London

Hello from California! I'm finally back after spending a great last couple of days in London. I've never been to Europe before, and landing in London after spending 7 weeks in developing Asian countries was amazing. I appreciated the cleanliness, the order, and the fact that everything was written in English and English ONLY. But even more than that, I was totally blown away by London as a city, particularly on my first day in town when the weather was postcard perfect.

I stayed at a great hostel called Palmers' Lodge, located 4 Underground stops of Green Park (Buckingham Palace), and a short distance from the Abbey Road studios. I saw the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace, walked through Green Park and St. James Park, Westminster Abbey, the South Bank of the Thames, the London Eye, the Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, the City of London, and Shakespeare's Globe on the first day. What struck me most about London was how walkable and pleasant it is. It's a city of 14 million people, but it is not overrun by traffic and pollution. It felt to me very much like a giant version of Boston, but with fewer cars.

I visited the British Museum on the second day. The museum is world famous, and has some of the most famous artifacts in the world, including the Rosetta Stone and large pieces of the Parthenon. The British essentially stole cool stuff from all the countries they ruled at one time or another and brought it back to the Museum, free for the public to see. There was a particularly large collection of items from the Ancient Egyptians, Romans, and Greeks. I thought it was very cool (especially since it's free in a very expensive city). After visiting the museum, I went back to the hostel, then took the short walk to the intersection where the "Abbey Road" album cover photo was taken, and headed to bed early to get ready for the the long day of travel to come.

Finally, yesterday I got on a 747 bound for New York and after several delays, made it on to my flight to San Francisco despite running to the check-in counter 25 minutes before takeoff. I've lost 20 pounds, my hair is a mess and I'm still suffering the effects of the food poisoning I got in India, but this has been an incredible trip, and I'll have good memories of it forever.

India

Hello from cool, pleasant London! I haven't updated the blog in a while, so I have a lot of gaps to fill in. First of all, though, for those of you who didn't know this, I was not planning to be in London this early on, and the rest of the group--Matt, Sanjana, and Dimitar--is still traveling in South India right now and will come to London next Tuesday. Between constantly being sick and dealing with the least developed country I've been in yet, I got so desperate to get to a developed country and get healthy that I changed my flights to come here early. I'll be here for two full days, today and tomorrow, and then fly home to San Francisco to complete my around-the-world trip on Wednesday.

My stay in India included a few days in Mumbai (Bombay), followed by a 32 hour train ride to the southern city of Coimbatore. Here are some of my memories:

--Watching a Bollywood movie in Bollywood. The movie sucked (Sanjana agrees, and as the only person who could understand what they were saying, here opinion carries a lot of weight), but we all had fun and I got a nice nap in the middle. My favorite part was the final chase scene, which involved a guy running along the top of a freight train carrying coal laced with explosives and guys shooting at him with fully automatic machine guns, culminating in a swordfight and him saving a girl who was strapped to the front of the locomotive.

--Getting recruited-twice-to be extras in Bollywood movies (since we're white, except for Sanj). Sanjana got super excited and wanted to go and demand to be an extra even though they wanted white people, but after some family friends told her that we would run a real risk of being arrested on suspicion of working without a work permit and be forced to bribe the cops to get out of jail, we decided against it.

--Matt or Sanjana asking Dimitar if he wanted to go watch a movie to kill some time before our train ride from Mumbai. His response: he immediately turned around, walked across the street, and projectile vomited onto a tree.

--A cool mosque and temple.

--A very crowded beach with very dirty water.

--Beggars.

--Terrible traffic in Mumbai.

--Being stuck on a train, in third class, for 32 hours. Dimitar entertained himself by getting as close as he could to falling off the train as possible.

--Meeting a very nice guy on my flight back to Mumbai who offered to take me to a nice hotel after I asked him for a reccomendation, and who told me on the ride there that Westerners get too worried about getting sick in India--that if they just drink bottled water, eat whatever they want, and don't take malaria pills they'll be alright. I beg to differ.

I'll post pictures soon, but today I'm off to explore London!

End of Beijing

After spending yesterday doing nothing--a tactical move designed to leave something for today, my last in Beijing--I went to the Summer Palace today with a Swede named Daniel who I met in the hostel. The palace was the Chinese emperors' equivalent of Camp David, if the Forbidden City is the equivalent of the White House. The emperors would go there during the summer to hang out and get away from the heat. The Palace is mostly a lake and a lot of trees, so it is cooler than the rest of the city. Daniel and I weren't much into the idea of paying extra to go inside all of the buildings--we've both seen our fair share of temples and palaces in Asia by this point--so we walked around the lake, enjoyed the shade and the breeze, and chatted as we went. It was a nice thing to have saved for the last day. Tomorrow, I leave for Mumbai via Hong Kong at 1:30, so I won't do anything here besides pack up and get breakfast.

An additional tidbit, from last night. Quoted from one of the guys who works here:

"Dave's daily routine: beer, movie, dog, Kung Pao chicken"