Im Bored, Lets go to Wimbledon

I cant remember if we had 2 days left at this point or 1. I think 1. Anyway...time for tourism....

Tower of London. Could have been wayyyy cooler if the moat was still there. They filled in the moat with grass. Nonetheless, a castle in downtown London is still pretty damn cool. Salt Lake City has a Cinderella Temple.
London Bridge part 2. The original one burned down. This one is still cool, especially with birds flying in from of it.

We happened to walk by Southbank. Its one of the more famous London skatespots. I dont wanna sound bitter, but after coming from Barcelona. This spot sucked. SO BAD. What you cant see is h0w bad the ground is. Giant cracks everywhere. Not one part of me wanted to skate here. Where is the pub?

London phone booths are rad. Why are there even phone booths anymore?As i said in a previous blog. The worst hotel i have ever stayed in. Thats a huge deal. The worst EVER. Look at this shithole. Its still ended up costing $90. For sure i got 5 diseases. London is not cheap
After waking up from a horrible night sleep we had nothing planned. Why not go to Wimbledon. After taking the train to the outskirts of town and walking a mile we came to Wimbledon. It cost 20lbs ($40) to go in. We decided to just walk by.
Grandpas and Grandmas love WimbledonAfter Wimbledon we got lost and ended up back at the "Bloody River Thames" (in a british accent)After getting lost in the English countryside, we finally found the train station. For some reason these electric boxes looked cool?

Another Day in London

After a long day of sightseeing we went to Victoria Station to meet our rad new Spanish friend Claudia. She was in town for this snow show thing. She was an amazing Barcelona discotech guide and showed us whats it like to stay out till 7am after skating 5 days straight.
We had some time to spare at the station so Drew was my test subject for a couple photos. Victoria Station is a super busy train/tube station. We ended up there and few times and its nuts how packed the place is. Constantly.

After getting Claudia situated in her pink hotel room it was time to go out. Im gonna have Drew write a guest blog about what went down at this phone booth. To make a long story short this black dude came up to Drew while taking this photo and thought he was Claudias Pimp. He asked Drew to order him up a girl. So funny.
The next day we had to switch hotels. Claudia helped us with our bags. Little did we know what awaited us at our new hotel.
The Silver Bullets need one of these.On the way to the hotel we swung by this amazing little cafe'. One of the classiest joints i saw in Europe.
Next door to the cafe they sold little steamed parcels of deliciousness.
After stuffing the bags in the hotel we had a hard time deciding what circus to go to.
Instead of making a tough desicion we decided on something that was alot easier. Bangers and Mash.

Sheckler

Pro's can hate all they want on Sheckler...Hes better than 99% of them. This is one of the heaviest parts ive seen in a long long time.

$2.20

I went to the gas station today and this is what i saw. This just proves how fucking corrupt OPEC and the oil companies are. They can charge whatever the hell they want. In Cali this summer I was paying $4.56 a gallon. Do you think it costs them one more cent to produce gas whether they charge $2.20 a gallon or $4.56, the answer is NO. This is going into some rich Saudi's pocket. I cant believe how clear it is. Regardless, I am a little sad at the same time. Low gas prices are nice. When is usually costs $65.00 to fill my truck tonight it costs $31.00. However, the only thing that is gonna save this world from American SUV's is mega high gas prices. Now every soccer mom and wanna be rapper driving an Escalade is gonna keep driving to work solo.

Ruby SoHo

Day 2 in London was a fun one, no real plans, just walk around. We got on the tube in the morning and got off at Oxford Circus which is the SoHo area of town. This area is super cool. It reminded me of Georgetown, DC. Alot of higher scale boutiques and alot of good places to eat. Many photos of bands you see from London are shot in the SoHo area of town. Its pretty hip.When we 1st got there we went in this really cool over priced photo gallery of musicians.




After walking around for a while we decided to go look at a building. Buckingham Palace.On the way to the palace we came through this really cool park. I guess this was Princess Diana's favorite place to walk the dog or something.

Since it was fall it photographed well.
Buckingham Palace was just another building really. Something about it made you want to get a beer.

Metallica

Ok, listen to my night. We went to this bar to watch the game. Its across the street from the Delta Center(utah jazz stadium)...anyway in the end of the 3rd quarter of the Redskins game this guy comes up to us and asks us if anyone wants a ticket to metallica. they were playing across the street....so i went. alone. I snuck into the good seats....it was hilarious and sad at the same time. that band used to be so good. now they just kind of suck. they played a few old jams, ended with seek and destroy.....they didnt play sanatarium, for whom the bell tolls, 4 horsemen, or fade to black....

..some other jams:....everything off the black album (of course)...they played Master of Puppets, Battery, One....they played at least 5 new songs, all which suck...I dont know why everyone says the new metallica is good. its not.These photos were with my phone, sorry they suck. 2mp.


This was were my actual seats were. nosebleed. The echo was so bad you couldnt hear a damn thing.
Metallica rolls with 13 semi's for their gear. Their carbon imprint is a little high id say.

Look Honey; Big Ben, Parliment.

Drew and I made it to London. After getting to our crap hotel we decided to be tourists. It was rad. London is impressive, so is how expensive it is. Everything is priced like the US but, 2$= 1pound. Its twice as expensive for everything and anything,We got off the tube at Trafalgar Square, there was a Hindu festival going on. It was cool. We decided to walk towards the Thames river and check out some sites down that way.
Big Ben and Parliment are on the Thames. I love how cites like London and Prague have the old mixed in the with the new.
We walked to the other side of the river. It was freezing. windy, and time for a London beer.

This is the London Eye its called. Its a huge money extractor from tourists. Luckily Drew and I excaped with getting any money extracted from out wallets. This is probably my favorite photo from the entire trip.
From where the Eye is you have a really good view of Parliment. Its pretty photogenic, its had alot of practice.

We made it to Big Ben. I was kind of sick of taking photos of it so i turned the camera the other way.
Lastly, we went to Picadilly Circus...its a super annoying, very American shopping district. This area of town was a mirror image of any US city. Well, except Salt Lake.

Last NIght, Kinda

After an insane week Matt, Lisa, and Fabia had to leave. The forecast looked like rain for the next few days so Drew and I decided to catch a quick flight up to London. I had not been there before so i was super excited. Before we left we had a nice "going away dinner" with our new Spanish friends.We all took the train out to "the rich neighborhood" as Claudia called it.
Jaume had prepared a bunch of stuff for us. The all the Spainiards thought it was hilarious when Drew tried to fry some of the sausage...they kept saying that all Americans love to fry anything, pretty true. The sausage would have been alot better fried and not raw.
There we some guitars laying around so we played some jams
The building had a really cool roof top.
Matt had a super early flight so he and Lisa went home early. The rest of us went to the craziest discotech i have ever seen. I decided not to bring the camera. Anyway, this place was nuts. Enormous and super fun...we ended up getting home at 630am. People were on there way to work. Not awesome considering we had to be up 3 hours later to get out of our hotel.