Taj Mahal Day!

Posted on April 12, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

In my planning for this year, I promise I didn’t even think about trying to cross a few of the seven wonders of the world off my bucket list. Alas, somehow I found myself visiting two of them in the span of two weeks. After that, how do I even begin to be impressed by anything else in the world? Just kidding, that’s a problem I’ve never had. It doesn’t take much to get me excited.

When I see something like Machu Picchu or the Taj Mahal, I just reach a whole new level. My thoughts usually go something like this, “OH MY GOSH. THIS IS SO COOL. THIS IS SO COOL. DID YOU SEE THAT??! WHAT ABOUT THAT?! AH LOOK OVER THERE TOO! THIS IS SO COOL. THIS IS SO COOL. THE COOLEST. SO COOL. I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M HERE. AHHH. AHHHH!!! SO COOL!!!!!!” Yes, in all caps. I promise it isn’t quite as annoying in my head as it is to read.

On our way there, we stopped at the McDonald’s in this mall to get some lunch. The rest of the mall was like the eerie set of a zombie apocalypse movie.

I’m getting ahead of myself though, as I often do when I’m excited. As you might have guessed, sightseeing day #3 was Taj Mahal Day. Aka Lara-loses-her-mind-with-excitement day. We left a little earlier than usual because it’s about a 3-hour ride to Agra, where the Taj Mahal is located, from Delhi. There are a few different ways you can get there, like tourist buses or the train, but we decided to hire a cab for the day. It was around $100, and it made the whole experience way low-stress. The driver picked us up, we stopped for lunch when we were hungry, he dropped us off right in front of our destinations, he kept the car nice and air-conditioned, and we got to go wherever we wanted, whenever we wanted, without having to worry about a group or schedule or finding our way.

Here’s where Agra is in relation to Delhi. You can see Delhi up to the north.

Formerly a moat that contained more than just air and dust

Our first stop after reaching Agra wasn’t the Taj Mahal, rather, it was Agra Fort (also called the Red fort of Agra). Like the Red Fort in Delhi, it’s mostly built from red sandstone. It has a long history, but it was built into its current form by the Mughal rulers after it was ruined in battle. The construction was started by Emperor Akbar in the mid-1500s, and Emperor Shah Jahan (our buddy who built the Red Fort and Jama Masjid in Delhi, plus most famously, the Taj Mahal) replaced some of the sandstone buildings with white marble ones during his reign. The fort is linked to the Taj Mahal because of some complicated Mughal politics that resulted in one of Shah Jahan’s sons putting him under house arrest in the fort where he could gaze upon his great monument from a distance.

The Amar Singh Gate to enter the fort. Supposedly the second most beautiful entrance (imagine what the other one must be like to make this only second best!), but this is the only one that tourists can use.

The fort is another monstrosity. The walls stretch for around 1.5 miles and contain about 95 acres. At its height, there were over 500 buildings inside, many of which were destroyed by the British. Luckily, some of the awesome buildings of Shah Jahan are among the 27 that survived. With so many buildings, you might think that the architecture would be more simple… and of course, you’d be wrong. Based on their architecture, I’m not sure that the Mughals even knew the definition of simple. There’s intricate detailing everywhere, and I can’t even imagine what it looked like at its height. And then of course, in the distance, through the smog, I got my first glimpse of the Taj Mahal. Initial reaction: it looks small. Well duh… from there it’s about a mile and a half away. There’s a trick where, if you’re looking at it through a window, it looks like it’s getting bigger as you walk away because it fills up more and more of the window. While you’re doing it, you know in your head that it’s the same size, but still your eyes are fooled.

The balcony where Shah Jahan spent his last years. It’s kind of hard to feel bad for the guy with a jail cell like this.

Just a little preview of the level of detailing Shah Jahan liked.

Another view of Shah Jahan’s balcony and the Taj Mahal in the distance *sigh* how poetic

You can only visit a tiny portion of the fort because much of it is still used for the military (casual military base in a UNESCO World Heritage Site), so by the time we were ready to melt into puddles from the sun and the heat, we were mostly finished walking through. Next stop: the Taj Mahal!!! (I would put more exclamation points because honestly, it deserves them, but I don’t want to be annoying.)

A distant view of the off-limits part of the fort

For those of you who aren’t up on your Taj Mahal facts, it’s a tomb. That’s crazy, right? All of that grandeur for a couple of bodies. Actually though, it was just intended to be used for one body, and besides being a tomb, it was a monument to love.

Shah Jahan built it for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. It is said that he fell in love with her at first sight, and from the time when he declared that he wished to marry her, it took 5 years to actually happen. By then, he had two other wives for political reasons, but she was his one love and the others were wives in title alone. She accompanied him everywhere, including on military campaigns, and he gave her the title “Mumtaz Mahal” which means “Chosen One of the Palace”. She died at 38 years old while giving birth to their 14^th child. On her death bed, she asked him to never marry again (though he had married others while she was alive) and for a monument to their love. He agreed to both. After her death, he was filled with grief and went into secluded mourning for a full year.

There are rumors that the original intent was to have two Taj Mahal-like structures, one on each side of the river, one in white for Mumtaz Mahal, and one in black for Shah Jahan. These rumors have mostly been disproved, but it’s fun to think about anyway. Just imagine if they were true and the “Black Taj” had really been built! One Taj Mahal is already a lot to take in. Today, Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal are buried next to each other in the Taj Mahal.

You think this is cool, and it totally is… but then you walk through, see the Taj Mahal, and immediately forget about it.

Construction was completed in 1648 after 22 years. It involved the best of the best, both in reference to materials and craftsmen. There were 37 master craftsmen with skills from calligraphy and inlaying to turret building and carving marble flowers, plus 20,000 other workers. The marble is from Rajasthan, a neighboring Indian state, and the 28 types of precious and semi-precious stones used in the decoration came from all over Asia, from China to Afghanistan. Everything is symmetrical except for in the central chamber where Shah Jahan’s tomb was placed next to the centered tomb of his wife. The bodies are actually located in a room beneath the main chamber and are marked with simple tombs to obey Muslim laws against elaborately decorated graves.

First glimpse. This picture could have been better but I was too busy trying to get closer

When you get your first glimpse of the Taj Mahal through the entryway, it doesn’t matter that you’ve seen a million pictures and know exactly what it’s going to look like. It’s still breathtaking. It still stops you in your tracks and makes your jaw drop. It still gives you those chills that you get when you’re looking at something so beautiful and so impossible to comprehend. It doesn’t even matter that there are a thousand other people there, all trying to get the perfect picture. It’s magnificent.

It would take an eternity of close study to do fully appreciate the artistry that went into every single feature of the building. The details are insane. Attention was paid to every surface, and it’s not overdone or gaudy. It’s elegant. It’s not one of those situations where something looks great from afar, but up close it’s not impressive. No, from up close, it’s even more impressive.

I could write on and on, trying to convey the splendor, but my words can’t do it justice. Not even close. Pictures aren’t enough either, but they’ll have to do. I wish I had pictures of the central chamber because that’s where the detailing reaches a whole new level, but you technically aren’t allowed to take pictures inside, and I’m not good at breaking rules.

Full disclosure: this is probably the 15th picture I made Andrew and Rohan take because it had to be perfect and people kept getting in the background and my head looked smushed in some.

You get to (have to) wear these fun booties aka elf shoes when walking on the marble.

Fun fact about the towers: they are all leaning slightly away from the mausoleum so that if they ever fall over for any reason, they’ll fall away from the tombs and won’t cause more damage on the way down.

Courtesy of that marble flower carving expert

I know, I know… super tourist picture but it made me laugh so that’s all that matters. I know I said I’m a rule-follower, but these are like joke rules.

After spending a good amount of time just sitting and soaking in the awesomeness, we left. I felt a little empty inside as we walked away, but luckily it wasn’t my last glimpse. We headed across the river to the garden that sits opposite the Taj which is the speculated planned location of the Black Taj. There are foundations that make it seem like it could be true, but those are said to be just the remnants of some garden features. Like I said before, true or not, it’s fun to imagine.

We saw a camel! He was just chillin’ outside of the garden

You can also get a great, tourist-free view of the actual Taj Mahal. We spent a little more time there, scoping out the best photo spot and dawdling so we didn’t have to say goodbye just yet, but eventually it couldn’t be pushed off any longer. We took our last looks, I tried to permanently etch it into my memory, and we headed back to the car for the long drive home.

Candid… I know it looks a little posed, but really, it’s not. I can’t tell you how long we spent just staring.

Akshardham and Gandhi Smriti

Posted on April 11, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

Our second day of exploring Delhi was… interesting. We unintentionally visited all of, what I have deemed, the most baffling places in the city. Our first stop was Akshardham temple. Andrew and Rohan had never been before, so it was a strange, new experience for all of us. There’s no entry fee, but they make up for that in over-the-top security measures and the fact that you can’t take pictures. I’ve never been through security like this.

First, you go through a guardhouse where they looked through your bag. Next, you come to a building where you have to hand in certain items. This is where it started getting funny. I tried to just give them my whole little purse minus my wallet because you have to hand in your phone, so what else do I even have in there? They rejected my purse but then told me to remove “all electronics”. Uhh. Okay? So I gave them the little external battery pack I had too, and I had to give them the cord, as if I could do anything with that after giving up my phone and the battery pack. Then I had to give him my headphones, and finally he asked for my hand sanitizer. What the heck am I going to do with either of those? But whatever. At this point, my purse was practically empty anyway, so I’m not really sure why they wouldn’t just take it.

The first and only picture I took before my phone was locked up.

The next step was security. You always get split into men and women here, so I went in the women’s line and walked through a questionably functional metal detector, had everything taken out of my bag again (though apparently the granola bar I had was no problem), and got the world’s least thorough pat down which did, however, include the woman asking me if the bump she felt from my pants drawstring was a phone. Likely. And finally, we were in.

None of us had done any real research on the place, so we just assumed that it was some old temple. I quickly started questioning that once we got into the complex. Everything looked too sharp. The carvings were crisp and perfect, and it didn’t feel old. When we entered the actual temple (shoe-less, of course), there was lighting integrated into the shrines, and it didn’t look like it was added in after construction. Suspicious. Rohan went and asked an employee when it was built… 2005. Hahahahahaha I literally burst out laughing. Here we are, thinking it’s some sacred piece of history, and it’s barely more than 10 years old. We kept joking and laughing about it throughout the day. That also explained why everything looked so fresh. Some of the carving was done by machines (so it amazingly only took 5 years to complete!), though the detail work was done by hand, and there hasn’t been nearly enough time for it to start showing any wear and tear.

The building is beautiful, and I’m glad we went, but how funny is that? It’s supposed to celebrate and showcase India’s architectural history, so I guess I have to say, “good job,” to the designers. You fooled us!

Inside the temple, we also learned about Swaminarayan, an important figure in modern Hinduism. His followers believe that he was a physical manifestation of God. He did a lot of good things for women in India, including advocating for women’s education, discouraging the killing of female babies, and speaking against the ill-treatment of women. The temple is dedicated to him and contains an exhibit that includes impressions of his feet, and… wait for it… actual hair and nail clippings! Yeah, that’s too much for me I think. Can you imagine being such a big deal that someone would want your nail clippings?

There was also a lot of large artwork of Gandhi’s head. One of the other ones had little screens in his eyes. That was weird.

Okay wow I managed to say a lot more about the temple that I expected. The next stop after that was Gandhi Smriti, the place where Gandhi was assassinated. There is now a Gandhi museum on the site as well, and that’s near the top of the list of the weirdest museums I’ve ever been to. It has a “multimedia exhibit” with LOTS of multimedia elements and no explanations of anything. There’s nothing saying what anything is, how it works, or why it’s significant. There was a woman following us around and pointing us in the direction of the next room throughout our visit, so I guess she was our unofficial guide. The whole thing was just baffling. There was one room with all of these little wooden boxes on the walls, and one wall of boxes contained little screens that were playing footage from one of Gandhi’s marches. Why the boxes? I felt like I was in some weird alternate reality.

I have literally no idea what the purpose of this is. It’s like a kaleidoscope kind of… you look in one end, there’s a screen at the opposite end, and the space in between is filled with mirrors.

The multimedia exhibit was strange, but there was also a helpful and informative exhibit of dioramas that gave a good timeline of Gandhi’s life. Filled with new Gandhi knowledge, we walked around the gardens and saw the spot where he was shot during an evening prayer ceremony. It’s an eerie juxtaposition of a horrible history and a peaceful garden.

I’m standing on a bridge over dry land. Very functional, right? But this is a nice view of the garden.

Delhi Sightseeing

Posted on April 4, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

Here’s the location of Delhi, for reference.

We hit the ground running on my first day in Delhi. We have three sightseeing days scheduled before flying to my final destination, so I wanted to see as much as possible. I wasn’t worried about having any jetlag because I landed at night, and if there’s one thing I can always do to get onto the right time schedule, it’s sleep. I had no trouble going to bed after getting to our hotel, and when I woke up in the morning, I was ready to go.

My friends for the first few sightseeing days in Delhi are Andrew, the guy who helped to organize my trip here, and Rohan, a Delhi-ite who is a friend of a friend. Andrew had an ambitious list of places to visit on day one, and we managed to get through them all! I’m all about efficient sightseeing. I can’t even count the number of tuk-tuks we took (took… lol get it? I know, I’m too funny) today, but they made it possible for us to quickly zip around the city.

The first stop was India Gate, a war memorial triumphal arch. It’s located on the same stretch of road as the President’s house and other government buildings like Parliament and some department headquarters. Most of these buildings were designed by the same British architect, and the others were designed by one other British architect. It’s not hard to tell that they weren’t Indian designs. They look like someone picked them out of a catalog for British architecture and plopped them down in India instead of the UK.

This is as close as you can get to the President’s house without being special. Maybe you can make an appointment or something, but this was as close as we could get.

One of the buildings that houses some government departments

From there, we made our way to the Red Fort, the former home of many of the Mughal emperors. That’s who was in power before the European power struggle that resulted in the colonization of India by the British. The fort was built in 1639 by Emperor Shah Jahan, the same guy who was responsible for the Taj Mahal. The outer wall encloses over 250 acres with 1.5 miles of wall. That’s crazy. We didn’t go inside, but I think a lot of the interior was plundered and destroyed throughout history anyway.

A view from the steps of the Jama Masjid

A short walk from the Red Fort gets you to the Jama Masjid, one of the biggest mosques in India. If you’re Indian, you can get in for free. If you’re not, you have to pay the “tourist tax” (as in, EVERYTHING is more expensive here if you’re not Indian). You also have to take off your shoes to enter, and this is where I fell in love with barefoot culture. It feels so weird! Even when you “enter” you’re still outside, just in a courtyard. And you’re walking around barefoot. And so is everyone else. How weird, right? But here, it’s completely normal, and I intend to fully embrace it.

Anyway, this mosque was also built by Shah Jahan in the mid-1600s. Busy guy. The courtyard is huge, and they say that 25,000 people can pray in it at the same time. The architecture is absolutely beautiful. Shah Jahan was clearly not the kind of guy who was okay with second best.

At this point, it was about 1PM and things were starting to heat up. We decided to head to Connaught Place, a shopping area, to find some lunch and hide from the sun. I’ll give you one guess as to who built Connaught Place… most British name ever. We went to a place with Mughal cuisine for lunch, and apparently that means spicy. I mean, I expected it, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m pathetic and can’t handle it. We got a bunch of things whose names mean nothing to me: mutton korma (lamb in some spicy sauce), chicken biryani (like fried rice but spicy), and khameeri naan (bread and my mouth’s lifesaver). I think my nose was running for all of lunch, and I ate like half the bread at the end trying to get the spicy taste out of my mouth. We got some kulfi (ice cream on a stick, but with indescribable taste and texture) to cool us down and also because who needs a reason for ice cream?

We only had a couple more stops to make after lunch. Number one was Humayun’s Tomb. This is another tourist taxed location… it’s something like 50 cents for an Indian to enter and 5 dollars for a foreigner. The complex has more than just Mughal Emperor Humayun’s tomb, though that building is definitely the highlight. There are some other monuments on the grounds, plus the 1547 tomb of Isa Khan, a noble who fought against the Mughals. Humayun’s tomb was built in 1572 by the Emperor’s wife, and now in addition to him, she and some other significant Mughals are buried there as well.

The tomb is spectacular. It came before the Taj Mahal, and it’s obvious that the Taj was built after looking at it. They have a lot of architectural similarities, though material-wise, they’re quite different. Humayun’s tomb is built from red sandstone. It’s undergone a lot of restoration work recently, so the building looks quite good actually. They also had an exhibit talking about the restoration work which was cool. I’m fascinated by that stuff. Fun fact – the finial on top is gilded in actual gold.

Okay, don’t worry, we’re almost finished. Now, the last stop of the day! We went to Lotus Temple, a Bahai temple. The Bahai faith is one that I had never heard of before, and honestly it seems more like a nice worldview rather than a religion. It started around 1844 and talks about the “oneness” of the human race, unity of people, condemnation of prejudice, gender equality, shrinking the wealth gap, the value of hard work, and the establishment of peace.

See that guy on top of the right petal? How would you like to be up there?

This definitely looks like a fake picture

All that aside, the building is awesome. It’s made to look like a lotus flower, and each “petal” is covered in marble. I have no idea how they built the thing, but it’s beautiful, and from the inside is just mind-blowing. Anyone can enter for free, but you have to take your shoes off, can’t talk, and can’t take pictures inside because it’s a place of worship. You can stay as long as you’d like and pray though, regardless of your religion. The whole concept is very interesting.

While I was sitting and attempting to pray, I’m pretty sure that I was falling asleep in my seat. The day took quite a toll on me, but I was happy that we had a chance to see so many things. We stopped and grabbed some dinner – spicy (of course) lamb shawarma – before heading back to the hotel and crashing.

Welcome to India!

Posted on April 4, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

*Between the chaos of travel and the ever-unreliable internet situation, I’ve fallen a bit behind on posts. I have most of them written, but I haven’t had the internet to support actually organizing the pictures and uploading them. I’m finally in a stable wifi environment, so I’ll be uploading the rest of the Peru ones and catching you up on my time in India so far over the next few days. I’ve back-dated the Peru posts and will date the India ones for around the days when I wrote them, so they’ll be in chronological order on my feed.*

Welcome to India!!! Whew! It’s been a whirlwind couple of weeks. When I first landed here, my brain was not ready to register being in a new country yet. I’m still getting used to remembering where I am. How weird is that? This is definitely not a problem I would have expected to ever have. Who the heck loses track of what country they’re in? How much do you have to travel for that to happen? Well, I guess that three countries in four days is my limit.

I landed in Delhi around 9PM last night and zombie-walked my way through immigration and customs. Thankfully it all went without a hitch because I don’t think I had the capacity to deal with any issues after 24ish hours of travelling. I connected no problem with my ride, and we headed off to the hotel to crash for the night before a big day of sightseeing today!

After a day of being here, here’s a list of my first impressions (these are all based on observations in Delhi, so things may very well be different in other parts of the country):

Traffic-related things:

Traffic view. This definitely isn’t the worst case but I was on a bridge, so I had to just take what I could get at the moment.

People are always talking about the traffic here and how crazy it is, so I was expecting something insane. Yes, it’s definitely hectic, but I’ve had experiences in Peru and China that are pretty darn close. There are some distinguishing factors here though.

Driving on the left – I think I knew this at some point, but I COMPELTELY forgot that they drive on the left here. When I got picked up from the airport, I had a momentary head spin when I got in the car and the driver was on the wrong side.
Honking horns – Everyone uses their horn as if everyone else in the world is blind, and the only way that they’ll know you’re coming is if you’re honking. You honk if you’re passing someone, if someone is crossing the street and you’re going to hit them, if someone even looks like they might be thinking about crossing the street, if an animal looks like it might be in your way, if you’re in completely stopped traffic and you need to make yourself feel better about not going anywhere, etc. You name an opportunity, and someone is probably honking.
Vehicle variety/quantity – The biggest thing that makes it more chaotic than other countries I’ve been to is that there are WAY more motorcycles and tuk-tuks (these are the same as motos in Peru – like a motorcycle rickshaw, or a motorcycle tricycle as I like to think of them) on the road. They weave in and out of the cars and drive kind of like nutcases. There are also bike rickshaws, normal bikes, other motorbike-related vehicles that I’ve never seen before, trucks, buses, and more. I’ve never seen such vehicle variety.
Not a great picture, but you can see a woman riding sidesaddle on the front motorcycle.
Motorcycle sidesaddle – This might be one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen. Sometimes, women (especially when wearing a skirt) will ride on the back of motorcycles with both legs on one side, like riding a horse sidesaddle. To me, this is an incredible feat. How do they stay on? Is that not terrifying?
Crossing the street – This is most similar to my experiences in China. When you cross the street, you need to be aggressive, but not TOO aggressive. It’s like a dance where if you step wrong, instead of getting some stubbed toes, you get hit by a car (or tuk-tuk or motorcycle or who knows what else). Sounds fun, right? The best strategy is to hide behind someone else while you’re crossing so that if anything goes wrong, they get hit instead of you.

General Environment

Smog – This is another one that I knew about but forgot. If you haven’t been to a smoggy country before, just imagine that every day is a little foggy, but that fog is slowly killing you. The difference in your breathing and how the air feels between smoggy countries and ones with clean air are VERY easy to perceive. Thank goodness for emissions regulations in the US!
Trash – Like Ghana, there’s a lot of trash everywhere. If you think US cities are dirty, come here. It’s gross.
Water bottles – When you finish a water bottle, you’re supposed to crumple up the bottle before you throw it away (it even says so on the label). This is so that people can’t trash-pick the bottle, refill it with un-filtered water, “reseal” it, and sell it to an unsuspecting victim.
Water – Speaking of water, as a foreigner, you pretty much have to drink bottled water (unless you want to spend a lot of time and effort purifying the tap water). Besides possibly containing bacteria that can give you anything from cholera to typhoid, some of the water has heavy metals including arsenic. You know, arsenic… aka poison. Everyone, please take a moment to take a deep breath, drink some tap water, and appreciate your clean water and air. Don’t take these things for granted!
Dirt or tan lines? Hint: it’s dirt. All dirt.
Dirt – Do we have less dirt in the US than in other countries? I don’t know, but I never feel so grimy at home. Here, plus in Ghana and somewhat Peru, I constantly feel like I’m covered with a layer of grime. It’s like there’s dirt seeping out of my pores. It’s impossible to keep anything clean.

Random

Architecture – There is some REALLY cool stuff here. I’ll post more about what we saw today later, but just know that it’s pretty awesome. There are so many different styles happening here because of all of the different rulers and influences that have come in over India’s history, and it’s interesting to see them all interact. Tomb architecture is quickly becoming my favorite.
Barefoot culture – If you like going barefoot, this might be the place for you. We went into a couple temples today, and when you go inside, you have to take your shoes off. It feels very weird taking off your shoes and walking around in public but at the same time, very liberating. I <3 barefoot temples.

Okay, that’s all for now. So far, I’m enjoying being here. More details to come soon, I promise!

Last Day in Cusco

Posted on March 30, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

Nice muggy picture of the plaza… the weather luckily got a bit nicer.

I didn’t have a very ambitious day planned for my final one in Cusco. Originally, I had been thinking that I would do a day trip to one of the towns close to Cusco like Tipon or Pisac, but considering how I felt when I finally rolled out of bed, I figured it would be a better idea to just take it easy. Pretty much my entire body was aching. Between the hiking and biking, every muscle in my legs, plus my shoulders and back from carrying a backpack, wanted to die. Trust me, it’s an accomplishment that I even managed to motivate myself to leave the hostel.

One of the churches in the plaza, Templo de la Compañía de Jesús. There are two (this one and the main cathedral) and then there are about 4 other churches within a 1 block distance

I decided to do the self-guided walking tour that I never got around to on day 1, and this time, I was sure to avoid every tour salesperson in the Plaza de Armas. I spent some time sitting on a bench in the plaza, then on the steps of the church, then on another bench. I know, really strenuous stuff. I just wanted to have some time to get to know the personality of the city. I spent all of my other days running all over, and I never had a chance to just sit and observe the people and understand what makes Cusco unique, besides all of the mountains and pretty buildings.

After sitting in the main plaza, I continued my stroll, browsed the public library (a popular tourist destination, I’m sure – not), sat in a few other, smaller plazas, watched tourists take pictures with alpacas and get harassed by people selling paintings and necklaces and whatever else, saw schoolkids getting into after-school mischief, visited the market, and tried to imagine myself as a Cusco-ian (or whatever the word would be).

My late afternoon was spent reading in a cozy little plaza by my hostel. I don’t know, I guess some people might think that I wasted my last day, but sometimes it’s fun to do normal things in a new place and pretend for a second that it’s your usual life. The city and I bonded.

Well, I didn’t spend the WHOLE day just wandering. I had a nighttime plan to go to the Cusco planetarium! I love stars, so this was something that I had been looking forward to. The Cusco twist is that besides talking about normal constellations, they also talk about the Inca constellations.

Another church, La Merced, just one block from the Plaza de Armas

Anddd another church, Iglesia de San Pedro

My reading spot… next to another church of course

The planetarium woman started out talking about rivers. Okay, not exactly the introduction I was expecting, but sure. She mentioned that Peru is the most ecologically diverse country in the world. I think I talked about this before, but Peru has 30 out of the 32 climates and something like 84 out of 114 microclimates in the world (don’t quote me because I couldn’t find support for that statistic, but that’s what she said). A number of them are quite fragile, so climate change is a very real issue for Peru as they’re already seeing big impacts on their wildlife. She said that many of the Andes mountains around the Sacred Valley used to be snowcapped about 15 years ago, and now barely any of them are. It was interesting to hear about things from her perspective, based on things she’s seen through her lifetime. Anyway, she tied all of this into how the rivers are the source of life. This is how the Incas saw them as well, so for them, the rivers were incredibly important. Ready for this segue from rivers to stars? The Milky Way was seen as the river of the sky. Aha.

We headed into the planetarium, and she showed us the night sky and some of the “modern day” northern constellations before switching to the southern hemisphere. That was cool because, as I realized, I know nothing about the southern sky, but of course there are just as many constellations as in the north.

Finally, we got to the Inca constellations. Some of them were constellations in the way we see them, by drawing lines between the stars. However, they also saw figures in the dark spots in the Milky Way. To them, the Milky Way was a river in the sky, and the creatures they saw inside were alive (because river = life). Here’s an image of the dark spot constellations:

She said that the most important one is the llama. The Incas believed that the llama came at night and drank from the rivers and streams on earth to keep them from overflowing. When it rains, it’s star llama pee. Who knows? Maybe she was just messing with us, but that’s what she said. I like it though, so I’m going to call it fact.

Machu Picchu

Posted on March 28, 2017August 19, 2020 by Lark

When my Machu Picchu day finally came along, I had mixed feelings. On one hand, of course I was beyond excited to visit the place I had been looking forward to seeing ever since I decided to go to Peru. On the other hand, it’s nice to have really exciting things to look forward to, and sometimes the “looking forward” is almost better than the “actually doing”. That probably doesn’t make any sense… let me try again. When you finally go somewhere or do something that everyone has raved about, aren’t you ever nervous that the idea of it will be better than the actual thing? That it’s been talked up so much that the reality can’t possibly match your expectation? There was a part of me that feared that. Like maybe I’d find myself facing one of the wonders of the world and manage to not feel impressed.

When you walk in, this is the first view you get of the ruins!

Lucky for me, the experience of visiting Machu Picchu is partly indescribable. No matter how much people told me about it, they couldn’t convey the wonder I’d feel when seeing the huge expanse of beautiful ruins set against a backdrop that’s straight out of a fantasy. No matter what I write about it, I promise you that I can’t even begin to do it justice. Even without the air of mystery that surrounds the history of Machu Picchu, it’s baffling. When you add in the questions about how it was constructed, what everything was used for, and where everyone disappeared off to, it becomes even more marvelous. There’s nothing better than a good mystery!

View from the Inca Bridge hike. Still a little foggy (because I was there at 7AM), but still spectacular

This picture is confusing and kind of seems like it should be rotated… but this is right. I promise. The Inca Bridge is at the bottom of the light rocks on the left. See the gap in the rock path and the boards that are placed across it? The Incas could move the wood to block off this entrance into Machu Picchu if they ever needed to.

On my hike back to the main part of the ruins… I just couldn’t stop taking pictures!

Archeologists have concluded that the site was an estate for one of the Inca emperors, which means that it was basically a full city on top of the mountain. About 1000 people could live there, but they think that 5x that number was required to build it. Also, they’ve only recovered the skeletons of about a quarter of that. The stone is a type of granite that was taken straight from the site, and they don’t use any mortar to hold it all together.

Question #1: How was it constructed? The site is way bigger than I realized. I think that’s what everyone says after they go, and even though I’m telling you that right now, you’ll say the exact same thing if you go. There’s the main part of the town that you always see in pictures (which even that is bigger than you realize… all of those pictures are taken from quite far away), but then there are terraces EVERYWHERE that were used for growing crops. Carving out the terraces, cutting, moving, and putting together the millions of rocks, and building a town of that size must have taken an eternity. The methods they used for cutting rocks so precisely and moving the big ones around are still somewhat unknown. It would be an amazing feat even if it WASN’T on top of a mountain, but it is. Oh yeah, I didn’t mention that you have to take a half hour bus ride (or a 1-1/2 hour hike) up the mountain from the town. It is not located for ease of access.

There are also pathways that wind through the surrounding mountains. There’s no way the full extent of them is even known because at this point, the unexcavated ones are buried under almost 450 years of plant growth.

Let me just say that there’s a reason why one of the theories of its origin is aliens. It’s so fantastic that aliens start seeming like a realistic explanation.

Okay, this one was a mini-tripod/self-timer picture. There was no one around to take it, really! I’m standing in the quarry area.

Question #2: What was it used for? Archaeologists have general ideas about the site as a whole and the functions of some of the different buildings, but for the most part, it’s just speculation. If you hire a guide while you’re there, they’ll tell you all sorts of things about what this rock means and why that room has 5 windows and 4 niches, but the truth is that not much is known for sure. There are a lot of assumptions, but there are so many questions that it makes you wonder how much you can trust them.

I decided to skip the guide and take my sweet time wandering through the buildings, making up my own stories as I went. I did have a guidebook which was nice because it helped to draw my attention to some of the more interesting features, but I still got to move at my own pace and just soak in the wonder of it all.

Did I already take this picture? Yes? Ehh… I’ll take it again just in case.

Ruins and mountains, ruins and mountains

Question #3: Where did everyone go? When the Spanish invaded in the mid-1500s, they took out much of the Inca civilization. However, they never made it to Machu Picchu. Its existence wasn’t brought to the attention of the general public until 1911 (it was looted by a few German explorers, and some local farmers knew about it and were even farming on some of the terraces prior to that year). So what happened to all of the people? Did they all go to fight in other locations? Did they just die out eventually? Smallpox is one guess. Imagine for a second if whatever did happen hadn’t, and there were still people living there when it was stumbled upon. They certainly had the food resources and planting strategies that they needed to survive. How cool would that have been?

My thought about every picture: “this is kind of the same… but kind of different so yeah, I’ll post this one too.”

The more important buildings had more precise stonework, though none of the buildings used mortar so they were all pretty darn precise. These though… How on earth do you get such tight joints with such massive rock pieces?

Anyway, those are the three main mysteries that I allowed myself to mull over as I wandered around and tried to make sense of it all. I didn’t start out wandering the ruins though. First, I walked up a pile of stairs to look over the site and get that iconic Machu Picchu view. From there, since I was already halfway up, I did two of the hikes that are included in the entrance ticket, one to the Sun Gate, where the people who hike the Inca Trail enter the site and watch the sunrise, and the other to the Inca Bridge, a piece of wood terrifyingly placed across a big gap in the rock path that winds around the mountain. You can’t walk across it anymore because someone fell off and died, and after seeing it, that doesn’t surprise me one bit. More like why did they ever let anyone walk across?

The classic Machu Picchu picture. I actually asked someone to take this, rather than using my usual mini-tripod/self-timer technique.

A cool view of the terraces and the beginning of the hike to the Sun Gate

My big hike of the day was up Machu Picchu mountain. Nothing at Machu Picchu, including the place itself, is called by its Inca name. No one knows the Inca names. Machu Picchu is the Quechua name for the mountain next to the town, so when it was “discovered”, the explorer just called it by the same name. All of the buildings and such that are named were named by him. So like I was saying, everything is complete speculation. Anyway, I bought a separate ticket to hike Machu Picchu mountain, one of the two mountains next to the site. The other one, Huayna Picchu, is shorter, but the hike is more of an adventure with ladders and precarious ledges. I decided to skip the death-cheating hike and save it for if I ever go back with a hiking buddy.

The hike up Machu Picchu mountain is just hundreds and hundreds of stairs. And more stairs and more stairs and these stairs that are so steep you probably want to use your hands too. Every time you turn a corner, you’re faced with another dead-end wall of rocks. Oh wait. Those are stairs. About 20 minutes in, I found a friend! She and I bonded over our pain and the fact that we were moving at similar speeds. I was thankful to have someone to struggle through it with me. The only thing worse than a super intense hike with minimal oxygen is a super intense hike with minimal oxygen where you don’t have anyone to complain to. In hindsight, it was a definite mistake to do the Inca Bridge and especially the Sun Gate hikes before the mountain. I basically set myself up for failure because my legs were already tired when I started.

My hiking buddy speeding ahead on the Machu Picchu mountain hike

MORE STAIRS???!!?? Yes. The answer is always yes.

But I eventually made it! This is after about 45 minutes of relaxing at the top, which is the only reason why I’m smiling and not bright red.

Anyway, I’ll spare you the quad-killing, air-gasping details of the hike and just say that it was an hour and a half of me strongly considering turning around and being fairly certain that the mountain was never going to end. I got to the top just before the clouds blew in and completely obstructed the view of the ruins. Can you think of anything worse than finishing that horrible hike and then not even being about to appreciate the view? I had about 20 minutes before we were sitting in a cloud. That’s all I needed though. I found a nice wall to sit on, ate some pretzels, and soaked in the awesomeness.

Everyone gets booted off the mountaintop at noon, so I headed down through the clouds, a moment of rain, and back into the scorching heat. They say that you need to prepare for every type of weather when you go to Machu Picchu, and it’s true. I went in the morning wearing a sweatshirt and pants. I took my sweatshirt off early and changed into shorts on my hike to the Sun Gate. At the summit of Machu Picchu, it was freezing and drizzly, so I put my rain jacket on. Once I hiked down a little, it was hot again. Then, in the afternoon as I was wandering the ruins, I must have put on and taken off my rain jacket at least 5 times as it rained and stopped and rained and cleared up and rained again.

See that mountain enshrouded in clouds in the middle/right of the picture? It looks like the top is actually cut off in this picture too. Yeah, that’s the one I climbed

Me and my hiking friend with a very important rock that supposedly looks like some important animal but actually looks just like, well, a rock.

I think this is hilarious. There are a bunch of places where there’s some ginormous rock that I imagine the Incas looked at and said, “LOL I’m not tryna move that!” (loose translation) So instead, they just left them in place and built the walls around them. The way they fit everything together is amazing no matter how many times I think about it.

I spent the last couple hours of my visit exploring the ruins. I reencountered my hiking friend, and we had fun walking around and making things up about the different ruins and their uses. Sometimes it’s nice to have a friend! It was especially perfect because she and I were on the same page about taking our time and wanting to see everything. Sometimes things work out so much better than you could have imagined!

After finishing up at the site and heading back down the mountain to the town, we considered meeting up for dinner and ended up just showering and laying immobile on our beds at our respective hotels. I could have guessed that was what was going to happen.

Can you imagine having this view every day?

But seriously could it be any cooler? Sorry I can’t express myself any better but I’m sitting at my computer, days later, still geeking out over how amazing the whole thing is.

Ollantaytambo

Posted on March 28, 2017August 19, 2020 by Lark

After my day of visiting ruins, I decided to spend the next day… visiting ruins. I had a train to catch to the town at the base of the mountain where Machu Picchu is located (Aguas Calientes), but the train didn’t leave from Cusco. I had to find my way to Ollantaytambo, a town about two hours away, and get the train from there. At this point, I was a colectivo expert, so I wasn’t worried about it. I asked at the hostel where to find colectivos to Ollantaytambo, and off I went! If you even manage to get close, you’re golden. Once you find the right street, there are a bunch of people calling out to you, trying to get you to get in their van. You just pick one, confirm a million times that they’re going to the place you want, and then decide to trust them and get on.

I just thought this was funny… This person is unloading crates of eggs from this truck – and is standing on a layer of them! I never really think of eggs as something you can stand on.

The ride from Cusco to Ollantaytambo is beautiful but also somewhat vomit inducing if you have any issues with carsickness. The road winds up and down, back and forth through the mountains and valley, and view after view was like nothing I’d ever seen before. I was trying to play it cool so that I wouldn’t give myself away as a tourist, but on the inside, I wanted nothing more than to press my face up against the window, unblinking for the entire 2-hour ride so that I didn’t miss a second.

You can see Cusco to the southeast of Ollantaytambo and Machu Picchu to the northwest.

I got to Ollantaytambo about 2 hours before my train left, so I decided to check out the ruins in town. There are, of course, a million different ruins that you can visit in and around town, but I went to the biggest one that used to be an Inca fortress/temple. It’s one of the only sites where the Incas actually won a battle against the Spanish invaders.

My first thought when I got inside was, “UGH… stairs.” The whole thing is just terrace after terrace, leading up the mountain to where there used to be enclosed structures. The roofs were all thatch, so there’s obviously nothing remaining of those. They’ve been restored in some locations, but for the most part, you’re left to imagine the ruins in their former glory for yourself. There are also some giant stones (I read somewhere that they’re 50 tons, but I can’t vouch for the accuracy of that) that were used in the unfinished temple construction. They were brought over from a “nearby” (5km away…) quarry, and the trip to the site includes a river crossing. You can use your imagination to try to figure out how they managed to move them on dry ground, but to cross the river, the stones were brought to the edge and then the water was diverted around them! That’s crazy!

Those big rocks in the distance behind me are the (maybe?) 50-ton ones that had to get moved here somehow from the quarry.

It only took a couple ruin visits for me to realize that the Incas were masters of beautiful and hard-to-reach sites. This fortress is no exception. When I finally managed to wheeze my way up the stairs (remember that this is at high altitude! I’m not just completely pathetic), I was treated to an incredible view of the town, the valley, and the surrounding mountains. The best way to view the mountains is from another mountain!

I’m sure I’ve said this before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again… but I love the Inca stonework! I think it’s so pretty

I had plenty of time to check out the main part of the ruins, even with my “stop and take the same picture 100 times” breaks. I still wish I’d had longer though. From the fort, there’s a hike you can do to a temple nestled up higher in the mountain, and I’m sure that it would have been worth the extra climb (if you consider another pile of rocks, another view of the same mountains, and some solitude worth it… which I totally do). Plus, it would have been cool to have a time to see some of the other ruins around town.

This is the view at the beginning of the hike up to the temple that I didn’t have time to do. Looks like it would have been a pretty awesome view, huh?

Casual stroll along a path that wraps around the mountain

Here’s a building with a recreated roof, so keep this in mind when visualizing how the rest of the ruins must have looked

Oh well, I had a train to catch, and there was no way that I was going to miss it. There are a few different ways that you can get to Machu Picchu with the most common being either trekking (aka walking A LOT through the mountains) or taking the train. I think a trek would be awesome, but with my limited time in Cusco, I decided to spend it doing other things. Despite requiring far less effort, the train ride was still incredible. It was like something straight out of the movie “Avatar”. I’ve said that about other places in my life, but I’ve never meant it more than I do right now.

Let me try to set the scene. There are cloud-topped mountains towering over the train on either side, plus a river running beside the tracks (the water is very brown but no matter). Everywhere you look is green and full of life. You pass from the low highlands ecosystem at the beginning of the ride into the cloud forest ecosystem. I didn’t even know that was a thing, but can you think of a more mystical name than “cloud forest”? In reality, it was just as mystical as in theory. I’ve never been on a shorter 2-hour train ride. Seriously I could have stayed on that train for another 10 hours and been totally okay with it.

I want to know who you have to bribe to get assigned the front seats!

But alas, we arrived in Aguas Calientes, and I set off to find my hostel. It’s the off-season at Machu Picchu right now, so I lucked out and got my own room, complete with all-natural “raging water” white noise from the river outside. Perfect for getting lots of sleep!

[Check out my other post about Ollantaytambo HERE.]

Lima Sightseeing

Posted on February 12, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

This weekend has been completely packed. I didn’t get a chance to write yesterday because it was crazy from morning to night… we didn’t get home until after 11PM! I, of course, was a total mess and couldn’t keep my eyes open, so I decided it was better to just go to sleep rather than attempt to write something (that inevitably would have been incoherent).

Yesterday was the team’s last day, aka my last day of coffee duty! I rolled out of bed just in time to get the coffee started at 6AM, took a quick shower, ran back to the kitchen to make breakfast, etc. etc. etc. until after worship when I took a 45 minute nap because I knew there was no chance of me making it through the day without one.

The team was ready to go around 11:30AM, and that’s when our adventure started. Most (if not all) of the flights to the US from Lima leave in the middle of the night, so we had the entire day to spend sightseeing in the city. Our first stop was for lunch, at a hotel in Punta Negra where Jim and Tony used to live before the EA buildings were complete enough to move in. Tony ordered a bunch of different dishes so that people could try a few things. I had some arroz chaufa (basically fried rice), lomo saltado (beef stir fry), sweet potato slices (potatoes are very popular here), and a piece of corn tamale (ground up corn and some other things all mushed into a rectangle). The sweet potatoes and tamale weren’t my favorite things… The potatoes had a confusing bitter taste to them, and the tamale wasn’t my favorite texture. It was nice to have a chance to try some different things without committing to a whole plate though!

Plaza San Martín. The statue is of José de San Martín, Peru’s liberator.

The beach at the hotel was also nice. There’s no beach access without going through one of the hotels/restaurants in the strip, so that makes it into a kind of private beach. It wasn’t very crowded there, partly because of the “private-ish beach” thing, and partly because the waves are huge which makes it a less desirable location for people who want to go in the water. I had no interest in touching the sand or the water though, so I was happy to have less people and get to see the big waves (from afar).

The Palace of Justice, home of Peru’s supreme court.

The rest of the day was filled with sightseeing! We drove into central Lima, checked out some of the historic stuff I saw a couple weeks ago (though all access to the plaza was blocked, so we didn’t get to go back there to see the President’s house, etc), and then drove up the coast to an overlook where you can see the city. The coast is awesome because there are these huge cliffs between the city and the beaches. They’re probably a pain to walk up and down and to deal with (and they’re all covered in netting because I’m sure they have rock slides all the time), but they’re definitely beautiful.

The overlook was one of my favorite parts of the day because I don’t think I fully appreciated the size of Lima before seeing it from that vantage point. When I say that the city stretched as far as the eye can see, I am not exaggerating. In every direction, the buildings just looked like they continued on forever. There’s also a massive statue of Jesus at the top (Cristo del Pacifico), and you can see him standing on top of that mountain from miles and miles away.

Buildings everywhere. If I had turned my camera to the right, you would see more of the same type of congestion.

The last part of the day before dinner and heading to the airport was a stop at the Inca Market, an artisan market that’s great for souvenirs. We split into groups, and I enjoyed walking around, seeing everything that the stores had to offer, and practicing my Spanish. A lot of people spoke enough English to say prices and such, but they were definitely happy when they realized that they could speak Spanish to us instead! And I even spoke a little! And no one looked at me like I was speaking gibberish! Maybe they were just being polite, but we’re going to go with “I nailed it” instead.

Lima on one side of the mountain, and this on the other side.

Dinner, the drive to the airport, and the drive back to EA after the airport were completely exhausting. I was falling asleep in the van all the way home. I even started doing that thing where someone talks to you and you can understand them, but when you go to answer, you’re way too tired to put words together so it just sounds like gobbledygook. Needless to say, the discoteca is going to have to try harder if it wants to keep me awake because I’ve been having some exhausting Saturdays recently!

Today was one of those days where you have a lot to do, make a to do list, work on things all day, and realize that you actually completed zero of the things on your list, despite the fact that you were running around all day. I don’t even know how I filled the hours today, but I blinked, and the day was close to over. I spent a decent amount of time doing laundry, cleaning my room, and moving from the room I’m in right now into Debbie’s room because Kait, the last missionary, is coming back this week, and I was in her room.
Okay, I should get to bed now… Tomorrow is bound to be another hectic, nonstop kind of day, and Debbie and I have to start our robot lessons in the morning. I’m keeping my fingers crossed…

Errand Day

Posted on January 28, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

We had a big errand day today, and it was one of those unfortunate errand days where everything goes a little (or a lot) more slowly than you’re expecting, it becomes impossible to finish all the tasks on your list, and you go home feeling slightly defeated because you know you’re going to have to do it again.

Since it’s the weekend, we “slept in” and left at 9AM. We were headed to central Lima, which I hadn’t been to before. When we went into Lima for church last weekend, we were still a bit on the fringes of the city. Our first stop was to get fabric for curtains, and apparently one of the only places to buy bulk fabric like what we were looking for is in a semi-shady part of central Lima. Eddy (one of the Esperanza de Ana staff who does a lot of the driving), his daughter (who’s 2 years old and is one of the most talented escapees in Julie’s class), Julie, Debbie, and I loaded into the EA van, and off we went.

A car filled with free floating mini-pots. I can only imagine how fun it probably was to load and unload each of those individually, definitely through the windows.

Reading the paper because what else would you do at a time like this?

I want you to keep in mind the fact that I previously declared that I never wanted to drive in Peru because it’s terrifying… and now take whatever I thought I knew about driving here, multiply it by 1000 terrifying points, and you have the actual central Lima driving experience. I haven’t seen such a lack of order on the road since I was in China (crossing the street, in parts of Shanghai and Beijing at least, equals taking your life in your hands). I’m going to try to explain, but there’s literally no chance it does the experience justice. There are cars everywhere. No one pays any attention the lines on the road (assuming they even exist). Pedestrians boldly step out into traffic and act like the hand they’re holding up to tell cars to stop is creating a force field that will keep them from getting hit. Some intersections have literally no indication of how drivers are supposed to decide who should go (no traffic lights, stop signs, etc), so everyone tries to go at once. It’s like everyone is constantly playing a game of chicken: one driver says, “I’m going to put my car there,” and another driver says, “no, that’s where I’m going,” and then they both floor the gas pedal and head for that spot until someone decides that today is not the day to get into a car accident and backs down. Some drivers decide that it’s a great time to catch up on the happenings and read the newspaper while sitting in traffic. Everyone is constantly honking, as if that’s going to make all of the traffic ahead of them magically disappear. Our one cab driver definitely had some road rage issues, and at one point he started yelling out the window at the honking truck behind us, got out to yell some more, and came back to grab his baseball bat (which he probably had in the car because he had a softball game later… NOT. Clearly this isn’t the first time he’s felt the “need” to use it). Luckily, he just waved it around, got back into the car, and kept driving like a maniac.

The fabric store. You can only see about 1/3 of it here… Yeah, that’s a lot of fabric.

We somehow made it to the fabric store alive… at about 12:15PM (I’ll do the math for you: 3:15 after leaving home for what should be maybe an hour and a half trip). We wandered around and asked a bunch of fabric stores if they had what we needed before getting directed to a shop through some random hole-in-the-wall hallway. Debbie got what she needed for the curtains, and I bought some fabric too for an undetermined future project.

By the time the fabric expedition was complete, it was around 2PM, and we were all starving. We located the closest quick and reasonably-priced place to eat and promptly stuffed our faces. I got “arroz chaufa con pollo” which is essentially chicken fried rice. I think it was really good, but I can’t be sure because my brain wasn’t fully functioning at that point.

Julie, me, and Debbie in the Plaza Mayor in front of the cathedral.

Before loading back into the car, we walked around the historic center of Lima. There’s some pretty architecture and an epic central plaza (Plaza Mayor de Lima) that is surrounded by some government buildings including Lima’s city hall (Palacio Municipal de Lima) and the Palacio de Gobierno del Perú (where the president lives – basically the White House of Peru), and the Cathedral of Lima.

Today I found myself in object form, and I am a toilet.

At 4:00PM, we had officially completed one thing on the to-do list. Ouch. Thankfully, most of the other things got cut. On the way back to EA, we stopped at Maestro (Peruvian Home Depot) to get some supplies for maintenance and a few upcoming projects, and after that, the only stop left on the list was home. By 7:45PM, we were back, and I was exhausted.

Now, it’s almost midnight and the neighbors seem to be having a competition to see who can be louder. The one party is at the same place as last week, I think two properties away from us. Word on the street is that some “young people” are trying to start a makeshift discoteca there. You might be wondering if there are zoning regulations or something against that sort of thing… and I’m wondering the same thing. This can’t be legal, right? On the other side, our immediate next door neighbors are having a party, and the music is so loud that we could just have our own party here using their music. I’m not even exaggerating when I say that I think they’re trying to outdo each other because the music on both sides has gotten progressively louder since the beginning of the night. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO SLEEP??? I have ear plugs, but I hate sleeping with them in and my ear canals are so small that they always fall out. UGHHH. Get ready for a grumpy Lara tomorrow.

One More Day in London

Posted on November 9, 2016April 27, 2020 by Lark

This was my last full day in London, and I had an ambitious schedule that, as you might expect, didn’t go quite as planned. Failed plan #1: waking up at 7AM and leaving by 8. I know what you’re thinking. Why did I even think that was a possibility? I was thinking that I used to wake up at 5:30 every day, so why would waking up at 7 be a big deal? Well, it’s different when you don’t actually have anyone counting on you… and when the room is cold but it’s so nice and warm under the covers.

By the time I dragged myself out of bed and pulled myself together, it was about 9:30. I had plans to go on a walking tour at 11, so I killed an hour in Hyde Park before meeting up with the group. Hyde Park is one of the biggest parks in London, and Kensington Palace, the official residence of Prince William, Kate, and Prince Harry, is on the far west side. I didn’t make it that far though… not enough time. Failed plan #2: the other six things I planned to go see before 11.

This makes me laugh. Can you imagine if you saw this coming down the street in the US? People would lose their minds. Here, it’s just another day, and the only people who even notice (besides the locals who are probably annoyed about the traffic) are the tourists.

The tour was a nice change of pace. I’ve spent so much time over the last three days wandering around in circles and trying to make plans, and it was a welcome change to not have to think about directions or where to go next for a couple hours. I just followed along and learned things. We saw Buckingham Palace (and apparently the queen was actually there, according to the flag), watched the changing of the guard from a distance, and then walked over to St. James Palace to see the changing of the guard there up close. I’ll be honest, yes it was interesting, but I can’t say I understand why people get so hyped up about it.

Me!

Afterwards, I had an appointment to go to the Sky Garden. It’s a “park” on the top floor of a 525’ tall building, and you can go up for free with a reservation. I’d say that the calling it a park or a garden is a bit of a stretch, but yeah, there are some plants up there. Either way, it’s a cool setup. You can walk all the way around and see out in every direction, similar to the Tate Modern terrace except that it’s about 300’ higher and there’s glass in between you and the view. Pros and cons!

How cool is that sky? And yeah, that’s how it actually looked! (It’s not just a trick of the picture.)

My last stop of the day was the Evensong service at St. Paul’s Cathedral. The building is absolutely amazing. It reminded me of a lot of the churches in Rome… there’s an awesome dome and a lot of incredible detailing. The service was great too! I didn’t get the prime seat that I got at Westminster Abbey, but the music and the sermon were both very well done. The building is huge and there were a ton of people there, but somehow it still felt intimate. Plus there was audience involvement in the singing, and there’s nothing better than singing a beautiful song and hearing everyone’s voices melt together and become one. Good job, acoustics. What a way to end the day!