London with pictures

The past few days have been pretty good. I've been having a lot of training, and doing a lot of learning and reading, so I haven't had too many substantial projects yet, but next week should be more fruitful in that regard. Yesterday, some of us interns met up after work and hung out for a bit. It turned out that there's a little crowd of Germans, so I hung out with them for a while, and ensured that I won't be forgetting my German while I'm here in London.


Today was a fairly relaxed day. Luckily, and unlike some of my colleagues in other departments, I didn't have to head into work this weekend, so I was able to get myself lost in London for a few hours. I headed out pretty late, because I spent most of the morning and early afternoon doing little things around here, updating my resume for meetings with directors and managing directors as part of my internship, etc.

I took off, and went to London Bridge. I took a couple pictures in almost the same locations as when I came in December, if you go back you can probably compare some of the pictures!











I walked around the City of London fairly aimlessly. However, here's a quick lesson on London geography. Greater London consists of a lot of little boroughs and "towns", similar to how New York has the Bronx, Queens, etc. One of these little subdivisions is the real "City of London", which is only about a square mile in size, right in the center of Greater London. All of these other little pieces of Greater London, such as Westminster, Canary Wharf (where I work), Lewisham (where I live), Chelsea, etc. actually larger than the actual City of London, but are part of the Greater London area. Interesting, huh?

Anyway, I wandered around the City of London, and then meandered my way across the River Thames (pronounced "temz", oddly enough) over the Tower Bridge, and found myself at some sort of Turkish festival. I stuck around for a little bit, tried some grilled lamb, as well as some less than delicious yogurt drink, and then went on my way.




















I continued along the River Thames on the "Thames Path", which took me in the right direction, towards home. Eventually, I made it to a DLR station (Docklands Light Rail), which I took to the end station, and then I caught a bus for the remainder of the journey.

In London, we use the Oyster card to get around. No idea how they settled on that name, but it's the easiest way to pay for your travels. You can either use it to pay discounted fare prices, or get week / month passes. In my experience so far, the week pass is barely worth it for the commute to and from work, but once you add in the added freedom, and extra little trips you end up taking to go shopping, etc., then it seems like the week ticket is the way to go.

Also, the Amazon.co.uk doesn't seem to have quite the same selection as the US version, but I guess I'll have to make do with what I have. I'm not sure if they can beat Amazon for price or price/quality, but I suppose that the "best" way to go shopping for a couple new shirts would be to go to a real brick&mortar store. I passed by a couple today on my excursion, and many of them seemed to have sales going on...

I think tomorrow, I'm going to go try to find an authentic curry or Chinese place in the area to spice up my palate.