Week 1: All the touristy junk that is expected of me.

Allright, allright, quiet down out there. I can hear some of you clamoring for the pictures that youve seen in the postcards. Since you´ve seen those pictures, I would imagine that you would feel complete, however it seems that people always want to see how other people saw something. As such, I took a day to photograph, from my perspective, some of the sights that all good tourists should see in London. First, we have St. Pauls Cathedral . Look how lovely it is! If you´re paying even remotely careful attention, you´ll notice that most of the front of the picture is actually an enormous drawing of the front of St. Pauls. It is a very good drawing however, and I felt it worthy of photographic record. Also, when I first walked up to this area (from across a bridge) I couldn´t actually tell that it was a sheet over scaffolding. Apparently, I am not smart. Now you may all be hoping for a picture of the interior of St. Pauls...so here is what I have . Yes, thats right, just as I stepped over the sacred threshold, camera poised, beady tourist eyes aglow, God decided that this was one Jew who wasn´t going to be doing any flash photography in his crib. So he struck me down with the full force of...overcharging. See, it was 7 pounds to get in, and being the unemployed budget traveler that I am, 7 pounds to see a Church that I didn´t even believe existed (EDIT NOTE: what norman actually meant here was that he doesn´t believe in the religion of the building, but does, in fact, believe that the physical presence of the church exists. We had quite an argument about this one, as he insisted that since he couldn´t go in, it wasn´t technically part of the (his) world, thus the non-existence. I drugged him with booze and cartoons and he is resting comfortably). So apparently, the way to make friends in a church that charges is to pay the fee and proceed quietly. The way to not make friends is to try and use a giant stone statue of a Saint as cover as you try to sneak around the guards. This brings us to about 10 in the list-of-places-in-London-that-Norman-has-been-kicked-out-of-for-various-reasons. Moving on. I caught up with one of my ex-roomies friends David who is extremely knowledgeable about London despite being from South Africa. With him, I saw this which I couldn´t quite identify, but someone did mention in passing that it had something to do with ice cream, Ben and Jerry´s´maybe? There was definitely something about a "ben". Oh, and the clock was off by 3 minutes. I went over to tell the guy who runs it but he had some big hump and a glass eye and a really weird name, quasi-moped? and he kept muttering about getting thrown out of Notre Dame. I guess he was in a frat or something. Go fightin´irish! Next, it was off to a place that holds all the tradition, mystique and intrigue of thousands of years of monarchic oppression... and also Batman . Buckingham palace! We think the queen was home because there were a big ol´pair of bloomers hanging out a window drying in the cool winter breeze. I know that you´re all wondering where the picture of the guards is, well let me tell you, there ain´t one. They have got to be the most boring group of people on earth. But women...you want to talk about a good listener...my god! Of course, it wouldn´t be a trip to London without visiting the all-vegetarian-food-cooked-at-a-very-low-and-specific-temperature-to-retain-vital-nutrients-asian-restaurant. And of course, like all good all-vegetarian-food-cooked-at-a-very-low-and-specific-temperature-to-vital-retain-nutrients-asian-restaurant, there was a sign on the window informing everyone of this fact...in hebrew. Of course.