To face the future:

My trip is about over. I feel very satisfied with everything I’ve seen and accomplished yet a bit unhealthy. I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve gained a few pounds. The traveling, the eating out and the near constant intake of ales, coffees and tea has thrown off my body chemistry considerably. I’m used to a pretty good diet and running 5k 5 days out of the week. If you’ve ever had a good work-out routine and ever gone off of it for more than a week you’ll know how I feel.

Anyways, here are some photos and videos from Sunday. If you’re not subsribed to the RSS I made a pretty large post yesterday so just keep scrolling if you haven’t checked back in a while. Here’s a shot of the harbor near where I was working for the last couple of weeks. I’m going to miss London.

I started by walking up to the Chelsea football stadium. I decided I’d bite the bullet and pay the 15 quid for a tour so I could get some photos of a real football (soccer) stadium—haha.

After every game it’s a rule of the Premiere league that the coaches and sometimes players have to talk to the press. This is the room they do it in. The guide let all of the kids get their pictures taken by the sponsor wall.

The home team locker room. They have some pretty luxurious facilities. Drogba’s jersey is right next to that bald man’s cranium.

Then they brought us out to pitch-level. They played some crowd noise for effect. It was pretty cool. I took this video as well:

They pay a fortune to move those UV grow lights over the pitch to make sure it’s ready to go year ’round.

I then hopped onto the tube system, which by now I’ve mastered and hit Russel Square and the British Museum. This is Russel Square. I’ve got some sketches from here that I’ll post as soon as I can scan them.

The British Museum. I saw some incredibly old stuff here.

Some neat festival costumes

The big center area of the museum. This thing was massive.

A crowd of Japanese tourists were crowded around this incredibly preserved corpse when I arrived. It was pretty neat.

Of course, the Rosetta Stone. One thing about this museum that I didn’t like was it was so crowded the security people couldn’t stop visitors from walking up and just rubbing their grubby hands over everything that wasn’t covered. I was just thinking the whole time “Don’t fucking touch that! Do you know how old that is?!” Museum manners, for crying out loud.

After I got tired dodging other tourists in the museum I jumped back on the tube to Leicester (I’ve been spelling it wrong for the last couple of posts. Oops) and stumbled upon a caravan of people waving red and black flags as well as English flags and literally laying on their car horns. At first I thought they were football supporters because I didn’t recognize the flag but I learned later that they were Albanian flags and that the crowd was celebrating Kosovo’s independence from Serbia. What a weird thing for me to stumble upon randomly. As I walked down toward the National Gallery I could hear a massive crowd and more car horns coming from Trafalgar Square so I took a video. I posted it on youtube last night and it’s already got over a thousand views and 16 comments from random Kosovars (I’m guessing).

A photo of the crowd in the square with Big Ben in the background.

A picture of the expanding sea of Albanian flags.

I couldn’t take any shots inside the gallery but let me just say wow. I’ve never seen such great artists all in one place. Cezzane, Monet, Rubens, Seurat, Picasso, Caravaggio (one of my absolute favorites), Pissarro and the list goes on and on. I could have spent most of the day there had I not wanted to see a few other sites.

I jumped back on the tube and landed back in the Southbank for a walk on Millenium bridge. Here is a view of the Gerkin.

Millenium bridge.

A shot from the bridge of the Thames.

St. Paul’s Cathedral.

I was glad I ended the day at this site. The twilight dramatically lit up the beautiful architecture.

A church I spotted in a side street who’s name escapes me.

I forget what that is but I think it’s part of the Royal Court of Justice (below)

I ended up tubing back up to Soho but by that point my legs were killing me and I walked through some less than inviting looking areas (Soho’s got some sketchy parts as well) so I packed up the camera, grabbed a lamb doner kebab and hit the tube again for the hotel.

If you haven’t had a kebab I would probably not recommend it unless you’re smashed. Basically they have these huge poles of reconstituted meat that rotate in a rotisserie that’s usually just out in the open air. A “chef” will then take a blade and scrape it along the meat to shave off your kebab meat. They’ll take the meat, put it in a gyro style pita, pour some unhealthy greasy sauces on top, sprinkle a few vegetables on there to give the illusion of being healthier than it is and then you eat it. I ate half of it while waiting for the tube so that probably added to the disgust factor. It was good but the kind of good that any really greasy fast food is. You definitely feel terrible afterwards.

So now I must pack…

Ahhhhh London. I’ll miss it.

To save money I’ve been walking to the nearest tube station. It’s a brisk 25-30 minute walk. After doing that about 4 times and walking around the city this weekend I caught myself a sinus cold. Here are some photos from Sunday:

First off, if you didn’t notice by the last set of photos the weather has been ridiculously nice—Spring-like as a matter of fact. I knew it was unusual but my suspicians were confirmed by the conversations I heard people having. I heard someone talking on the phone the other day saying “yeah the sun is shining and it’s actually warm!” Haha, imagine that.

I started by going to look for more Banksy graffiti. I made it to this one near Farringdon st. but unforunately it got painted over. When I was telling someone about it at work this morning they informed me there was another one pretty close by (the kissing policemen) that I may have to go check out this weekend. Below is my photo and then a photo I found on the net of how it used to look.

An older mini

Some neat deteriorated type

Then I stumbled upon a massive Chinese New year celebration in progress in Trafalgar. The streets were all closed off and there were loads upon loads of people. You could barely get out of the tube.

Performers took the stage. Yes, I saw a dragon dance.

People everywhere

Some martial artists practicing near that pire. I took a video (below) because the sword guy was pretty radical.

The Odeon

National Treasure 2… Does it really deserve such huge promo posters?

Not sure if this was a restaurant or what but it looked cool either way.

The Prince Charles Cinema

Then while I was eating a burger at Burger Union I noticed the police blocking off Liecester square so I came out side to see a fireworks display. I did the best I could to get a video of it:

Piccadilly Circus in the daytime

A Renault

Shakespeare’s Head restaurant in Soho. The sun light really gave that sidestreet a nice atmosphere.

Had to get a better shot of the funny looking Shakespeare mannequin hanging out the window.

Next weekend I’m planning on checking out more Banksy, the British museum, and maybe actually seeing the changing of the guard.

Here I am to kill your internets with pictures. Getting this post together was a pain as you might imagine but from previous experience I’ve learned if I don’t organize the photos right away they tend to just stay on my hard drive never to be seen. I still haven’t shown anyone photos from my last trip to Japan.

In previous posts I’ve written “click to enlarge” next to images you can enlarge. Since there are so many here you can just assume the horizontally formatted images can be clicked.

So I think I’ll just go through these and caption them.

Okay, to begin, on Friday the company I’m at won a large piece of new business so everyone went out to the pub (The Chelsea Ram) to celebrate. We started with some ale, lager, then it was on to wine and eventually B52s.

He tore a tendon snowboarding in France and had his arm in a sling until the lager kicked in.

My camera got passed around and there were multiple down-shirt shots taken. Once the ladies realized what they’d done they promptly deleted theirs.

The arm sling made for some good fun

We ended the evening at a curry house. Good times.

Saturday I took a hungover walking tour of London. I rode the tube in to Hyde corner and basically walked everywhere else. I spent the entire day seeing London. I don’t think I’ve ever walked so much in my life.

Blonde redhead provided an excellent soundtrack for the trek.

War memorials in Hyde corner

Wellington Arch – originally planned by George IV in commemoration of Britain’s victories in the Napoleonic wars.

Hyde Park – The Wellington Monument. (Achilles)

Aston Martin dealer. I’ve seen so many crazy expensive cars here it’s ridiculous.

war memorial near the Arch

It took me about 30 minutes walking around trying to find this Banksy stencil. There’s another one on my list for today. If you don’t know who Banksy is he’s a pretty famous street artist. http://www.banksy.co.uk

There were two other people that came and took pictures of it while I was. I really didn’t expect that.

a random side street

Obligatory Buckingham photos

Some cool outdoor ads I saw near St James station.

Westminster Abbey. I had flashbacks to my art history courses when I spotted this.

Just look at that gothic style architecture…

…and those buttresses…

…those beautiful buttresses—and stained glass. Very cool.

I know I’ve studied this but I can’t recall the name. It’s the North Door of the Abbey

you know what this is.

London eye in the background

war protesters in parliament square.

Parliament. Abbey in the foreground.

Statue of Oliver Cromwell

Parliament from the front

Some blokes playing footy in front of parliament

The Thames

That wedge-shaped building is called the “cucumber”

Big Ben and Parliament from across the Thames

In Southbank there’s a great area underneath Queen Elizabeth’s Hall where kids are allowed to graffiti, bmx and skate. It’s about at this point I remember I can take video with my camera.

Obey!

A few videos so you can get a sense of what it was like.

This is the Portico Quartet. When I was looking for Hang drum (the instrument that guy in the center is playing) music a while back I found these guys on the internet. Crazy coincidence. I took some video but you can’t really hear the bass. Here is their myspace: http://www.myspace.com/porticoquartet

After they finished I bought their cd for 10 quid (pounds)

and a solo hang drum video that got my really interested in what you can do with the instrument:

Some crazy elvis-looking street performers. They would dance provocatively to the music and make women uncomfortable.

I’m going to start taking pictures of cars you might not ever see in the states. Here is a Puegot. (maybe you can buy them in the states? If you can I don’t know where)

Shakespeare’s Globe Theater. It took me a while to find this and the Tate. The sign posts were confusing.

Millenium bridge. Crossing it is still on my list of things to do still.

The Tate Modern. They turned an old power station into a wicked art museum.

This crevasse is an installation in the front room of the Tate. How in the world did they do this?

Cool typography

The Thames in the evening

On Lancaster I spotted this Pizza Hut with people lined up all the way out the door. How do you go to pizza hut when there are so many better pizzerias in a city like this?

Trafalgar square. Chinese lanterns are hung up everywhere for the Chinese new year

China Town

I liked the type on that Tokyo Diner sign.

And finally, here are some videos from Chinatown and Piccadilly. You can get a feel for what it’s like.

People here really enjoy their tea, coffee, lagers and ales I’ve noticed. It’s my kind of place!

So predictably since I started working I’ve had less time to take pictures but It’s been interesting trying to adjust to the lifestyle here. It’s been a whirlwind of brainstorming collaboration and meeting people since we started but everyone’s been really friendly and willing to work with us to get whatever we need so it hasn’t been a pain in any way.

Ad agency’s here are pretty much the same as they are in the states but there are a lot of different accents at the office I’m in so it makes the chatter seem a lot more interesting.

We visited the client’s ultra swank offices overlooking Big Ben, the eye and the Thames. (click to enlarge)

Some nice weather that day. It’d been brisk and blowy the previous couple of days.

and then we brainstormed.

and then we were invited to watch some footy at a pub (England vs. Switzerland). England was victorious of course. Didn’t get a shot from the pub but here’s a shot across the corner. We talked a lot about the differences of American sports vs. Football (soccer). It’s pretty interesting to hear how Europeans view American sports. For instance, American football games are 4-5 hours because they’re driven by advertising while football here is only 90minutes + stopage and minimal breaks for advertisements.

Mark and I drank some great lagers / ales. Here are some:

Kronenbourg 1664

London Pride

Leffe

It’s been pretty hectic work-wise the past couple of days but I think there’ll definitely be some time for exploring this weekend. Tonight we wandered a bit and had some Indian food. We noticed a real estate office. Look at these prices:

A swank 5 bedroom 3300 sq/ft condo with view of parliament for only 9 million dollars and that’s only for a lease.

A more humble and moderately priced 1200 sq/ft flat for only 4 million dollars and a 93 year lease.

Interesting. London is incredibly expensive in case you didn’t know. The pound to dollar exchange is about double yet most things that you could buy for say $40 in the states will be the same amount of pounds in London. I’m not too sure how realty works here but it seems expensive.

More to come. Cheers, mates.

Ten minutes after getting to the airport the homeland security “officials” managed to break my luggage. Apparently something I had packed looked suspicious to them on the scanner so they asked me for the luggage key. This particular piece of luggage is a hand-me-down roughly 30 years old and I only had one key. I told security repeatedly to be careful and that I could open it rather than risk them breaking the key. The guy ignores all requests and eventually turns around and says “Well, I broke your key.” So they ended up duct-taping my luggage together to make sure it wouldn’t pop open and all they did was give me the broken key and a letter telling me how to file a claim. You can bet I’ll be filing a claim.

After a few delays: great success!

The Big Lebowski calmed my nerves and then I caught 3-4 hours sleep.

London. I saw a funny tissue ad on the tube that had some London coloquialism in it—something about your nose being “bunged up.”

See what I mean?

Hotel view #1 (click to enlarge) We were supposed to have reservations but apparently there was a mixup? No trip is complete without a few snafus right?

Hotel view #1 (click to enlarge) Did I mention we also had trouble with power converters/transormers/adapters? Mark is on his 3rd or 4th type now. I finally found one that works. We’ll be electricians before this is all over with.

I’m pretty sure this is the Thames #1 (click to enlarge)

The Thames #2 (click to enlarge) – Some really ultra nice high-rise condos. They must be ridiculously expensive.

And I just had my first fish & Chips experience. Good stuff!

Tomorrow we work our advertising magic.