Trip to London- Day 5 (The Beatles and then some French Bureauacracy)

I started my last day in London on Thursday by checking out of my miserable hostel, and catching the tube for my Beatles walking tour!  As a huge Beatles fan, I knew my visit to London would not be complete without visiting some of the Fab Four's favourite haunts and recording studios.......

 MPL

Also known as McCartney Productions Limited, Paul's record label and London Offices.  Sadly, Paul wasn't around today, but our tour guide has seen him on tours before!  Paul's office is on the third floor, with the curved windows.  When the lights are on, the Beatle is in the office!

Trident Studios (the guy with the fro was our tour guide, he had a thick cockney accent!)

Trident Studios is where Hey Jude, Dear Prudence, Honey Pie, and several other White Album songs were recorded.  A lot of other great artists recorded songs here too, such as The Rolling Stones (Sticky Fingers, Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out), Queen (Seven Seas of Rhye, Bohemian Rhapsody) Carly Simon (You're So Vain), along with many others! 

 Carnaby Street

The heart of Swinging London back in the 60's!  The Fab Four most likely hung out around this area.  Today, the street is still a fashion center, with many trendy and high end stores.  Good thing we kept walking because I saw a lot of cute things in the stores, and London had already beaten up my bank account....

 The Palladium Theater

The Beatles performed a concert here, and were met with crowds of screaming fans afterward.  Beatlemania had begun!

Apple Studios

Location for the Beatles rooftop concert for 'Let It Be'.  It was their last public performance.

After a quick tube ride, we got to the last stop on the tour...........ABBEY ROAD

 Abbey Road Studios, where the Beatles recorded most of their songs.  According to our guide, Paul still stops by quite a bit.  He said that a few weeks ago Paul was heading to the studios when he saw some tourists taking pictures in the Abbey Road crosswalk, paying homage to the iconic album cover.  He asked them if they would like their picture taken, but they didn't look up and said "no thanks".  Moral of the story: BE AWARE OF YOUR SURROUNDINGS AND EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED!

Abbey Road

Yours truly crossing Abbey Road

Our guide pointed out that the Beatles had a police man stop traffic while the pictures were shot from a stepladder in the middle of the street.  Sadly, I did not have that luxury and had to wait for a break in the traffic before striding across the road.  The tour was a great way to wrap up my trip to London!

Fast forward to today, when I had to go to finalize my visa at 8:30am with a bunch of other Sweet Briar students.  It was a first hand experience with the notorious French bureaucracy.  I got chest X-Rays (to make sure I didn't have TB) done in the good old USA before I left and I brought them with me, because my good friend Leigh told me about the awful experience she had when finalizing her visa last semester.  The French are rather nonchalant about nudity, and they do not provide women with a cover-up when taking chest x-rays, making the visa applicants stand bare breasted against the X-Ray machine.  Uh, non merci!  Even without taking the X-Rays, the whole process took two and a half hours.  Before going inside, I bought some "timbres fiscal" (literally money stamps) worth 55 euros to pay for finalizing my visa.  I then handed over some paperwork, and was told to wait.  They called my name and moved me to another salle d'attendre (waiting room). 

Eventually, they called me over for my chest X-Ray and I handed over my copies.  The nurse said this was, "tant mieux" or so much better.  Yay!  I hoped this would speed things along as I had already been there for about an hour, just sitting and waiting.  I was wrong.  I was then called in to record my height and weight, and an eye test.  This nurse kept switching back and forth between French and English, which pissed me off.  I understood her perfectly well, but if I didn't respond quickly enough, she asked the same question in English although I was about to respond in French.  After waiting again, I was called into a doctor's office to check my blood pressure and heartbeat.  He said he had called my name three times already, and asked how to pronounce my last name.  "Duckloe" is not a French name, and everyone has a hard time pronouncing it, so if he was calling me earlier, I must not have understood that he was calling me.  I apologized and told him that I didn't hear him and maybe he should speak louder in a crowded waiting room.  After that, I went back to the first waiting room.  Praise the lord, I must be almost done! Or so I thought.  It turns out that the immigration office had just raised the price of the Visa consultation to 58 euros, so I dashed out across the street to buy more timbres fiscal.  Merde. FINALLY, I got my little piece of paper for my "long sejour"stuck into my passport.  Phew!  I feel that the entire process should only have taken 30 minutes.  As one of my JYF friends Joe says, "France is where practicality goes to die."  I think he may be right.

MAIS, it is where good food goes to live!  My friend Julie and I decided to go and get a falafel in the Marais before going to class at Sweet Briar.  It was delicious!

While chowing down on our massive sandwiches, we passed by this beauty in a chocolate shop window.  Succumbing to the siren call of pastry and chocolate, Julie and I decided to split one dark chocolate eclair, for our dessert.  It was absolutely sublime.  Any day with a dark chocolate eclair is a good day!   

Bisous!

Allison