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I'm a little behind on these posts!
This day I went on a free walking tour that started at my hostel. I love to wander through cities alone but I thought this would be a great way to have a better context for what I was seeing and to see more things at once. It also proved to be a great way to meet people from all over!
We started out by going through an alley that was the inspiration for Nockturn Alley in Harry Potter and to Trafalger square, there there is a national museum and lots of other various history, art, and buildings. It wad here that I learned where the term stuff drink comes from!
So, a long time ago (please excuse the potential lack of accurate facts) there was a man named Admiral Nelson that lead the British Navy. A battle was to be fought between the British and the French and Nelson was worried because France had around 33 ships and he only had 27. He needed to come up with a different way to attack them instead of straight on so he divided his fleet into two and attacked the French from either side. This worked and the British unexpectedly won! Unfortunately, Nelson was killed during this battle from which he was considered a hero. Traditionally bodies are buried at sea by dumping then overboard, but the captain of the ship just could not bring himself to do this with their new war hero. So...he came up with another plan. He found a barrel of rum (or other spirit) under the deck of the ship and stuffed Nelson into it in hopes of preserving him. It was of course necessary to bend his body to fit him in. The British still had another week to get home and were so anxious to celebrate their victory. They went through all of the open barrels of alcohol and scoured the ship to find more. Lone behold, another barrel was found hidden deep into their quarters. They assumed the captain was hiding the good stuff for himself or for a special time so without disturbing the barrel too much they poked holes in the barrel and poured them into cups. They had alcohol, they were happy! Well, I'm sure you can figure out what happened next...when the captain opened the barrel there was no liquid and all decaying, dead body. They tried to get him out and un bend him but he was very stiff. Thus, the sailors had a 'stiff drink'.
We also saw other things like the Buckingham Palace, the Churchill War Rooms, and the Westminster Abbey. It seems so incredible how old some of these buildings are and that they are still standing. Apparently anything that is under 200 years old is considered new.
After the tour we went to a pub together and I got to know some of the people better. Some were from the US but others from France, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Moscow. The tour offered us a discount on tickets to the pub crawl later that night so some of us got tickets! A friend from Michigan, Emily happens to be in London working right now so she met me at the hostel and we went to the pub crawl together and met up with those from the walking tour. It was so much fun!!! On the way home I tried a kabob....amazing!!! Not the traditional shish kabob that we grill, they take lamb or chicken meet from a spit and make a wrap out of it. YUM...had one the next night too!
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