London the City

Sorry for the holiday I took when it came to updating the blog. I've been having a wonderful time around the city. Last night we were feeling a little adventurous (Well, I was and unanimously convinced the group) to take the Underground to east London. East London is considered the party section of London, you'll find more clubs and bars there than any other part of London.

We were feeling sure of ourselves and hopeful of the night to come. We got off thinking that we were in the eastside of London only to find out that we were just east of the West End of London. Around the Soho area. Still, it is London, and there were bars and pubs and clubs everywhere. We settled for a pub that was called the 'Green Man.' There were a lot of people outside either smoking or waiting to get in... we found a winner. My friends Petro, Ryan, Kevin and I watched an insane game of soccer, the African Cup of Nations Tournament is going on right now, it was really fun to watch and most of the bar was tuned into the game.

After a few hours of that frenzy we headed back home. Let it be noted that the underground stops running at around midnight so make sure if you go out you know which night buses go back to your place. We got seperated and Kevin and I made it home. Ryan and Petro spent most of it trying to find the bus. They gave up and settled for a casino... that's all I have to say on that subject.

Tonight, since we felt like we conquered the city last night, we are heading out for a bar crawl around Holborn, just east of Soho. We chose a funny bar crawl that looks promising:

http://www.alpc.co.uk/pcrawl9.htm

After the bar crawl we were hoping to get a taste of the local live music venues going on tonight. Timeout London is a great place to go find out about such gigs. They have listings of free stuff to check out around the city. We are heading to the bar 'Catch' tonight after the bar crawl where there is local House music line-up.

Link to the venue: http://www.timeout.com/london/music/event/172864/astral-social-club-team-brick-joseph-scott

Okay, after talking about night life for a while I think I need to give a few interesting facts to show that I've actually been soaking up a lot more than just ale this semester so far...

1.) The Dragon is the unofficial mascot of the City of London. The City of London is much different than London. It makes up around a square mile of London and is made up of a lot of the Financial companies and big players in London. Whats cool is for most of the roads leading into 'the city' there are statues or gates or small gargoyles of Dragons somewhere around the entrance into the square mile 'city of London.' One of the big ones is called the Temple Bar Memorial which is actually really cool to see.



2.) The Monument to the Great Fire of London is a fantastic place to visit when you're here. You can go up to the top and check out the very cool cityscape of London. What a lot of people do not know is the little tidbit concerning the height of it. If the monument were to be laid down flat on the ground, it would land across the street in an alley where the fire actually started. Specifically, the point of it would fall on the location of the old bakery where the fire actually started. The story is: the baker put fire wood next to the oven when the shop closed in the evening for the morning bake the following day. Well, the oven was still on and it started the fire wood pile up in flames and thus the Great Fire of London started burning close to 3/4 of the city with it over the next following days. There are your fun facts for today. Soon coming later.


Till next time...