River festival

(photos: view of the Tower Bridge, city hall, and the open air theatre called Scoop; some of the boats racing, passing the tower of london; front view on awesome fountain sculptuer; view of another part of the sculpture; southwark cathedral with a fantastic statue in front of it, i want to be a knight like that guy)

Apparently this weekend is kind of a big deal. First of the all, there is the Open House London, then there is the Thames River Festival. Both of which i shall partake in. Yesterday we woke up early to get to the River in time for the River Race, which is a huge race with over 3oo assorted types of rowboats. We watched the first few boats from the Tower Bridge, but at the time we thought they were the last few boats so we walked away after a bit. Then after walking around for another 15 minutes, we looked over to the river and saw boats everywhere. It was fantastic, i have no idea who won.

I gave in and participated in some sort of river themed raffle for a pound. And i won! ....a coke zero. Right. I think i got the bad end of the deal, but hey, it was exciting to win so i was happy. A bunch of tents were set up with people selling jewelry, bags, ponchos, shirts, dresses, musical instruments, everything. I did not buy anything, although i may buy earrings when we go back tonight. We saw a bunch of performers playing music, doing short plays, or all sorts of performance art. One man we stopped to watch ( merely because i thought he was going to juggle since he had bowling pins on the floor) started his act by stating that he certianly wouldn't be juggling. Right. And he didn't. He proceed to do all sorts of shoulder dislocating as went through a coat hanger and got himself out of a straight jacket. It was pretty disgusting, but he was quite funny. At one point he said something offensive about Americans, and then was like " ohh sorry to all the americans in the audience" "Do we have any americans?" " raise you hands" "no americans?" So finally, i thought, ok sir, you obviously have some jokes set up, so i will be nice and help you out. I raised my hand and kind of waved as in "yes, yes. hello. yes. over here", and my friend, embarrassed, did the same. So he went through his american jokes and was happy. This including asking us : "are you on holiday?....or have you just come to learn the language?" I strongly resisted the desire to shrug, look confused, and shout out in french : "je ne comprends pas.." (i don't understand) or "ich nicht verstehen" im deutsch. Instead i just nodded to the learning the language part and let people go on thinking we are stupid. The people had a good time, and i certainly didn't care. But i did not give him money at the end, because i think i gifted him enough.
and i am cheap.

The river fest allowed us to see some places that we may want to go back to eventually. For example; the clink prison museum, southwark cathedral, a replication of sir francis drakes ship, a naval musuem on the ship which think was called the HMS Belfast (?), and a few little shops or pubs.

We walked the Thames from the Tower Bridge to the Westminster Bridge, and by the time we were done we were happy to be done walking, but happier because we had a fantastic time. I of course had an ice cream cone, since i saw approximately 25 ice cream vans on the way. I had no chance.

We came home, rested a bit, waited for the rest of the people to come back from a trip, and then left for the pub near us at 8 in order to aquire some nourishment. We hung out there for a while, came back home, wasted some more time, and eventually i went to sleep.

Right now i am headed for Hyde Park to acquire a guide to the open house as well as attend the "Horseman's Sunday" event. This is a yearly event where over 100 horses and riders are blessed after the sunday mass. It should be quite interesting. After that, i am going to see how many buildings i can fit in before heading back to the River to see a free play and watch fireworks on the River.