precious 10ish minutes that we didn’t have to begin with.  As we were sprinting to the gate, I kept thinking this is how it must feel on Amazing Race, except that there would be a cash prize at the end. I could totally do that! We get to the gate just as they begin boarding…Phew! Made it.  Once in Amsterdam, we had our first real true test of a new language.  Up until that point, say like when we were in Ireland, there was Gaelic but always the English equivalent right next to it.  This time it was all Dutch. It was really cool, but also a little eye opening.  Everyone could understand what we were saying, but we didn't have a clue as to what they were talking about.