This is a guest post from Craig. I’m filling in for Britt today because she is lying in a hammock on the beach in Zanzibar, and is indisposed from typing.
We left Santorini for London. After making it past a numerically challenged official who’d miscounted the number of days we’d been in Europe (we hadn’t overstayed), we boarded our Easyjet flight to Gatwick. On arrival we enjoyed surprisingly friendly treatment from UK immigration, and were admitted into rather-colder British climes just around midnight (it was actually a refreshing change from weeks of sunshine).
Because of our late arrival we’d elected to stay at a cheap Travelodge near the airport, rather than trying to get a late train into London-proper. Unfortunately, due to my dilly-dallying we missed the last bus to our hotel, and were forced to submit to Gatwick’s absurd monopoly and take a £15 taxi ride maybe 5 minutes to the accommodation. It’s an absolute ripoff, but what else are you going to do when it’s late and cold and you’re tired and just want to go to bed? Happily, once we got there, the Travelodge was clean and quiet and the check-in clerk was cheerful, and a hot shower melted the frosty exterior right off Britt.
The next day – our first real day in the UK – we checked into our Airbnb apartment near Chelsea stadium, right on the border of Fulham (where I used to live) and Chelsea. The place was very nice, and the owner had thoughtfully left little notes and instructions as well as a bottle of wine for us.
Apparently the first thing we had to do was get Vegemite, which occasioned a trip to Waitrose, which reminded me of all the good things there that I didn’t realise I’d been missing in the US – real cheddar, chutney, cider, Lurpak, eggs that aren’t tiny and pale (though they still had nothing on Norway’s), strawberries with flavour, etc…
Having sorted the Vegemite, we found a pub (The Cock Tavern) that was open for lunch. The food and beer scene in London pubs has come a long way since I lived there; instead of five identical-tasting lagers there was a multitude of beers, and the menu had vegetarian options – none an afterthought – which were quite tasty. I actually wanted to drink some of the fizzy, super-cold crappy lagers (I’m looking at you, Carling) from the old days, but it seems like they’ve been pushed out by new breweries (though this is probably selection bias: we went to nicer pubs).
Most of our days were spent planning for Tanzania in the morning, exploring in the afternoon, and having dinner and drinks with friends in the evening. It was busy, but in an easy way. We got around with the wonderful public transit system, which seems to have even more buses than I remember – so many now that there are jams at busy intersections. Still, they’re clean, modern, cheap, and not much slower than Uber. It’s also fun sitting in the upper front seat of a double-decker, right at the leading edge of the bus, looking out the wraparound glass window, and watching for the inevitable-but-it-never-happens crash as the drivers manouevre skillfully along the congested roads.
Amongst our cultural experiences was the Tate Modern, with its giant Turbine Hall exhibitions (this time big flashing lights, echoing sounds, and big grey panels that lowered and raised randomly from the ceiling). The Tate Modern is my kind of modern art museum – a little bit of everything modernish, with some classics (Dali, Picasso) for the Average Joe who doesn’t know anything about art (me), and just enough “I don’t get it?” / “I could seriously make that at home” / “Is that just a bunch of empty potato sacks?” pieces to keep you on your toes. It’s free, too.
We also walked around a lot, including through Green Park and Hyde Park on a beautiful day, where the changing colours of the trees were highlighted by the sun; the autumn colours are something neither of us has seen for years, since the Bay Area doesn’t really have that season.
Most of our wanders included refreshment stops at the many (so many) pubs, some of which were real gems, like my personal favourite Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet St, which has been around in some form since 1538, with parts of the interior dating from the 13th century. It’s full of nooks and crannies, and the roof is so low on the narrow stairs that practically everyone has to duck.
Half the point of going to London was to catch up with friends, and the other half was probably to get a change in menu. After meat-and-patata-tortilla Spain and salad-and-Saganaki Greece (to be fair to the lovely Greeks no one but us made us eat Saganaki every day) we were looking forward to a bit of variety: a good burger, good curry, good Asian food… Fortunately the best way to catch up with friends is over drinks and dinner, and I’m happy to say that we achieved, with some memorable moments on the way. After getting one of my two favourite Asian cuisines out of the way at the start (Vietnamese, with high-school friend Eric and his wife Pip) we had a couple of memorable nights out.
Brick Lane is a classic London food experience: A street lined with curry houses that may-or-may-not share a huge and secret underground kitchen, where you play the eager reps off against each other in order to negotiate for free poppadoms, 10% off, no corkage fee, and maybe a round of drinks for the party. If you’re a regular (and especially if you have a favourite that you kinda want to eat at regardless of how the bargaining goes – RIP The Clipper) you send in the newbies or least-memorable members of the party to negotiate with that restaurant to secure a good deal. At least that’s how it used to be. Discovering that The Clipper was gone took the wind out of our sails a bit, so we ended up settling for the second restaurant we talked to. We didn’t even get free poppadoms, the historical bare minimum for even thinking about going in, despite some concerted efforts – “they’re only 70p, why not just buy them?”, “if they’re only 70p, why not just give them to us for free?” – so I felt like a bit of a failure. Nevertheless the curry was good and the company (Simmi, Jess, and Brad who we know the from US, and my university friend James) made for a fun time.
Another fun experience was out with my university friends: James, Kris and Dave, and Macca and Liz. After a tasty dinner we wandered about trying to find a pub (for once we were in the only part of the central city without a surplus of drinking establishments) and eventually happened on a small and fairly quiet place on a corner. We secured a table next to a piano, which turned out to be very fortunate, because about 15 minutes later a party of older gentlemen (probably in their 60s, all clearly having been enjoying a bit of a drinking session) came in. One of these guys wandered over to the rickety, out-of-tune instrument and proceeded to belt out a good 45 minutes of ragtime and honky-tonk music, completely from memory and with long, rambling and possibly-improvised instrumentals. When he finally finished (after an encore), slammed down the keyboard cover, and walked away, it was to loud applause and cheers.
After our five nights in our Fulham Airbnb we spent a few nights with Kris and Dave. They have a cool place in South East London, and, as Kris had been ill a few days earlier, it was nice to spend time with them when she was feeling herself. We went out to an Italian restaurant in the area and had lasagna, and another night Kris cooked for us.
From Kris and Dave’s we moved west and stayed with Macca and Liz. Because Thanksgiving was coming, and we were heading for a place where there wouldn’t be any pumpkin, Liz had made a wonderful pumpkin cake. Fortunately there was enough for me to have cake for breakfast one time, which is one of my favourite things to do but which I never do, because we never have cake (even if I knew how to make cakes I would have a policy against having cakes, for the same reason that we don’t have chocolate or beer or biscuits/cookies in the house).
One of the things we had to do before leaving for Tanzania was getting anti-malarials, and Diamox for altitude sickness (because we’d decided to climb Mt Kilimanjaro). Our efforts to do so (none of the travel doctors seem to have a working phone number) took us to the area of The Shard, aka the tallest building in Europe. It’s a gleaming glass spire on the south bank of the Thames, with a hotel in the middle (on the 50th floor) which features a couple of bars and restaurants with spectacular views over the city. It turns out that the cost of a few drinks at the highest bar is about the same as a ticket to the viewing platform one floor above, and also similar to the London Eye, with the advantage of a much better view than the London eye and booze instead of the no booze on the viewing platform. Britt’s cocktail was even served in a bird cage.
Our trip to London wrapped up with a visit to Uniqlo to buy thermals for Mt Kilimanjaro, lunch with Liz and Macca, and them dropping us off at Heathrow (thanks!) for our flight to Tanzania.
Roam Mode 