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Wednesday 18 June 2014

The Weekend and Also, My Parents Came to Visit


Friday

I had to line up a lot of work because my parents were coming to visit so it was a pretty busy week. I started on Saturday and had applied for work for the next week. My job apparently decided I was working too much (I see I’m taking time off the next week, they see a really tired employee come day six) so I ended up getting the Friday off before my final Saturday shift. Sarah and I saw this possibility coming (she also had Friday off) and had decided to use the magical world of StubHub (www.stubhub.co.uk) to see if we could get half-decent, day-of tickets to see One Direction. That’s right. We woke up to find that tickets had dipped to our pay limit (we were going Sunday already so we weren’t going to pay more than a certain amount to see them Friday). The boys were playing Wembley Stadium for three nights and this was their first show. Our tickets were in Standing Yellow, which was in a back corner of the football pitch.

I met Sarah at Oxford Circus at 3:00pm to go grab the tickets. In Canada, when you get tickets off StubHub you get them emailed to you and you just print them off. Here you go to StubHub’s last minute ticket center. Which meant we got actual tickets! They were really cool. They had One Direction’s faces on it! We then walked to find some food which ended up leading us on the scenic route to Baker Street, where we eventually settled for some little cafeteria. I got some crappy lasagna (my mom makes the best lasagna all other lasagnas suck) and fries. Sigh. Then we headed up on the train to Wembley. You can always tell who is going to a One Direction concert because they are female and probably wearing their faces everywhere. We weren’t, but only because I left my hoodie in Calgary (and Sarah’s One Direction duct tape). The scene at the train station was madness. There were girls everywhere. The gates wouldn’t open until 5:00pm so we had half an hour in the craziness. That being said, the view from the train station was pretty cool. The stadium is in full view across the pathway, there were double decker buses riding on the bridge in front of it, and a giant One Direction billboard plastered across the front.

We waited outside longer than necessary, until Sarah realized that Wembley Stadium was outside. It was organized chaos to get in. We all had specific entry gates and they would only let about fifty people in at a time. The arena itself is huge. Normally the area with concessions is jampacked but it was so big in there it didn’t seem very busy. We sat on some couches we found and listened to a radio program that was recording from the stadium. Everything got pushed back half an hour so it was a lot of sitting. Their opening act, 5 Seconds of Summer, also opened when we saw them in Vancouver. We skipped them then, too.  Finally, at 8:00pm we went to our standing section to wait for the concert. They played some really fun music while we waited, like Bruno Mars’ Locked Out of Heaven, which definitely made the waiting easier. Then it started. I screamed and danced and freaked out. It was good times. I love Harry Styles. And I’d get to see it again Sunday!

Saturday

The next day was a bit rough, mostly because we didn’t get in until late as we missed the last train and had to take the night bus. I had to get up at 10am to work. When I’d finished at 8pm, Sarah and I headed to Trafalgar Square to meet my parents, who had just come in from Canada. They were jetlagged and tired and had been walking around all day so all we did was walk to Covent Garden so I could grab some Shake Shack to eat. It was a tasty burger.

Sunday

                Sarah, Sandra and I had all cleared our schedules to hang out with my parents all day. We started off with Sunday buffet brunch at Babur, the Indian place Sarah and I had eaten at nearly two months before. We were cautious not to fill up (Sarah and I have learned from our mistakes). From there we took the train down to London Bridge. My parents really like walking, and I don’t, so I tried to find a happy medium. The walk from London Bridge to Waterloo takes about forty-five minutes and has a lot of nice things to see. On the walk you pass Southwark Cathedral, Shakespeare’s Globe, Tate Modern, the Millennium Bridge, Oxo Tower, ITV Studios, BFI, and more. My dad wanted to see The Old Vic, so we walked a little past the station so I could show him. I also freaked everyone out by pointing to a restaurant and giving the exact date Harry Styles ate there. Oops.

                From Waterloo we headed to my parents’ hotel, the London Edition. First we stopped to pick up our second round of One Direction tickets. We were in the stands this time, in Club Wembley. Everyone but me and Sandra had a nap at my parents’ hotel. We got to Wembley Stadium around 5:30pm this time and there was far less of a crowd waiting outside. We walked the whole arena again before grabbing some surprisingly tasty pizza and some not so tasty popcorn. We skipped 5 Seconds of Summer again. They announced that the boys would be coming on at 7:45pm, but it was more like 8:30pm again. This time Sarah and I could see the whole stage, though the boys themselves were very very small. That’s the problem with arenas. There’s not really a good seat. If you’re close, you can’t see all the action. But if you’re in the stands, you’re far away just because of the size of the place.

                This concert was even more fun than Friday’s. I danced around and screamed and acted like a fourteen year old. It was really great. Did I mention I love Harry Styles? We had to catch the train because everyone needed to get up early. Again, it was organized chaos. They didn’t want everyone rushing the station so they held us back until everything was clear. The police were so well-prepared. They brought a microphone and a record player and started playing One Direction songs through the mic! It was funny and thoughtful of them.

 

Monday

                I was working Monday night but I had the morning and afternoon off to hang out with my parents. My dad had booked a Rock & Roll Tour of London in the morning. It was very informative. It took us all around Soho, Highbury & Islington, and Camden, showing us many sights of the British music scene. They tailor the tour to your interests, which is good and bad. Nobody said they liked The Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin, so we, unfortunately, did not hear much about them. I said Joy Division, though, and they actually found a way to incorporate them into the tour, which was impressive.

                Our tour finished around 12:30pm in Trafalgar Square. We went to Covent Garden to meet Sarah and introduce my parents to the wonders of Nando’s. They were impressed. Afterwards Sarah went back to the flat and my parents and I went shopping briefly, before I went back to their hotel to get ready for work and they walked down to Harrod’s.

 

Tuesday

                Another early morning as Sarah, Sandra and I headed to Victoria to meet up with my parents. We had booked a coach tour of Stonehenge and Bath. The coach wasn’t completely full, which was nice. Everyone mostly slept on the drive out to Stonehenge. Even our guide stayed quiet, after acknowledging the fact that everyone was probably going to fall asleep. Good call. We got to Stonehenge in about an hour and a half and had an hour to look around. The tickets were included in our tour, as were the audio guides. You have to take a shuttle partway up to Stonehenge and then walk for a bit. Sometimes I really like audioguides but today I was just not in the mood to listen, so Sarah and I just walked around. You’re not allowed to get close anymore, because people suck. They would try to push the rocks over or deface them in some way. That, and the ground is unstable after all these centuries. Stonehenge has actually been a tourist attraction since the 17th century or something like that.

                It was pretty cool to walk around something so old, but it’s also kind of overrated. I thought it would be bigger or more imposing; that I would somehow feel insignificant when standing there. But honestly, it’s just some old rocks in a cool pattern. My dad thought we were going to Easter Island and kept asking where the giant heads were. After we took the shuttle back down to the Visitor’s Center and went in the exhibition. It was basically a museum dumbing down what was said on the audioguide. What is Stonehenge, why did they build it, etc. My favorite room was a room of theories about Stonehenge’s existence. It’s up for debate and I like conspiracy theories like that. Then we were back on the bus to head to Bath.

                The ride to Bath took another hour and we sometimes drove through some countryside villages. I was more excited to see Bath than Stonehenge. The city is beautiful. The buildings are a mix of Roman and Georgian architecture and it’s a really cool combination. They also primarily use these kindof gold-beige stones which are so pretty. When we got off the bus our guide took us on a walking tour of the city. We saw the exterior of the Roman Baths, the Royal Crescent (which I found really cool) and some other famous landmarks. Mostly I just really liked walking around the city, taking it all in. I don’t think I could spend more than a day there, but it sure is nice to look at.

                We had forgotten to book tickets to the Roman Baths with our tour except for Sandra who booked separately from us. By chance, there was one token to enter left over, so Sarah and I used the two to see the baths. They were really cool. It’s basically the ruins of a spa. After walking through it they have a miniature of what the baths would have looked like. It was really cool to see how it would have looked. It really did look like a spa with a bunch of swimming pools and hot tubs.

                After we finished at the baths (we skipped the audioguide again) we met up with my parents and went looking for a bite to eat. We visited a pub which actually had some really good chicken wings. It’s really hard to find good hot wings in England. They are my favorite. But these were fine. We did a quick walk through the shopping area which turned into us almost missing our bus. There wasn’t anything left to the tour after that, just the drive back to London.

Wednesday

                Sarah and I spent the morning at our new flat (more on that in another post). I met my parents to show them the new neighborhood and then we headed to Camden. My parents had taken an interest in it after our Rock & Roll tour so I took them to the high street so they could check out the markets. It, unsurprisingly, wasn’t really their scene. We did shop at H&M for a bit and grabbed some lunch at Wetherspoon’s. My dad tried the veggie burger and loved it. My mom tried the purple drink and loved it. Then we headed down to Oxford Circus where we shopped at H&M (again), Debenham’s and TK Maxx.

                Sandra met us down at Oxford Circus and we went to supper at Belgo, the mussels restaurant. I’d been to the one in Bromley with Sarah but this time we went to Covent Garden. The food was just as good (my mother is hard to please and she really liked the mussels) but the restaurant was really crowded and loud. Oh well, it was still a very satisfying final meal with my parents.

               

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