London Calling

Oh gosh, I got to talk about the UK trip now! I was kind of looking forward to this. I'd been dreaming of visiting this place for a long time, since I started loving the Gallagher brothers to be exact. So I was super excited when Glen and I decided to fill my Spring break 2010 (03/19-03/25) visiting England and Scotland. We landed in Heathrow.

Me & the Double-decker

Noel Gallagher, who I believe is currently living in London, is not into London himself. On one of his interviews, too many scumbags in the city, he said. Oh well, it's pretty typical for a big city, isn't it? Though to some extent he may be right. The most pleasant big city among all that I've been to is definitely NOT London. Being a big city, London smells. Yes, it stinks. It definitely is not fragrant. LOL *trying to think of any city that may actually be fragrant. I must be stupid :D*. In brief, the reasons why I like London are for it being the home of the Gallaghers (apart from them being Mancunians and Irish-descents, they're pretty much Londoners too), for it being so old, for it having so much going on in the past, for it being London. Wewww, in the end I sound like I love London. Fine, you can put it that way, Comrades. There are actually quite a few things I like about the city, and I certainly wouldn't mind going back there one day. 

Who knows later in life I'll bump into Noel on the metro? Rumors have it that this bloke doesn't (read: can't) drive and takes the London tube to get around. Pretty cool, right? I mean, who would think that Noel Gallagher rides the damn tube quite regularly? I certainly never did. Was kinda thrilled when a cousin of mine read an article in the Rolling Stone magazine about that. Seriously, the metro got really really crowded during certain hours, and there were actually times when I just didn't feel like riding it. 

The hotel where we stayed at, Glenlyn, is in North London. It's about a ten-minute walk from Woodside Park station. It wasn't very close to downtown, but wasn't bad either because all we had to do were walking a bit and hopping on the damn tube. Glenlyn's comfortable and had a warm atmosphere. The cool thing was I had the experience of tasting full English breakfast there for the first time: baked beans, fried tomato, fried mushrooms, scrambled eggs, hash browns; pretty much everything except for the bacon. 

Glen walking towards Woodside Park station

I even developed my liking in black tea with a splash of milk because of visiting the UK. The English love black tea & milk. A friend of mine who is a Londoner (her name's Kate and she lives in the suburb of London) told me once that if you didn't have black tea in your house then you're not English. Ah, I got it now. This cultural thing has a value that seems very special to me, because I honestly can't think of any single item that's so strongly related to my identity of being Indonesian. Terasi? Tempe? Ketupat? I mean, I am doing fine without them. I don't even think about them. I may miss eating them but I certainly would not say that you're not Indonesians if you don't have them in your house. I wish I could put it that way, but it just doesn't hold true. Sometimes I envy the English for loving their black tea. The same thing of me envying the Koreans for loving their kimchi so much. I am too busy loving many new stuff that I don't focus well on my own things. Nicely put.

Okay, so we got our missions done in London. We visited the National Gallery, British Museum, and Victoria & Albert Museum. I am not a fan of museums so I don't have much to say about these three -the Louvre in Paris would be an exception though, but I'll talk about it later on a different entry. But you know what I love the most about museums in general? It's the gift shop! Just like some of you, I love souvenir shopping! Oh yea, in addition to the museums, we hit the Portobello flea market as well at a late afternoon. That market's pretty funky.

Info board at Carlisle station. We were on our transit here to Edinburgh.

From England, we took a train to another country in the UK. Scotland! Scotland! I was full of joy arriving in Edinburgh; we grabbed one of those distinct-looking taxicabs to get to our hotel. To be quite frank, Edinburgh was far better than London. Of course it depends on what your criteria are, but I personally prefer mid-sized cities to the huge ones. Edinburgh is perfect to me. It's not overwhelming. It's not too noisy, and the streets were also pretty -wow, my sentences rhyme! 

It's getting too long, by the way :D. And you know it's never my intention to bore you.

Edinburgh at night time

The bargain room at Salisbury

We got to our hotel in Edinburgh, and I liked it. It's of a good value (75 pounds/night, while Glenlyn in London was about 80 pounds/night), and breakfast was superb. I think I liked it a bit better than Glenlyn's. The Edinburgh hotel is called Salisbury, located on 43 Salisbury Road. The receptionist guy was not the best though, I was asking him if I could get some printing done and he said no. Just my luck.

Morning walk to the Edinburgh Castle. Lovely!

If you ever visit Edinburgh (which I highly recommend, by the way), do not miss the Edinburgh Castle. It is very picturesque up there. I got to view  the whole Edinburgh from up there and it was quite dramatic. The Holyrood Park -also currently known as Queen's Park, but it will change once Prince Charles gets coronated- is also awesome. Make sure you hike up the hills to get the best view of the Edinburgh landscape.

Lastly, eat at Nando's while you're in the UK! It's a franchise that makes the best grilled chicken marinated in a sauce called peri-peri. Nando's was originated in South Africa, and expanded rapidly to the the rest of Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia, and North America (a few restaurants in the East only thus far). I am not able to find anything equivalent to it here in the West Coast though. Fingers crossed they'll make it here some day.

How's that for a UK trip review? Feel free to drop comments on any of my posts! :)

Edinburgh Castle