London 2023: The First Week

 

What a difference a year makes! Here I am back in Belsize Park. After a relatively uneventful flight, with minor weather delays en route and moderate turbulence across the Atlantic, my plane arrived at Heathrow a mere one minute late and, best of all, my luggage came on the flight with me. Thank you, Aer Lingus.

Now I'm well settled into the flat in Lambolle Road and am dusting the cobwebs off of the UK folder in my brain, reacquainting myself with the coinage (I still confuse the 10 cent US dime with the 5p UK coin), awakening the muscle memory for walking on uneven cobbles, revisiting all the grocery stores in the immediate area to get my favourite foods, refreshing my mental inventory of toilet locations, and learning the hard way that I need to add 10 minutes to any transit time estimates that I get on the Citymapper app, especially the walking bits. My legs are short and getting older, so I just have to reconcile myself to the fact that I can't walk at a London pace. To my #1 travel rule ("If you are nearby to an acceptable public loo, use it"), I've added a complimentary rule #2 ("If a bus comes along that's going in your direction, take it"). In both instances, you never know when the next one -- loo or bus -- will materialize.

Things in Belsize Park are essentially the same with a few minor changes. The Budgens grocery store has reopened since extensive renovations that began days after my 2022 arrival. It's a very nice store (check out the photos in the link above), though is now pricier than before. But I happily discovered that they still carry the Yeo rhubarb yoghurt that I love. In England's Lane, the French bakery still sells pastel de nata (priced at £1.90 each, which isn't much of a change if any) and there's a new convenience store that seems so-so. Best of all, right across from the tube station is a new charity shop that's fabulous. It supports the mental health charity Mind, which has shops in other parts of London but only just opened this one in the past six months or so. The shop is bright and cheerful, the staff and volunteers couldn't be nicer, and -- a lovely surprise -- the clothing is grouped first by type (shirts, skirts, dresses, etc) and then by SIZE, rather than colour like every other charity shop I've entered in the UK. 

A number of small and medium art exhibitions were ending during my first week so I darted about to catch a bunch of them:

• Art and Artifice: Fakes from the Collection at the Courtauld. I'm a huge fan of the programme Fake or Fortune, in which Fiona Bruce and Philip Mould are always bringing works to the Courtauld Institute for analysis, so this was right up my alley. I kept expecting Fiona and Philip to pop their heads around a corner to offer more info, but no such luck. 
• Black Venus at Somerset House -- Black women artists confronting and reclaiming images and representation in art since the infamous Hottentot Venus. 
• Brian Clarke at Newport Street Gallery. Big, colourful, splashy, sometimes dark stained glass windows and screens:

• Excess of Desire by keita miyazaki at Gallery Rosenfeld. Sculptural pieces made of car parts. Very cool. 

• Evelyn Hofer at the Photographers' Gallery. I absolutely loved this retrospective exhibition of a relatively unknown woman photographer (I'd not heard of her, though much of her work was done in America). I particularly liked the symmetry within her photographs.  

• Grandma's Land by Alvaro Barrington at Sadie Coles HQ in Kingly Street. Installation about his growing up in Grenada. 

There's some new temporary public art around the Strand. This is an installation that's part of the London Design Festival, called Spirit of Place by Simone Brewster. There are five pieces, all made of cork.

And there's also a new installation on the low rooftop of Temple Station, called Slackwater by Holly Hendry. It references the movements of the nearby Thames.

On Thursday, I went on one of the weekly walks with the Primrose Hill Community Association. Loyal readers will remember how much I enjoyed participating in PHCA activities last year. This walk included stops at the blue plaques of three local residents who are less known than the usual blue plaque set: Agnes Arber (a botanist), Henry Wood (musician and conductor of the Proms) and Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, an Indian economist, social reformer and political leader. It was lovely to reconnect with the group and to learn about these three fascinating, accomplished individuals. 

Thursday evening, I saw the first of several theatre performances I've booked. This one was of "Indecent" by Paula Vogel at JW3, a Jewish community cultural centre about a 25 minute walk up the Finchley Road from my gaff. I thoroughly enjoyed the performance -- the staging, the acting, the music and the story. It's a play within a play within a play (a bit confusing at times), about the controversial performances in eastern Europe, New York City, ultimately the Lodz ghetto of a play by Sholem Asch called "God of Vengeance." I managed to miss the number 13/113 bus up and back down the Finchley Road by a minute or two. I watched them both pull away from across the busy road, which I didn't dare dart across. Hence the new rule about adding minutes to Citymapper's estimates. 

I did a house tour at the Cosmic House in Holland Park on Friday. I'd been wanting to see the inside of the building ever since it opened for public tours in 2021. This was the brainchild and home of post-Modern architect Charles Jencks and his family until his death in 2019. In 2018 it was given Grade I listing. My friend Simon, himself an architect, told me about the ticketing process. As soon as July, August and September tix became available, I was persistently on the website until I scored myself a ticket. By that evening, they were gone. Admittedly, I had neglected to do much reading about the house before my visit. I was delightfully surprised to find how whimsical the place is, with various humorous motifs (faces, action figures) throughout. If you want to book for future open days, you'll need to get on the mailing list and be ready to pounce when you are notified that it's time to book. 

I rounded out the week with a shopping trip to the Parliament Hill Farmers' Market on Saturday and a guided walk around the old Eton Estate part of Belsize Park on Sunday. Oh, and I got a covid jab on Sunday morning. I was hoping for the new formulation, but it will not be available in the UK for another two months. Meanwhile, there's a big push on to get the over-65s vaccinated with the old bivalent jab, which they told me has been just as effective as the new one in the clinical trials. Since I couldn't get the new formulation before I left the US, and I've been horrified by the lack of covid precautions here in the UK (nary a mask in sight), I decided I may as well get boosted with the bivalent formulation. I was able to get it at UCL Hospital in the Euston Road, without question about immigration status and without a NHS number. 

Here are the stats:

Tuesday (arrival day):
£10 to top up my Oyster card

£20 mobile phone package for 30 days

£1.90 pastel de nata

£22.98 groceries and wine

12,694 steps

5.14 miles

Wednesday

£156.30 one-month travel card

£6.50 shirt from charity shop

17,026 steps

6.92 miles

Thursday

£2.30 sandwich

£7.33 groceries

£15 ticket for Indecent at JW3

27,844 steps

11.35 miles

Friday

£5 Cosmic House tour

£1 veggie samosa in Portobello Road Market

£1.85 pastel de nata from Lisboa in Golborne Road

£8.50 wine

18,008 steps

7.41 miles

Saturday

£11 bread & veg from farmers' market

£4 Photographers' Gallery (Art Pass price)

18,702 steps

7.62 miles

Sunday

£2.27 groceries

13,299 steps

5.45 miles

Back in the Big Smoke

Peggotty said, "I’ll stay with you till I am a cross cranky old woman. And when I’m too deaf, and too lame, and too blind, and too mumbly for want of teeth, to be of any use at all, even to be found fault with, than I shall go to my Davy, and ask him to take me in." (David Copperfield) Well, a pandemic, global economic collapse, Brexit, two Tory twat PMs and the death of the Queen couldn't stop me from going to Blighty and London has taken me in. It's been far too long.

The journey over was a bit of a nightmare that started before I'd even boarded my plane in Hartford. In the years B.C. (Before Covid), Aer Lingus offered a brilliant route from Hartford to London via Dublin, but that was suspended in 2020 and hasn't resumed. So, I booked myself on a really cheap flight on American Airlines with a tight connection in Philadelphia -- a mistake, apparently. I was one of the last people to board the first flight. The gate staff came around saying there was no more room in the overhead compartments and they seized the bags of the last three of us in the queue for stowage in the hold. I had a really bad feeling about this. I had been so careful about packing light in the smallest roll-aboard possible (it even meets the stringent size limitations on Ryan Air). I begged and pleaded to no avail. The guy in back of me said not to bother complaining as the AA gate staff are always assholes. When I got to my seat, there was indeed a space right above it, perfectly sized for my wee bag. I stuffed my backpack with all my electronics, etc. under the seat in front of me and buckled up. The plane had barely moved away from the gate when it stopped ... and stayed for over an hour because, we were told, of bad weather in Philly. I talked to a nice cabin steward who told me that everything in Philly was delayed and odds were that my connecting flight would be leaving late. Well, it left without me. Fortunately, AA rebooked me onto a later flight that night to LHR, where I had an entire row of three seats to myself and got some kip, but unfortunately my bag stayed in Philly, which I only discovered after all the bags from our flight had come off the carousel at Heathrow. That meant going to the customer service desk, filing all the relevant details, and hoping I could believe that my bag would be put on that night's AA flight and would be delivered to me the next day. Long story short, the bag did arrive on my doorstep at 8 pm Thursday, by which time I could have used some good drugs to bring my anxiety level down.

What to do on my first day without my luggage? Go to a charity shop! There must be six or eight of them within easy walking distance and I lucked out. At the first one I went to, I got a t-shirt and leggings for 11 quid, then made it back to my AirBnB in time to unroll the yoga mat I had ordered from Amazon, log onto the wifi network, and be ready for the 3 pm livestream mat class (10 am EST) from my local Pilates studio. Feeling a bit more human afterwards, I went out again to go to the shops for food items. And I got caught in my first (brief) torrential downpour.

Day two started with the weekly walk around the Primrose Hill area, sponsored by the Primrose Hill Community Association. Some of the walks are social rambles and others are guided with a theme. For this walk, local resident Martin Sheppard, who has written a history of the area, walked us around the park for an hour and told us about how it was used during and impacted by World War Two. There were anti-aircraft guns on the hill, various shelters for the troops, and part of the park was used as allotments. He was full of interesting factoids, including some about how London Zoo dealt with the war. Fearing that a bomb strike would result in animal carnage and escape, they moved many of the animals to other locations outside London and euthanized some. Others remained in the zoo, and some were really freaked out by the noise of the shelling (this area sustained a lot of bomb damage due to proximity to the rail lines, a prime target), including a zebra who got out and had to be rounded up and returned. 

Mid day was consumed with errands. I ordered a burner phone from Argos and needed to schlep up the Finchley Road to Sainsbury's at the O2 (an even more dreadful place than it was the last time I was there in 2004). On the way back, I stopped into another charity shop and bought a scarf (I had forgotten to bring one) for 3 quid -- a bit scratchy, but it matches my plum raincoat perfectly. I might be cheap, but I aim to be well turned out. Back at the flat, I faffed around with the phone to great frustration.

Finally, in late afternoon I set out for a tour of the Islamic gardens at the Aga Khan Centre in King's Cross. I had wanted to see the inside of the building when I was here in 2019 -- it was featured during Open House weekend, but when I got there the queue was so long that I didn't try for it. The garden tours are announced on the website every three months, and I had pounced when they opened up dates for autumn tours. We had a knowledgeable and funny guide and the six gardens are beautiful -- scattered on various balconies and roofs throughout the nine-storey building. And the views over Coal Drops Yard and Granary Square were great.

Friday was my day to mooch around in Bloomsbury. It started with a trip to the EE phone store in the Brunswick Centre to see if they could get my burner phone working properly. They couldn't, but helped me to connect by phone to customer service tech people. After 45 minutes sat in the store while on the phone, the problem finally seemed sorted and I was on my way. The next stop was the Wellcome Collection to see a small exhibition about air -- not the best exhibition I've seen there, but there's a new one coming in a couple weeks so I'll be sure to come back. This is one of my favourite places in London -- the library is a fantastic place to chill out in comfy chairs and the caff is lovely. Unfortunately, they shuttered their wonderful bookshop for Covid and haven't reopened it.

I grabbed a sandwich in a convenience store and walked over to Tavistock Square, where I sat on a bench next to Gandhi and ate my lunch.

Next up, a walking tour of the UCL campus, led by a marvelous student guide -- a second-year undergraduate from Singapore who is studying geography and data science. He walked us around some of the historic and modern buildings on campus (alas, not Senate House) and brought us to the brand new Student Centre to see Jeremy Bentham's auto-icon in a glass case. Jeremy looked fantastic for his age and very happy to be in the midst of the activity of the campus. 

My final stop before heading back to Belsize Park was the Crypt Gallery below St Pancras Parish Church. This, too, is a favourite stop for me. The current exhibition is Beyond Nature by Jeff Robb -- holograms of flowers, hung singly in the arched niches in the crypt. Art meets horticulture meets technology. 

Sorry about the poor photo quality. The burner phone is naff. My next post will be shorter -- my weekend adventures and perhaps a bit about my accommodations.

Wednesday, October 5th

£10 to top up Oyster card

£26 groceries and wine

£11 t-shirt and leggings from charity shop

13,871 steps

5.71 miles

Thursday, October 6th

£47 mobile phone and SD card

£10 EE top up for phone

£3 scarf from charity shop

£7 Rescue Remedy pastilles -- I REALLY needed to de-stress

£3.35 Kevin pie (Waitrose was out of my favourite Heidi pies)

22,072 steps

8.99 miles

Friday, October 7th

£147.50 one-month travel card

£2.20 sandwich

£10.20 apples and wine

15,700 steps

6.43 miles

Get me to the airport, put me on a plane. Hurry, hurry, hurry, before I go insane.

The Ramones were singing "I Wanna Be Sedated" on the radio this morning as I drove to work. When they wrote the song, they were itchy to get out of London. I, on the other hand, am anxious to get there. Anxious as in I can't wait, and also in that my pre-travel anxiety level is sky-high. Did I remember to pack everything? Will everthing be ok at home while I'm gone? Will my wonky knee hold up? I'll settle down as soon as I'm on the plane, but will then be nervousy about getting from Heathrow to Belsize Park on the tube. I usually take the Piccadilly Line to Leicester Square, where I change trains after climbing about 30 steps to the Northern Line platform. For me, that change at Leicester Square is the absolute worst part of the journey. This time, to cut down on the number of stairs that I have to negotiate with a suitcase and a 10-pound messenger bag, I'm going to change for the Victoria Line at Green Park, and then for the Northern Line at Euston. This will add about 10 minutes to the journey, and will probably involve more walking between lines at Green Park, but it's worth it to cut down on stair steps. I'll still have to climb about a dozen steps to get to the lifts at Belsize Park (it's one of the deepest stations in London) and then a miserable 51 steps up to Spooner's flat. After a nap and a shower, I plan to head out to the Museum of London, where I'll meet up with Mondoagogo to do a hands-on workshop in the archaeology department, handling bits and pieces of antiquity that have been dug up around London. From there, it's on to the pub quiz at the Royal Institution. I hope I can stay awake. Keep watching the blog for tales of my adventures in Blighty.

This just in from London

Image by ☞ John McNab via Flickr

Spooner sent me a most excellent postcard of the Obamas and the Queen. It's this photo, but they've wisely cropped the Duke out of the postcard because he looks sneaky and too much like Klaus von Bulow.

I've booked my next trip to the UK (in September, so that I can do Open House Weekend again). Apparently, Spooner will be moving before then. I'll miss Primrose Gardens -- I'll either have to learn to like his new patch (wherever that turns out to be) or I'll have to stay with the nuns at the women's hostel in Belsize Park. Hmmmmmm....

Open House, Part 2

Well, mates, it's happened. I've run out of steam. I've just gotten in from my last day of adventures, and I am truly knackered. Thankfully, the blisters didn't start to appear until yesterday, and I had a pretty easy (right!) day planned for today. We had 11 index cards for the day, 10 of which were in the City and one in Tower Hamlets (just east of Tower Hill, where Whitechapel meets Wapping). We made it to 9 of the 11, plus one that wasn't on the original list:

• The Daily Express Building (or what was the Daily Express; not sure what's in the building now -- might be Goldman Sachs -- but it's still an Art Deco gem and we were able to see the lobby)
• Apothecaries' Hall (one of the best preserved 17c livery hall interiors; I took some pix of jars that held leeches and various herbs and potions)
• St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe (Wren's last church in the City)
  
• Painters' Hall (bombed in the war and rebuilt afterwards)
• St Helen Bishopsgate (parts date from 1210 and it survived the Great Fire)
• Bevis Marks Synagogue (built in 1701; it's the oldest synagogue in Britain)
• Old Turkish Baths (late Victorian; now a pizza parlor where we had a nice lunch)
• Guildhall (Grade I listed medieval civic building, dating from the 12th century)
• St Bartholomew's Hospital (founded in 1123; Grade I listed Georgian building where we saw the Great Hall and a staircase decorated with huge canvases by Wm. Hogarth)
• Wilton's Music Hall (dates from 1859; the oldest music hall in Britain and possibly in Europe; if you saw the movie Casandra's Dream, you caught some glimpses of the interior)

Spooner's favorite from today was the synagogue, while mine was Wilton's. I got some pix, but in many places you either aren't allowed to photograph or the lighting is so dim that it wasn't possible.

When we got back to Belsize Park, we went to Budgen's supermarket to get things for dinner and for our respective journeys (Spooner's with some kids from his school to Scotland tomorrow and mine home to the States). Oh joy, oh joy! HobNobs were on sale -- buy one package for 99p and get the second free. Brilliant!

Pedometer reading: 18,700 steps, 7.6 miles

Expenses:

• £5 for my half of our pizza at Ciro's
• £1 for a piece of cake at Wilton's (a bunch of oldies off a bus tour were having tea and cakes in the cafe and I grabbed a piece of ginger cake)
• 99p for two packages of HobNobs
• £9.49 for a bottle of wine for Spooner's household
  

I think I'm ok for money on my Oyster to get to Heathrow tomorrow. Spooner and his flatmates will be leaving before dawn for their school trips, and I'll leave the house around 10 for the long journey home. It's been a really wonderful trip -- I saw a few new areas as I fill in the map of London, I got to spend some time with Flickr mates -- new and old -- whose company I totally enjoy, I saw sites that a regular tourist rarely gets to see, and (I hope) I got a few good pix in the process. I'm especially happy that I got to spend a fair amount of time in the East End (Hoxton, Shoreditch, Spitalfields and Whitechapel) because I missed that patch on my last trip. Watch for the pix to appear on Flickr -- after I rest, play with the cats, and do a mountain of laundry.

Thanks for reading about my adventures. The next post will be from Stateside, when I will tell you all about conkers, snails, stinging nettles and dock. I'll also go back to my older posts and drop in photos and links.

Greetings from Old Blighty

Here I am, back in London. In Belsize Park at the moment, using Spooner's macbook, which is a bit of a challenge. I'm getting a slow start today on account of jet lag and a very tiring arrival day. But I got up at 9 a.m., so my internal clock is half way to being adjusted.

The trip over was uneventful, but LONG -- 15 hours from door to door, using every mode of transport but boat. First the drive to the Massport lot in Framingham, then the Logan Express bus to the airport, then the flight (landed around 7 a.m.), an hour and a half on the tube to Belsize Park and a short walk to Spooner's house. The only good thing about the flight (it sure wasn't the food -- this time I tried the Hindu meal, and it was the same as all the other alternatives that Virgin Atlantic serves up, i.e. rice, overcooked veg and mystery sauce -- which upset my digestive system something wicked) was the inflight entertainment. I watched the film Somers Town, which I'd wanted to see while I was in London but it had just left the cinemas in Swiss Cottage and Finchley Road. It's by the same director who made This is England, and stars the same kid, who is about 15 now. There's really not much of a plot -- it's mostly vingnettes about a kid from the Midlands who's come to London, and his new mate, a Polish immigrant boy whose dad works in construction at the new St Pancras International station. It's quite charming, and I always like when I recognize places in Brit movies.

So, after my nap yesterday, I hopped on the 168 bus down to Camden Town, bought a bagel at Fresh and Wild, and headed for Regent's Park to wander around. It's a vast place -- not as big and wild as Hampstead Heath, but it took me longer than I'd guesstimated to make my way past the zoo to the Victorian drinking fountain, around by the bird sanctuary to the west side where the London Mosque is, over to the band shell which was blown up (killing 7 Royal Green Jackets in the band) by the IRA, around the Inner Circle -- with a wander through the secret garden at St John's Lodge -- and out the York Gate to Marylebone Road.

As I was walking down the Marylebone Road to the tube station at Baker Street, a tourist from South Asia stopped me and asked how to get to Oxford Street. This was a first -- it's always been me reluctantly asking someone for directions. Maybe I finally look like I know where I'm going (that's only semi-true). But I was able to quickly show him on my map where he was and how to get to Baker Street for a bus to Oxford Street. Once I was in the tube station, I had to ask someone on the platform if the train for Plaistow (wherever that is) would stop at Aldgate East.

I met up with my mates Helen and Judy in Whitechapel High Street, the beginning point for a guided walk about Jewish radicalism in the East End from 1881 to 1905. Jet lagged as I was, I think I was able to take in most of it at the time, but I can't remember any of the people we learned about at the moment, except for Samuel Gompers, who we learned attended the Jews' Free School in Bell Lane (building destroyed in the Blitz). We saw the Jewish Soup Kitchen in Brune Street, the former site of Mossy Marks' deli in Wentworth Street (I have to find out if that's the place that James Mason visits in The London Nobody Knows), and ended in Princelet Street. Afterwards, Helen and Judy and I had dinner in a restaurant in the newly renovated (read: soul sucked out of it) Spitalfields Market. (Rosenbeans, you wouldn't recognise the place -- it looks nothing like the funky market we went to four years ago.)

Pedometer reading for yesterday: Over 20,000 steps, 8.5 miles.

Expenses:

• £20 to top up my Oyster card (I'll need to add more later)
• 69p for the bagel
  
• 7 quid for the East End walk (it costs £3.50 if you're non-waged)
  
• £1.05 for postcards
• a tenner for dinner
  

Miles and Miles

My last full day in London served up quintessential English weather. It was dark and pouring when I headed out for the day with the intention of going from museum to museum, spending as little time as possible outdoors or above ground. By the time I reached the Courtauld Gallery at Somerset House, the rain had tapered to mist, and it had stopped by the time I had finished looking at the Impressionist paintings and the Renoir at the Theatre exhibition.


Wednesday was St George's Day, which apparently England is trying to reclaim from its more recent association with the British National Party and football louts, and there was a festival of English food, with lots of vendors from Borough Market, in Trafalgar Square. I wandered around, watched the tea ladies and some other entertainment, then had a bowl of various types of salad, made from spelt, rye, beets and other veg from The Veggie Table, and a scrumptious piece of banana cake that came from Flour Power City Bakery.


After lunch, I nipped into the National Portrait Gallery to see a small, but fab, photography exhibition by John Londei called Shutting Up Shop. Then, with the weather now warm, sunny and gorgeous, I decided to stay outdoors and really started covering some miles, most on foot with intermittent bus and tube trips. First to Oxford Street -- a place I usually try to avoid -- to hit John Lewis for another pair of knitting needles.


Next, a walk up Marylebone Lane to The Button Queen where I got a couple of interesting buttons, one vintage deco one that was probably too expensive but I think it would look neat on a neckwarmer. From there, I went by bus to St John's Wood to pick up a Beatles floaty pen for rosenbeans, and ran into Esther walking back to Belsize Park.


Not wanting to waste a moment of spring air and lovely late afternoon light, I decided to do the Hampstead walk from www.londonwalks.org. Some of it was in streets and lanes I'd been in before, but most of it was new. I skipped the Admiral's House, but otherwise did the entire walk, all the way up to the flagpole by Jack Straw's Castle, a pub that both Dickens and Marx liked to frequent. The flagpole is on the highest point in London, and I was hoping for splendid views, but there were no vistas to be seen from there.


Walking back to the tube station, I went by the Holly Bush Pub and caught sight of the BT Tower and the London Eye over the rooftops of Hampstead.

Before leaving for home on Thursday, I took a quick walk down some previously-unseen streets of Belsize Park. Everywhere I walked, there were signs of spring bursting forth -- lilacs starting to bloom, magnolia blossoms opening, tulips and pansies in all the front gardens. I saw the site of a painting by Robert Bevan that we'd seen in the Camden Town Group exhibit on Saturday. As soon as I saw the painting, I thought it had to be Belsize Park (the label confirmed it), and I dragged Spooner over to see if he would recognize it (without looking at the label or my saying where it was). He hadn't a clue, even though it's a five minute stroll from his house. I guess I'm getting pretty good at identifying the sights of London, or at least the sights of some of the areas I've gotten to know.

The trip home was long and tiring. I left Spooner's at 10 a.m., and while I was underground for an hour and a half, making my way to Heathrow on the tube, a storm went over and planes weren't allowed to take off until it had passed. This put all flights behind schedule, and ours sat on the tarmac for two hours before they let us move to the runway. It was 8:30 p.m. by the time I got into my car in Framingham, and 10 p.m. on the dot when I pulled into my driveway. My body is now somewhere between London and Eastern time, and I got up at about 4:30 this morning to dump my 617 photos onto the computer and look at them. After I unpack and do some laundry, I'll start putting them on Flickr and will drop a few into my blog posts. I'm sure I won't get far before jet lag takes a grip of me and I crash.

The Eagle has Landed

Hey Mates! I arrived in London at 7 a.m. this morning and walked in the door of Spooner's house at 10. A long but uneventful trip. After taking a quick nap and shower, I headed into town to meet one of my Flickr mates at the Royal Academy of Arts to see "From Russia," an amazing exhibition of French and Russian masters, mostly impressionist and post-impressionist, from the Russian collections (i.e. stuff that was in private hands until the Russian Revolution when the state seized it all). Virtually none of this stuff has been out of Russia since, and Putin almost didn't let it out for the exhibition.


Afterwards, we walked up to Newman Street to see the newest Banksy. It's fab.


Then, I came back to Belsize Park and did some shopping -- soap (forgot mine, don't like Spooner's), cello tape (for wrapping prezzies), the essential HobNobs, and some cake for Spooner's birthday. Prezzies are now wrapped and he should be home any minute.

Tomorrow, Islington (weather permitting).

Almost Set to Jet

Cheyne Walk c. 1800Plans are falling into place for London. I've got Spooner's birthday prezzies all ready to pack, including a few from his ex. The weather over there has been like a yoyo -- in the low 60s on Friday, then 30s and snow today -- so I can't figure out what clothes to pack. Here are some highlights of what I'll be doing over there:

• From Russia at the Royal Academy of Arts.
• Walk around Islington, with stops at the S&M (Sausage and Mash) Cafe and the Estorick Collection.
  
• London Welsh choirs at Cadogan Hall.
• Walk around Chelsea, including the Royal Hospital grounds and Cheyne Walk.
  
• Daytrip to Whitstable or Canterbury.
• Something in Southwark -- either the Tate Modern or Imperial War Museum.
• Exploring other bits around Waterloo, particularly Lower Marsh Street.

Rosenbeans has requested that I look for floaty pens, Earl Grey tea and Donna Leon books for her, so I'll check my favorite souvenir stand next to St Martin-in-the-Fields and a bookstore in Belsize Park called Daunt. ScribeGirl wants more soap from Covent Garden Market. Anyone else with requests should let me know. Stay tuned for further developments.