London, Day Three Part Two & Day Four Part One

I should have just called yesterday "Day Three" because I shouldn't have really thought I'd want to get back on the Internet again. I'll fix it when I get home. Anyway...

Yesterday we went to the Imperial War Museum, which came highly recommended from readers. But we were hungry, and it was crowded, and we were hungry. So the stay in the Imperial War Museum was brief. Followed by a walk over a bridge, and to Buckingham Palace, and through a park, and around a park -- which could have passed for Central Park, adding to the impression I sometimes have been having, although not always by any stretch, that London and New York are not dissimilar enough to make London actually seem foreign. This may just be ignorance on my part of stuff like how old buildings are and how to tell.

Wandered around the Waterloo area, which has a train station with a McDonalds, a Burger King, and a Starbucks. Poor London. Stop taking our chain restaurants. They're not really worth it.

I really like the British baseball commentators on "five," the BBC station that airs the games. They're funny. Also, they had a show "Britain's Worst Chef" the other night that was pretty amusing. And a commercial for "Gender Swap," which I don't really want to watch. Curt Schilling is awesome.

Today my friend had class, so I went out on my own and basically walked across the city and stopped whenever I passed something cool. I breezed through the British Museum in less time than it deserved, but it had lots of cool old Greek stone things, and a nicely architected Grand Court in the center. I went into Virgin Records, for no reason, and found it what you might expect. Also was curious and looked at the magazine section in a large British bookstore. They had more American magazines than I might have expected. Before the British Museum, I walked down Oxford Circus, a big busy street. Then I walked down Fleet Street, looked inside the Inns of Court and the Criminal Court, walked over to St. Paul's Cathedral (very nice, despite the scaffolding), continued (after getting myself turned around and retracing a few steps) around the Tower of London, across the Tower Bridge, over to the London Bridge, to Shakespeare's Globe Theater, and then picked up tickets for a show about soccer (er, football) that we're seeing tonight at a small theater not far from Shakespeare's.

Funny sign of the day: Under a bridge, announcing the clearance, "Max Headroom __ meters." Max Headroom, like that talking TV box thing from the '80s. Although maybe we have those signs in the U.S. too and I just haven't noticed. At some point on my walk I passed the London School of Economics and the Financial Times headquarters. No reason for mentioning that, I suppose.

So I covered a lot of ground. Maybe walked 3 or 4 miles, I'd imagine, at least. More tomorrow, and then I come home on Wednesday.