My name is Alec and I'm addicted to the AA

Actually, what happened was,

The night before in London, I wanted to go to the AA bookstore (this is the bookstore at the Architecture Association school of architecture) so I dragged Tay there and got to the door, and realized that I didn't have nearly the time I wanted to spend there (I usually budget hour at least, and this is a bookstore much smaller than the living room of my apartment, by the way). And Tay's boot search was not fruitful at that late hour, so we decided that we needed to return to London the next day.

Anyway, jump to the following morning-
We caught a ride into the Guildford station with dad again and then attempted to buy tickets to London, which proved more difficult than we had originally anticipated. It's a long story, but basically the British will encourage you to jump queues but won't accept an unsigned credit card, even if you sign it in front of them.

I really love train travel. You go to the train station, which is in the center of town, and the moment you walk in the door, you see trains and the board with all the departure times and destinations. Theres no Orwellian melodramatic security theater, and its a short walk to the platform. The only line you ever stand in is for tickets if you want to talk to a real person, and you never wait more than ten minutes for anything. You see the train arrive, you board it, and because there's huge windows everywhere, you see the train departing and the landscape changing. You really experience the transition from A to B, which for me is really important in understanding A, understanding B, and the relationship between A and B.

Flying, you leave A and go to faceless airport somewhere outside of A, you spend your time in various windowless chambers until you find yourself in another faceless airport. Is it the same airport? Usually the only way to tell is to recall if there was a protracted period of heightened unpleasantness beforehand. Your only introduction to B is the drive in from the airport.

Coming into Waterloo station is one of my favorite feelings in London. All the tracks end there, and everyone gets off and you join the crowds getting off all the other trains coming in from different parts of the country. It's a huge station of steel, iron, stone, and tons of glass, and a combination of widely varying styles as its expanded over the many years of its use.

We caught the underground back up to Oxford street- first stop was the AA bookstore. It's a very small bookstore, but its packed with books, and the books are amazing. Perhaps a dozen titles, and that's being generous, you could find in the corner big box bookstore. My school's giant architecture library would carry perhaps a quarter to half of the titles. Perhaps 75% could be purchased online from various sources, and typically for astronomical markup. However, a lot of titles, especially international ones, are very hard to come by and some titles are exclusively sold through this one bookstore.

It's an exciting place for me as well because its in the AA, which has produced and had studios taught by some of the most notable names in contemporary architecture. It's in a series of residential apartments, actually, and you have to be buzzed in from the outside, so it's kind of fun just to go there.

The books are expensive too which means, that even though I saw two titles I really really wanted badly, I couldn't afford them. (I can, however, find them online, but alas, more expensive.) So I spend a lot of time at the sale shelf and the $3 clearance box. We ended up spending a little over an hour in the store. Tay was very patient, and perused some of the philosophy and other books while I shopped.

Next stop was boot shopping for Tay. We walked back to Oxford street and walked the entire thing again, stopping in at nearly every shoe store along the way and any other stores that caught our eyes. Tay picked up a pair of jeans at H&M. I'd spent my wad at the bookstore, so I didn't buy anything. At the end of Oxford street, we worked our way back through SoHo and Chinatown, stopping for lunch at a pretty good Japanese place. Split an Ebi tempura roll, and I got a grilled eel rice bowl, one of my favorites. Not too expensive either.

We cut back north to the first Aldo and Tay found the boots he'd been looking for. We spent maybe half an hour while he tried to figure out how much he wanted them, how he'd potentially wear them, etc. In the end, he got them, and for good boots, it was a fair price.

I wanted to see Hyde park and Harrod's so we walked, again, the full length up Oxford street. In the past two days, we'd traversed Oxford street no less than four times. We got to Marble Arch and Speaker's corner in Hyde park, and walked in after sunset. It's startling and interesting to suddenly go from super high density center of London to the vast open fields of Hyde park. It was a pretty place. I wish I'd gone during the daylight hours.

We emerged at the far end of the park onto Knightsbridge, and picked our way over Harrod's. Tay had never heard of it, but I was intrigued. It reminded me of a labrynthine, endless cruise ship store. Endless luxury brands, insane prices, strange and gaudy decoration, marble and gold, various themed bars, cafes, restaurants, ice cream parlors, tea rooms tucked inside. A solid block of a department store. We roamed through it, eventually finding our way to...the Harry Potter store?

It was smaller than any of the stores in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando, but they sold some very different products. They had some action figures on sale (although I can't imagine 'Confused Ron' would ever be a hot seller.) The marauder's map is kind of cool, but not at $40, and its the kind of thing I'd hide anytime I have company. The wands were different too. They did have a Dobby latex mask though which was very disturbing on Tay.

Anyway, Harrod's got old quick. Number one, it was really crowded, and number two, we never seemed to change scales of space. We went from room to room to room and they were all the same size, so it began to feel very claustrophobic. We finally found our way out and agreed we'd have rather just sat down and bought a pint someplace instead.

Tube back to Waterloo, and dad suggested a train for us to catch, and we ran to catch it and caught it for the ride back.