There's No Place Like London

Things I had forgotten about Britain:

-The smell of English breakfast in the morning. Eggs and toast and fried tomatoes, oil and salt and butter. It's a bit overwhelming for someone who has accustomed herself to the Greek style of coffee and maybe some bread.

-When you get on the London Underground, there are signs telling you which lines are not in operation that day. They always say things like "We apologise for the inconvenience this may cause, but the Picadilly Line will not be in operation today between Green Park and South Kensington. Hopefully, services will be restored tomorrow. We wish you a pleasant day!" This is in contrast to New York, where you hear a loud fuzzy noise blast into the station, followed by a garbled, belligerent voice on the loudspeaker screeching out something like "ONE TRAIN NOT RUNNING GO TO NINETY SIXTH STREET". At least, I think that is what they are saying when they talk. I don't think anybody knows for sure.

-The sandwiches all have mayonaise on them. I think that deep down, in the depths of my soul, I have never particularly cared for mayonaise, but I tolerated it, because it's pretty easy to ignore. However, I've never liked it, and I never actually voluntarily put it on anything that I prepare, unless I am forced by a recipe. Thus, I am far from pleased when I walk into a sandwich shop to discover that everything has mayo on it. (Actually, I think my boyfriend has brought out the latent mayonaise hatred in me, because he really, really, hates mayonaise, and thus I feel justified in my own dislike for it. This does not mean, however, that I will ever start to like American football.)

-Everything costs more than you could ever possibly imagine that it could cost. The price of a Greek hotel room is enough to buy you a British sandwich. And it'll have mayonaise on it.

-Shakespeare's Globe is honestly my favorite place on earth. I saw A Comedy of Errors today- stood through the whole thing, because that's what the riffraff did in Shakespeare's day, and I am trying to stay on a riffraff budget. But my feet didn't hurt at all, and afterwards I went to the gift shop and purchased a myriad of unneccessary objects with Shakespeare quotes on them. (Example: Eraser with fake spots of blood that reads "Out, Damned Spot!")

-I arrived in Victoria Station at 1:30am, after a harrowing experience with Ryanair. I stepped out into the street, noticed the car was coming at me from the WRONG DIRECTION, yelped, and made a mad dash back to the pavement, bags flying. Now I know which way to look, but I still have to look in the non-British direction as well, just to make sure there's not some foreigner driving on the right. In Britain, the phrase "deer in the headlights" should be changed to "American in the headlights".

-I keep taking pictures of things like Big Ben. Why? I already have a large store of pictures of Big Ben from the last time I was in England. I do not look at them. I do not need more of them. Big Ben, like the Parthenon and the Empire State Building and the Eiffel Tower, has been photographed enough. The whole point of going to London is to see things like Big Ben, instead of just looking at pictures of them. But I still take the damn pictures.