London Scavenger Hunt

1. Royalty: When I first thought about how I could get pictures that would show how British people portray the Queen and royalty, I really was not sure where I could go to find these things. The first thoughts that came to my head were Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London, which of course are tourist attractions. Once I started exploring the London area with the girls, I started to realize that "the Queen" and "royalty" are found everywhere. Some places, it was very evident that these images were present whereas in other places they seemed to be hidden, or almost washed away in the stones. There are many street names and buildings that seem to be influenced by royalty such as Queensway, Kings Way, Kings Cross, the Royal National Theatre, and the Queen's walk. It appears as though many of the pubs and restaurants have royal titles ... Old King's Head, the Duke of Wellington, and the Royal Inn on the Park. From what I've seen, it appears as though royalty has a lot of influence on the city of London.
2. Non-English Speaking Neighborhood: We decided to take a little trip down to Saigon because Michelle had read that it had great Vietnamese food. We walked around for a bit and I saw that there were actually quite a few different ethnically diverse restaurants around the area. After wandering around for a while, we ended up eating at a little restaurant called Cay Tre. When we walked into the restaurant, a group of Asian people were eating at a larger back table, and did not appear like they spoke much English. Our waiter, on the other hand, spoke English relatively well. What fascinated me was the relaxed, quiet atmosphere, and intricate decorations throughout the restaurant. I had never been to a Vietnamese restaurant before, but soon realized that culturally everyone uses chopsticks to eat their food. This was a slight challenge for me because it is a very rare occasion that I would ever use chopsticks and typically the places I have gone to in the past, have given you silverware as well. After trying a few appetizers, I now have an idea of what I like and what I dislike from what I tried. To me, it was a great opportunity to check out a new culture that I had never really been exposed to at home.
3. Class and Culture: We decided to jump on a tube and take it to the Elephant and Castle station. Originally, we wanted to find a festival Michelle read about in the paper, but unfortunately we ended up walking around a few blocks. I have chosen this particular picture to represent this specific area because it was one of the first things that caught my eye. As we were walking, I became a little anxious not knowing where we were going and I noticed that some of the windows were boarded up, and/or barred up. The people walking around did not seem to make eye contact with us as we were walking down the road. I felt like we might be in an unsafe area so I suggested that we take a bus to get ourselves to an area that we could navigate better. Compared to other tourist areas, or Zone 1 London stops, I noticed that there were lots of Hispanic people and Black people walking around with small bags of groceries as if they were coming home to feed their families. I saw a few groups of younger teenagers hanging out looking like they were going to be causing some trouble.
4. Local Children: On Sunday, when we were taking the tube around town, I noticed a group of students in uniforms with a school crest on the jacket. They seemed to be with their instructors and broken up into smaller groups with one chaperone. I was able to observe them on the tube and as I was exiting the tube, one of the instructors was taking a head count to make sure he had all of the students that he needed. Similarly to US and other UK schools, students go on field trips, especially at the end of the year. One difference, that I have noticed periodically is that UK schools tend to go on field trips on the weekends, whereas in the US it is rare that a field trip would overlap with any part of the weekend. The students themselves acted like they were the same age as the students that I saw at the end of the year.
5. Tourists: When we stopped at the Shakespeare's Globe to see if we could get tickets, I ended up people watching for a little while outside because all of the tickets were sold out and we needed to look at some maps. I noticed that this particular tourist group was actually quite similar to tourist groups from the US and some of the UK. Lots of students were taking pictures of the scenery and with their friends.
6. Favorite Lunch Spot: When we were in Saigon, we decided to actually try other cuisines besides Vietnamese. We went into a local store and asked the man behind the counter where we should go to eat lunch and if he had any suggestions. He had a heavy accent, but I could understand that he wanted to go to a restaurant named Shish. It sounded good. As we were walking up to the front of the restaurant, we stopped to look at the menu and another man approached us and told us that it would be a great choice for lunch/dinner.
7. Market: I think this has got to be my favorite part of the entire scavenger hunt. Not because it was all about shopping and looking for bargains, but because this street is in the movie, Bedknobs and Broomsticks. I always wanted to find out what Portobello Road looks like. From the movie, the area looked very dingy and also smary, but from what I saw it was completely different. There were lots of cheap items, and some bargaining, but I had no idea that some of these items were expensive antiques. The market had everything from electronics to clothes, to fruit, and exclusive food stands.