London: Days 1 & 2

So this week I went to London! The short version: the city is beautiful, it's the first place other than Portland where I've ever seriously considered living. Walking around the parks, meeting the people, not being mocked for my fandoms. It was loverly. I wasn't sad to leave for the reasons elaborated below, but I also wouldn't say no to a life time in the City of Westminster.

The long version:

I started traveling at 7:20 am and bus, train, taxi, plane, coach, tube, bus, and 12 hours later I finally arrived at the hostel. In terms of travel 12 hours isn't so bad, but considering I that I paid separately for every piece of transportation and I only needed to move one time zone to the left, I wasn't too happy with the schedule. Also it gets dark at 4 in London (what's with that), so my whole trip from getting off the coach to arriving at the hostel was a little unnerving. Do yourself a favor and don't take your first bus trip in London outside of zone 1 in the dark.

The coach ride from Stansted was actually really enjoyable. Even though it was almost two hours of bus ride (longer than the actual flight) we went through the English country side for about an hour and then drove past every major sight to see on our way to Victoria Station. There was an Asian family sitting around me who were pointing out sights with the assist of Google Maps on their iPad (pro tip: such a good idea! It was like a free bus tour of the city.).

The down side was arriving at the nearly empty hostel, hungry, tired and still without money only to have my worst fears confirmed. The bad reviews on hostel world were much more accurate than the good. I stayed at The Monkeys in the Trees hostel which was falling apart, moldy, and while reasonably priced for London, not at all worth the 18L or so I paid for a 6 bed female dorm. Also, being located on bus line west of Hammersmith, it was in not the greatest neighborhood, and really sketch to walk back to after midnight or leave before dawn.

Luckily, the equally miserable other visitors at the hostel were happy to venture out. I spent my first night in the pub around the corner with some Aussie boys, drinking my dinner. (Pro tip: cash machines, or ATMs as I know them, might say "free withdrawls" but they're going to charge you if you're using a credit card like I do. Only take out cash once to avoid unreasonable fees; Pro tip #2: beer is CHEAP, actually alcohol is just cheap, so drink.)

Pretty much sums up the relationship of these two Aussies

Every single night I found myself falling into my bed and going to sleep immediately, regardless of when I got back, which included falling asleep at 8:30 pm on Thursday and waking up at 5 am on Friday. The early wake up was certainly excusable in this case: on day 2 I spent all day out at the ExCel Conference Center for the Doctor Who Celebration! I'm a nerd okay. I did warn you about the fandoms.

From beginning to end, the Celebration was awesome (and chuck full of queing). I was really happy to be there for the 10 Quid my Ebay ticket cost.

All of the Doctors greeted you going in and out of ExCel

We spent the morning queing and at the special effects panel. The director of SFX (or something to that effect) was there telling us about all of the explosions and shooting and bangs that he has to coordinate. Also how he accidentally set David Tennant's hair on fire. Did you know that Matt Smith's Doctor's jumpiness around explosions is actually Matt being scared of the sparks and bangs and falling? And when he jumped through the glass door in Closing Time the pressure used to explode the glass went off a little late and the stunt guy apparently got knocked out by it. That's what you get for only having one take.

They exploded this Dalek on stage and also brought out a Cyberman for a shooting demo. Apparently they have only 6 Daleks or something like that, 3 of which can explode nicely. It was really fun having the guy talk about things they do that are near home-remedy SFX. Like how there are actually people crouched down inside the Daleks who move them around like Flintstones cars.

When they brought out the Cyberman (scary as hell in real life, he was walking around after lunch), they had two volunteers come on stage. This poor kid dressed up in 11 cosplay got up there not knowing what was going to happen and then a Cyberman burst through the wall. You can see both the kid and the host were genuinely terrified of the Cyberman. Even the SFX people didn't want to touch him and kept asking him to turn around, jumping when he moved and trying to keep at a safe distance. But 11 got his revenge, he got to shoot the Cyberman, with Rose's gun from Journey's End no less.

After the SFX show we got qued up for more. No one was able to explain exactly why we were queing or where we were going, but we ended up in the big hall with exhibits, smaller panels and a little shop of course. The sets from the opening part of the 50th were all set up at the entrance. I thought they were classic who or reproductions so I only took one photo, but after seeing the episode I wish I had taken more!

I did just sort of lean over and casually stroke this piece of set though. You know you've gotten too into your fandom when you cannot control your impulse to touch sets and costumes.

The friend I met up with got to laugh at me a lot as we came around the corner and I got unreasonably excited about the dinosaurs. I love Jurassic Park and the idea of petting a Triceratops, even one made of rubber, was just SO exciting.

By and far my favorite part of the day was seeing Bernard Cribbins. He plays Wilf in Doctor Who, was also in Faulty Towers as Mr. Hutchinson, and has done more British comedy than I can recognize. He is a really sweet, little bit dirty, funny as hell man. Really. He spend an hour just telling us stories about everything and everybody. He couldn't praise Davies or Tennant enough. He sang us the first bit of "Whole in the Ground" and talked about his music career. Really, tired as I was, I couldn't help but smile from ear to ear the whole time he was around. Bernard Cribbins, my new favorite actor from Doctor Who.

After Cribbins we had a lot of time to kill so we wandered around the auditorium. There were a lot of costumes and booths and shopping of course (though you had to que to shop which was a little strange). Standing next to these costumes, all of which we weren't allowed to touch of course, was pretty surreal.

Then as the last official part of our day we had two panels: "Regenerations" and "The Eleventh Hour". Regenerations had 3 of the classic Doctors, the same three who did the 5ish Doctors Reboot, who had fun bantering together. They were Doctors 5, 6, and 7 so they all replaced one another and really had a bit of bickering between them. But hearing their stories and banter and seeing clips from their episodes really made me want to watch some classic Who. Unfortunately the auditorium was very warm, we were a bit far away, and I was ready for a nap, so I only took in about half of what they were saying.

Eleventh Hour got the current big-wigs on stage. Having moved during the interlude we were only about 100 feet from the stage, so we just kind of sat there gawking at Matt Smith and Moffit and Coleman and Wilson. This was the one point where I wish I had bought tickets for Sunday as the panel couldn't say anything about the 50th or the Christmas episode so their answers to questions were aggravatingly vague.

After the panel we wandered around a bit more, took some photos of people signing autographs and then took off. The conference had some great potential, and was definitely easy to nerd out to, but fell a little short on content. Also Tennant, Piper, Darville and Gillan weren't there on Friday (or at all as far as I know), which definitely left me feeling a little empty. I would have enjoyed a panel that could actually answer questions but had Darville and Gillan or Tennant and Piper instead of the whole group that just wrapped the Christmas Special and were under a gag order.

But I still left that second day with a nice happy feeling (and throbbing feet)!