BPE - London

Aug 4...
I arrived to London at 8 pm, really looking forward to meet my sister after one year and happy to be back in London, after... 4 years, when I first travelled by myself (not with my family, or with math olympics) and where I had my first backpacking experience going by bus around England.

After going out of the airport, I took the train to Trafalgar Square, where I will meet my sister in front of the National Gallery. We had actually talked by phone some days before that, and I we had decided to meet between 9 and 10 pm in the entrance of the Nat. Gallery... how incredible it is to make an appointment to meet someone in a city on the other side of the world where you have only been once... that's the great thing about travelling I guess!

Anyway, after meeting my sister, hugging each other, we went happily to the hostel where we would stay the first night. After leaving our bags we went to see a friend (where I had stayed the last time I came) at the bar he used to work at. After walking a long time through London streets, we got there, a small bar full of people, crazy london people, and a few latin americans. We stayed there for a while talking to him and his friends, and then already very tired we went back to the hostel to sleep.

Aug 5...

We had decided with my sister that we will depart from London the next day, because she had already have time to go around and I had already been there, so we just had one day to go around. We decided to go to Greenwich where the observatory is, and where you get a really nice view of London.

This pic was taken by a Scottish who was wearing a really nice skirt :p

After Greenwich, we went to Nothing Hill, went out of the station and just walked toward one street with lot of people, colourful houses, and a really nice street market. Wether that was Nothing Hill I am not sure... :p

lots of people...

lots of breads...

lots of vegetables, fruits, grains and...

o(^ワ^)0 ...vegetarian food! 0(^_^)0

and colourful shopping bags you can use as many time as you want!
(in Europe pretty much everywhere if you want a plastic bag you have to pay for it...)

After walking all along this street we end up in the middle of nowhere, so we looked for a station and we head towards Hyde Park (one of the things I like the most about London are obviously its parks, so I definitely wanted to walk around them this time as well!). Just when we went out of the station there was a demonstrarion, we stopped to look at it for a while. There was so many people walking, and you could see there was people from all around the world, all kind of people, from different religions, all walking to protest the bombing of Lebanon, and the no-reaction from the English Government.



We decided to go on, across the parks, where there again all people was resting, playing, taking the sun, talking... people from everywhere, all races, all countries, all clothes... there was a group of muslim women all dressed in black, my sister wanted to take a pic (but at the end we didnt) telling me that they looked so peaceful, in the middle of a park in London... they didn't look like if they were out of place, that's the great thing about London! There is people from pretty much every country in the world living together, in such a wonderful city, and all of them seem to fit there peacefully and in harmony...

After walking across the parks we went to the Big Ben, and there we met the demonstration again...

many people sitted next to the parliament.
Below... the real truth?

After going through the Big Ben, we continued our way toward the hostel along the river and the Bankside...

Capoeiristic picture... I promised my friends from Capoeira I would take a pic doing Capoeira in front of famous places around Europe, so here it begins...

London Eye

I guess after being so long in Japan where everything is so strict, I was happy to see a place for skaters and bikers along the riverfront where they could just do what they like and not be pushed out as in other places...
The pic below is a tree next to this place where they hang broken boards, shoes, etc... a really nice piece of city art I must say. (^_^)

We got to the hostel and picked up our backpacks, and got the subway to the north of London, to start our hitchhiking experience around UK....
after we went out of the station we walked for a long time trying to reach the beginning of the highway, but it was still far away, and we were in the middle of the city so even when we asked for a lift noone will stop... after it began to get dark we asked how to get to the highway, took a bus and got down at a roundabout before the highway started. It was already dark, and we weren't so sure about what to do, but we were already there so... put out our fingers!
In less than 15 minutes I think a car stopped and told us to get in... not a bad start! He was from Pakistan and he was getting off the highway in the next exit, just before the first service area but at the end he drop us at the service area, even when he seem very tired and would have to drive to the next exit to go back... :)
It was already quite late, and we were already IN the M1 highway, so we decided to spend the night there... it was not going to rain, and we didnt want to call so much attetion so we just went behind a sign, put the plastic in the floor, and went to sleep in our sleeping bags... at the beginning we kind of looked at each car that passed by, not sure if it was actually ok to sleep just there in the service area, but then just fell sleep with the sky us our roof.