The city that makes the money, and the city that spends it

This past week I feel as if I did very little when it comes to being a tourist, yet I managed to spent enough for the average tourist. London is actually divided into two cities, the city of London and Westminster. Most tourist attractions, political offices and basically the majority of the fun London activities take place in Westminster. Most of the businesses (including my internship) are in the city of London (at some points these two are divided by the Thames). Any ways, the saying (until the recent economic crisis) is that London makes the money and Westminster spends it. It makes sense until you take the tube over to High street Kensington or Oxford street. Both of these places have store after store and thousands of people crowding the sidewalks with shopping bags. I made it out alive yesterday, somewhat successfully, with a computer cord which will now allow us to watch movies through the TV for those rainy afternoons.

As for my tourist activities, on Friday a few of us went to the London Dungeons, which is a haunted house-like "tour" of London circa 1600-1700s. Actors coughing and sneezing from the plaque taught us about Jack the Ripper and Sweeney Todd. Earlier in the week I joined one of the Harry Potter walking tours (which was a bit difficult to get pictures of since it started at 7 p.m.). The tour was cool and entertaining since the tour guide yelled "IT'S A NORBERT!" every time she saw a statue of a dragon. Today some of us went to the Sherlock Holmes museum, which is located at the fictional character's address on Baker street (about a 10 minute walk from my flat). It was a little strange considering how many old manikins there were in each room, but cute at the same time (including the somewhat hard to understand old man taking on the role of Dr. Watson). We didn't make it to the Tate Modern but that is now at the top of my list for next weekend. Beatles tour is on thursday (although this tour is also starting at 7). This week I learned that the British will never show too much excitement either way about anything. On that note, the past week was not bad.