Wednesday, April 19, 2006
April 18: London
Yes, I realize I am posting this on the 19th. But I was tired last night. So deal! The story goes as this:
I met Mark at his apartment sometime around 8:30 AM, after hauling my rather ridiculous load of backpack, daypack and duffel down a busy London street for about 15 minutes. Mark was on his way to work for some meeting, and I took this opportunity to take a brief nap on the couch. Those who know me know that I never nap, which means hell's frozen over. But I digress...
We spent the afternoon walking around London, starting from Covent Garden (by tube) and over to Charing Cross, the Embankment, the City over towards London Bridge and St. Pauls and a bunch of other places. This list is definitely not in order other than the fact that we started at Covent Garden. I think there's no better way to learn what a city is like than by walking the streets, and that's what Mark & I did. There are some very ugly buildings in London, including the new Lloyd's of London building, and some phallic-looking building that is occupied by a bank that clearly sees itself as very important:
One of the cool places we visited was the War Cabinet Rooms museum, which is one of the non-free museums in London. You might think admission is $8.50 CAD. But no! Admission is £8.50 GBP, or £6 GBP if you're unemployed. That's right: if you're unemployed, you should be going to museums at discounted prices and not looking for work. Hmmm....
Anyway, the War Cabinet Rooms is pretty cool. You get to see where Churchill spent his days during the war, plotting convoys on a map and eating sausage and yelling at his subordinates. You can listen to recorded commentary using a doo-hickey that looks like a cross between a telephone and a TV remote. The museum has things like this:
We finished off the evening by paying a visit to Bricklane, which is nothing more than an alley of brick-buildings all of which house Indian restaurants. Since they all serve the same food, competition is fierce. You can't walk by a restaurant and pause for a minute without someone running up to you saying (unintelligibly) "muhhwahhuh 10% off hgwwjjhh" and when you look like you want to run away follow up (equally unintelligibly) with "hrrumahh 20% off and free round of drinks rraahhigghera" or something. We ended up eating at the least seedy-looking place in the joint, and in all fairness the food was great. The problem? 20% discount does't get the prices to a reasonable level and "free round of drinks" doesn't mean "your two beers are on the house" - in fact, I don't know what it means. I know, however, that our beers ended up on the tab.
At night time, I was trying to drag Mark to a local arabic smoke-parlour, but we never ended up out and instead spent a few hours at his apartment, cracking joke with his roommate Jody. Good times were had by all, possibly except for Mark and Jody.
There are more pictures here.
I met Mark at his apartment sometime around 8:30 AM, after hauling my rather ridiculous load of backpack, daypack and duffel down a busy London street for about 15 minutes. Mark was on his way to work for some meeting, and I took this opportunity to take a brief nap on the couch. Those who know me know that I never nap, which means hell's frozen over. But I digress...
We spent the afternoon walking around London, starting from Covent Garden (by tube) and over to Charing Cross, the Embankment, the City over towards London Bridge and St. Pauls and a bunch of other places. This list is definitely not in order other than the fact that we started at Covent Garden. I think there's no better way to learn what a city is like than by walking the streets, and that's what Mark & I did. There are some very ugly buildings in London, including the new Lloyd's of London building, and some phallic-looking building that is occupied by a bank that clearly sees itself as very important:
One of the cool places we visited was the War Cabinet Rooms museum, which is one of the non-free museums in London. You might think admission is $8.50 CAD. But no! Admission is £8.50 GBP, or £6 GBP if you're unemployed. That's right: if you're unemployed, you should be going to museums at discounted prices and not looking for work. Hmmm....
Anyway, the War Cabinet Rooms is pretty cool. You get to see where Churchill spent his days during the war, plotting convoys on a map and eating sausage and yelling at his subordinates. You can listen to recorded commentary using a doo-hickey that looks like a cross between a telephone and a TV remote. The museum has things like this:
We finished off the evening by paying a visit to Bricklane, which is nothing more than an alley of brick-buildings all of which house Indian restaurants. Since they all serve the same food, competition is fierce. You can't walk by a restaurant and pause for a minute without someone running up to you saying (unintelligibly) "muhhwahhuh 10% off hgwwjjhh" and when you look like you want to run away follow up (equally unintelligibly) with "hrrumahh 20% off and free round of drinks rraahhigghera" or something. We ended up eating at the least seedy-looking place in the joint, and in all fairness the food was great. The problem? 20% discount does't get the prices to a reasonable level and "free round of drinks" doesn't mean "your two beers are on the house" - in fact, I don't know what it means. I know, however, that our beers ended up on the tab.
At night time, I was trying to drag Mark to a local arabic smoke-parlour, but we never ended up out and instead spent a few hours at his apartment, cracking joke with his roommate Jody. Good times were had by all, possibly except for Mark and Jody.
There are more pictures here.
# posted by Alex Perel @ 1:48 PM 
