Wow I am really behind with my writing!! Ok so let's get into it: Jan 9 Pete woke up early for work and I left a few hours after him. I rode to the cathedral which was really beautiful. They had a leaflet for £1 which gave a self guided tour of the church, I took one although I didn't pay (I put it back though so no harm done!) And I saw everything but they had a small exhibit but I wanted to get going to the veralium (something like that..the Roman name for st albans) museum which opened at 10 so I left. I rode through both adjoining parks which were pretty. I asked a local how to get to the museum and he told me a bunch of directions and then said don't get lost! And I didn't!! I passed Ye olde fighting cocks which is supposedly the oldest pub in England and gets its name from the fact that it used to be a cockpit (its a rotunda building).oh and in the town center there is a pub called the cock! I know cock here means rooster, but come on its still funny when you see a public place called that!! So The park with the museum had a lake and some Roman ruins. I spent several hours in the museum, seeing all the Roman artifacts and coins. They had some awesome mosaics and wall paintings and human skeletons. Even one of an infant. Plenty of little kid school groups again but I mostly avoided them. They were actually really obedient when watching the short film at the beginning!! So by the time I left it was dark so no point to try and check out the ruins in the park. I then called Pete and asked if he wanted to go out to dinner and he said yes so I tried to make my way back to the cathedral for the exhibit first then I was planning on going back to his but I didn't recognize the park in the dark so I got very lost and rode in circles. I eventually asked someone who pointed me in the right direction. So at the cathedral there was a service of some sort going on so I felt a bit awkward about being in there, so I left after a short while. I then decided to call Pete and have him meet me in the center cause he had some role playing thing he had to go to at 8, and it was like 530 by this point. So we went to O'neills and chatted. It was our first formal speaking! So I don't know if he was just annoyed with me from the day before, or tired from work or generally not interested in what I had to say, but I found it hard to just have a normal flow of convo. But what we did speak about was his job, he teaches middle school (whatever its called here) and hes not a big fan of it, even though he's only just started in October. I don't blame him, kids suck at that age, id go mad too! He is from the north island of new Zealand. he took the euro rail and went around Europe with it for a few weeks. He stayed 1 night in the main city in several countries (Prague, Berlin, Amsterdam etc) then hopped on the train the next day. To each their own but I don't really see the point in that. Why tire yourself out with all that traveling? Is it worth it to just spend 1 day in a whole country, and just 1 city at that? But hey if he thought it was worth it thats all that matters. So then we talked about this role playing thing he's into. Basically people in this club meet at a pub once a week and tell each other to act out a part in their fantasy story and it has a plot and a mystery that you have to solve. Sounds a bit strange to me. He invited me to that session that night but I said no, that is not my thing lol. So he went off to the pub for the meeting and I went back to his. I again went to bed right before he came back and then he left before I woke up the next morning so didn't get to say goodbye. We have since left each other positive feedback so all is well :-) Jan 10: I packed up the air mattress to the best of my ability (aka not well) and then set off. I had downloaded a self guided walking tour of the town so I did that for a few hours. It also included the veralium park so I got to see the Roman walls, hypocaust, and mosaic. and also there was a roman theatre excavated with a temple next to it, so that was real cool. i think it said that there was only one other one found in england (and i dont think it was referring to chester cause this was much more original that the chester one..and anyway this was a THEATRE, not amphitheatre, so no blood and gore!). In the town there were also some old buildings, including a clock tower and almshouse. When I finished I had lunch in a courtyard, then went to the st albans museum. They had a temporary exhibit about life in the town in the 60s, so I spent my whole time there. I was really enraptured by it! They had old childrens books and toys, and an old tv set playing the first episode of Dr who with an old chair to sit and watch it on, and a newspaper with the front page of the moon landing in 69! They had old pics of st albans, and old music playing. And I found out that the zombies were from st albans! And of course they had some 60s outfits, and the old British coins before the decimal conversion. So yeah I really liked that exhibit but I couldn't stay to see the rest of the museum cause I had to get going to London, left at 3:08 pm. Getting out of st albans was no problem, but it really isn't very bike friendly! But I guess that's cause the roads are so skinny, cars can hardly make it by on their own. So my ride to London was uneventful on the a5 ( I say that because I can't remember it) and it got dark when I was like halfway there. so im still going on the a5, then i see this insanely scary hill in front of me. i thought no way am i going to make it up that! but luckily i needed to turn at the roundabout right before it. but unfortunately i made a very bad boo boo and turned in the wrong direction and went for about a mile ot two until i realized i was going in the wrong direction. so i had to turn around and then i see the sign that says to central london and the distance marker (there actually were a lot of signs with distances to london on them! but for the rest of the country, it seems people dont need to know how much further to their destination!). so from then on i didnt get lost. I approached the London outer boroughs pretty quickly, so there was lots of traffic. I stopped off at lidl and bought more choc duo and bread and I was tempted to eat it in the parking lot again but I wanted to try and make the cirque show that night, so I kept going. I rode up a street called shoot up hill as I approached closer to the main London area (edgware). According to "the street names of London" book its named that because it "shoots up steeply." I somehow think it has a different history. i saw a dead animal in the middle of the a5, couldnt tell if it was a fox or somebodys dog. once I started getting into more central London and off the a5, that's when problems started to happen. I kept making the wrong turn, then over shooting my next turn and all this. i even found the other end (the top) of that scary hill i avoided, i wondered if i would have cut out all that time and distance if i had just rode up it. but i probably would have had a heartache half way up, so i think its better i took the long way! so anyway I stopped on the side of the road to check Google maps to see where I was, when another biker stopped and asked if I needed directions. So he told me how to get to south kensington, which was a longer but easier route than I had written out. when i got to the south kensington area i had to deal with some annoying hills. a real sexy cyclists bypassed me. i swear cyclists have the sexist bodies, skinny frames and shaved (sometimes) and muscular legs mmmm! so i tried to catch up to him to chat but he was no match for me, on a road bike with drop handlebars and me with my touring bags! So I went straight to the royal Albert theatre, was able to pick up a ticket to the show, called totem, for £25 restricted view, and then I went to the hostel and checked in. arrived around 7ish, did 28.02 mph, max 26, avg 8. The reception guy was super nice. Then I had about 45 min to get food so I went around the corner (on earls court rd possibly) and went to subway. I had a foot long but was still hungry! But I headed off for the hall again, and got there with 10 min to spare! The view was better than I thought, the guy in the box office told me I would be able to see about half the show, but cirque stages take up the entire floor space, so most of the action was in the middle, so I could see fine with the exception of a handrail blocking my view slightly. So the show was amazing as always. I think the most impressive act was a group of women on unicycles with really long saddle posts, and they were balancing bowls on their heads the whole time and they would line up and each put a bowl on their foot and then throw it up and catch it on their heads! It was amazing and they were so in sync with each other, even the rocking back and forth motion to keep their balance! Then one got in the middle and the others rode around her and as they passed she flicked bowls onto their heads with her foot, and she even flung it behind her, without looking, and it landed on their heads every time! Quite talented!! This was a show about nature, so they had men dressed as frogs, jumping on a trampoline. And they had apes and had an evolution of humans sequence. The modern human was a business man and the neanderthal and chimps ripped his suitcase apart and his clothes off (the best part) and started fighting him. I didn't really understand it actually, but you're not really supposed to lol. They had some sexxxy ass men as always!! Native Americans wearing only loinclothes, guys on the beach who later broke out into break dancing, and a human disco ball!!! He was an acrobat, so he would drop from the ceiling on a rope and then spin and the light shone on him and he lit up the room just like a disco ball. It was awesome!! There was another sequence with native Americans, a man and woman and they were figure skating on a very small circle of ice. I thought for sure someone is going to fall off!! But of course they didn't. There were more flying acrobatics, between a man and a woman, the guy was looking good in his tight pants and no shirt, but at the finale when all the acts came out on stage I saw he had a hairy chest so that's a no go. But all in all the show was great, the intermission was a half hour! So it didn't end till 1030, and I was pretty tired by that point. During the intermission though I wandered around the hallways. They have photos on every floor of previous performances. The bars were really fancy and no doubt expensive for drinks. There were even private boxes in the seating area (and I mean more like at a stadium, not the boxes you get in theatres) so this was quite the exquisite venue. After the show I went to the hostel and plopped right down in bed and went to sleep very shortly afterwards. When I walked in and put lance out in the backyard, I could hear lots of people chattering away in the common area. A part of me wanted to go mingle but I figured id do it another night since I was there for a week! Ok bed time now will have to cover more tomorrow!
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