day six: london's touristy stuff

today we got up at 9:15 or so. we were slow to get ready because we knew it was mother's day in the UK and on sunday things don't really open up till pretty late (i.e. noon!) we headed out around 10:15 or so and walked down towards where P lives. N stopped to get a coffee and we managed to find a great fish and chip shop, but unfortunately it was closed on sunday. we walked down to oxford street (the main street for shopping in the west end) we didn't really see anything we wanted so we kept going towards piccadilly circus and the theater section, we got in line to buy tickets, but with only one window open we realized this would take way too long. so we decided to keep on walking down to the national gallery.

we weren't in the national gallery for long, N got pretty bored, pretty quick. and too be fair we didn't recognize many of the portraits or the painters, so it wasn't as interesting as if it were americans. we were there for less than an hour i'm sure.

after that we sat in trafalger square to get situated and then walked down to big ben and the parliament building. after taking photos of it, (N was in a few - i was in none as per usual). we walked over to westminster abbey. unfortunately it was closed to tourists for church services so we decided we needed to come back tomorrow to check it out. instead we kept walking (we did a TON of walking today) to buckingham palace and saw the guards doing their thing.

afterwards we headed back up towards marlybone so we could find a nice place to eat. we came to a small area north of oxford street and wigmore off james street. we had some good italian pasta for lunch. i had a fresh pasta with mushrooms and N had something with braised venison. he also had two appetizers and gelato for dessert. we also ordered a nice white wine for a change of pace.

after lunch we headed over to the monocle store to check out a travel duffel we had our eye on for a while. unfortunately they didn't have the color we wanted in stock so i just picked up a couple issues i had missed and we left to find a cafe for an afternoon espresso. we found one a few minutes away.

we got back from all this around 4:30 or so. the reason i know this is cause N wanted to rest for a few minutes, which ended up turning into a big nap. i left around 4:50 to the library to use the internet: find a hotel in amsterdam, check for flights from london to amsterdam, etc.
i didn't get back till around 6 and N was still asleep.

we had a long debate over what we should do on a sunday night. there wasn't much going on in the city so we were debating between seeing a movie (either lesbian vampire killers - it's an inside joke or gran tarino). we decided that we'd have indian food and hit the gym at LBS. we had super spicy lamb vindaloo and chicken tikka marsala along with chicken tikka and samosas as appetizers. we had garlic and onion naan and two orders of rice. N destroyed dinner as usual. he had two pints as well. i was keeping off the booze since we were hitting the gym. we learned over dinner than N has napped 4 of the 6 days on this trip
. the vindaloo was probably in the top three spicy versions i've had. we were super full as usual and i had a wicked stomachache from all the spicy food.

we waited tll 10pm to go to the gym. its the third workout on the trip, which isn't bad at all (one every other day pretty much), i'm hoping for one more tuesday morning before flying out to amsterdam and maybe a nice run around the canals in amsterdam.

got back around 11 from the gym. we surfed the TV for a while, and managed to find a terrible ashton kutcher movie. N is having a grand time watching it, and i'm trying to finish up this post before watching the first part of another korean movie. the first one was pretty good, finished that today... the english title was "i like it hot" it was about three girls, a middle aged woman, her daugther (who is in school) and their cousin (who is in her mid-twenties. it was sorta a romantic comedy i guess, except it wasn't very romantic, or very funny. so i'm not sure how to describe it. hopefully the next one will be better. it does make me miss korea a bit.