The Big Book of British Smiles: Part 1

On August 23, 2005 I landed at Heathrow International Airport in England. My journey had begun. The journey, as I previously stated, would be a hunt for the "real killers" of the July 7 terrorist attacks. But since the British police already arrested people for that I moved onto plan B: get shitty and have fun.

The night I arrived it was immediately time to "crunk it up" as the kids say these days. Evan and I decided to hit some pubs as he would tell me of his adventures in Italy the week before. Immediately I realized that I liked this city. It felt like a shorter of New York in that everything was so Americanized and the streets were so busy and full of life. When I say Americanized I mean that many of the businesses were American like Starbucks, McDonald's, KFC, Gap, etc. That night we actually ate at a restaurant called The Texas Embassy. It was a texmex place and it was alright. It was just interesting that we were eating in the old Texas embassy because, as you may or may not know, those greedy bastards were their own country for a little while. A few pubs later we capped off the night as I was very tired from my day of traveling.

My first full day there and what happened? It rained. What do you expect? But luckily, it was the only day of rain in a week. We were very typical in night one (drinking) and we were even more typical in day 1. We toured the National Gallery which contained a whole assload of art, most of which was very religious. And of course, I tired of it quite quickly considering most of it looks the same. So we took interest in some and feigned interest in others and decided we should take care of some business that our friends and family of the female variety would most certainly enjoy: shopping. And not just any shopping, shopping at Harrod's.

Yea. I had never heard of Harrod's before but Evan assured me that every girl on the planet knows of it. We rolled in after taking the Underground over to the world's biggest department store and started wandering through. First we explored the ground floor which displayed fine men's clothing (suits, ties, expensive clothing we love but can't afford...or have a place to wear it to). At that point I told Evan that whoever said, "money doesn't buy happiness" must have been on crack because I could solve so many problems and buy so much cool stuff with no financial worries. I was also reminded how poor I am. Thanks Harrod's

Anyway, this place was huge. It was more sprawling than a pair of Kirstie Allie's panties...minus the sweatstains and pubic hair. This place had not one, but two markets. Complete with every kind of food imaginable. Seafood, chocolate, delis, butcher shop, etc. However, we did not eat in there as I would have had to sell my left thigh to the butcher just to pay for a sandwich. After that we went upstairs and explored the huge toy store and the "common folk" clothiers as well as the "luxury washrooms" complete with minority towel guys. I forget what you call them but why aren't there ever white dudes in those things? That's racism damnit! I want to be able to say, "where's my damn breath mint, honkey!"

Anyhoo, after buying a couple gifts for others we decided to hightail it out of there and grab some food. Which brings me to our first picture. We ate at this place called EAT. There are a few somewhat fancy sandwich shops in London and this was one of them. So I felt it was appropriate that I take this picture.

After filling up on some vommunition, we headed across town toward the London Bridge area (the actual bridge is in Arizona). After walking through dark alleyways along the docks we finally found what we were looking for - a wine tour. This place was called Vinopolis. It cost about 16 pounds and we learned how every region in the world makes their wine and how each is different. We also learned how to taste wine. I love learnding! Not only did we get six free glasses of wine to "test", but we also were given a free Bombay Sapphire drink coupon. For some reason there was a Bombay bar in the middle of the tour. I'm not exactly sure why there was but when the tender makes the cran-bombay drink he made me, you don't ask questions. Needless to say, Evan and I passed out upon returning home. This made for an early rise the next day...and a little headache.

My second full day started with a walk northbound to the British Museum. Lots of old artifacts and what not including probably one of the most important finds in history, the Rosetta Stone. After gawking at that we spent the next two hours roaming the seemingly neverending rooms full of "stuff". At one point when we were in the gun room of some type we noticed a tour near us. We couldn't quite gauge the language they were speaking. I was guessing some kind of weird French at first. Evan was hellbent on German. I said it didn't sound angry enough to be German so we compromised on some random eastern European language like Romania or something. We were also discussing this quite loudly right in front of them. That could have explained the stares we were getting. Well that and we're so hot.

After a frappucino, as I was exhausted, we decided to have at the London Eye. This is just a massive ferris wheel basically where you can get really good views of the city. I took many a picture on my queasy ride including this, this, and this. Lovely huh. After that I felt somewhat nauseas so we decided to check out the Salvadore Dali museum which was right next to the Eye. The opening hallway to the sculptures and paintings contained quotes of his written on the walls including my favorite. Duh, what else did you expect? I took a few pictures of some of the sculptures as Dali is my favorite artist and apparently I wasn't allowed to as Evan pointed out a sign on the wall indicating as such. To which I replied, "they can kiss the fattest part of my ass." Which is doubly humorous considering I'm anything but fat.

Our day was not done as we headed back over the bridge to gawk at Big Ben which is surprisingly not a Teiko digital sports watch yet (you'd need to have watched a lot of old South Park to get that reference). Also, Parliament wasn't in session so we didn't venture in there. They're on holiday, or "vacation" to us Yanks, until October. So we moseyed on into the Westminster Abbey. Here's the side we entered and here's the side we exited. In the middle we saw the tombs of an assload of people including some famous ones including William Shakespeare, Mary Queen of Scots, King Henry VIII, Winston Churchill, and Charles Dickens among many others. I also stood in the spot that the new king or queen gets coroneted in. I felt the divine intervention for a moment and yelped out, "I'm the king of th e world!" Ok, maybe I didn't but looking back on it, that'd have been pretty damn funny...and rude. Probably why I didn't do it. On our way back toward the hotel I found this restaurant so naturally I had to take a picture.

After the Abbey it was time to get our dinner on and forget everything we learned that day with beer. The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.

Day 3 started off with a trip northbound again. This time we ventured to King's Cross. If you don't remember it's where the Underground bombings took place. We took the tube there and had no problems. It seems the people there are hard as nails. They just went about their business and it didn't seem like anyone was phased by the bombings at all. Very ballsy of them.

We checked out the British Library that morning. No, that's not a typo. Evan told me they had some interesting pieces of parchment in there including one of the original copies of the Magna Carta, some very early pressings of the Bible, as well as original writings of music by Chopin, Bach, Mozart, and The Beatles. Not to mention the original print of Alice In Wonderland. Sort of neat but soon we both agreed our alcohol dependency was playing us. We walked across the street to a pub called The Euston Flyer.

The food, contrary to popular belief, was quite tasty and the local beers we drank were awesome. We spent a little over two hours there drinking and yapping about whatever and trying to figure out how in the hell the game of cricket is played and scored. It was on the big screens and we just couldn't for the life of us figure this thing out. It was like baseball but thrown into a blender and then spat out. Apparently the matches can go on for days, too. It's an absolutely ridiculous sport and at no point did I feel like I was watching a sport. Hell, they play in sweaters for Christsake! This is even sissier than golf!

So we said goodbye to the Flyer and our extremely cute bartender (I can still see her face) and headed down to the London Tower, which of course, used to be a dungeon. As soon as we walked toward the turnstiles we were given a history lesson in tour form from a Beefeater. (A Beefeater is a guard of the Tower and you must have served in the military for at least 22 years as well as other requirements I can't remember.) He was very animated and explained how the Tower and its grounds held prisoners until they were beheaded up on a hill about a half mile away.

And I'm sure you're wondering (you lush) if these Beefeaters are the same as the gin. Well, yes they are. Beefeater gin is the oldest distilled gin in England. And the reason they're called what they are is because the people that were imprisoned in the Tower were always the wealthy. These rich sumbitches would then pay the guards to keep them as comfortable as possible so the guards could afford to eat very well. When they went into town the poor commoners would see them and call them "beefeaters" because they could afford to eat meat while the townspeople could only afford turnips and other gross psuedo vegetables.

But enough with the history lesson. On to what all the girls care about - the family jewels. (Read: hehehehehehehehe, sweet) Seriously, though. The biggest diamond in the world (which is on a scepter), the crowns of kings and queens and other royal expensive crap were in one of the buildings on the grounds. Basically, all the stuff that girls go ga-ga over. I'm sure there's a pearl necklace joke in here somewhere but I can't seem to find it. I guess I'm slipping.

As Evan and I left we noticed tourists from other Euro countries trying to take pictures of the Tower from the outside. They were taking forever to set up their shots so I said, "Evan!" and he stopped, posed and I took the picture all in about four and a half seconds. At which point I yelled, "That's how you take a f#$kin picture!" Yes, we were quite American. Dinner and more pubs followed before we passed out again.

--Day 4 and our exciting conclusion, next column--