(Retro- blogging. Going to get shorter and sweeter. I'm determined to get caught up and be normal- blogging this trip.)

London.

London was good. I had to go there about a month into my time here in ZA for some training, so I headed up early to spend the weekend before kicking around. So that must have been...let's see. End of September, last year. Holy bovine am I running behind on getting these things blogged.

Anyway, its a long flight from the bottom of the planet up. I was tired. The hotel was near Hyde Park, which was nice.


Met up with Grant and walked south of the park looking for good places for him to live. I told him he should live in one of these old converted carriage houses on this street. He didn't go for it. So we went to a bar and had...


YES. FISH AND CHIPS AND BEER. This made me happy. We were watching the rugby but ZA wasn't playing that weekend. Didn't matter much, I could already sense the impending doom in ye ole kingdom - the Springboks were destined for glory.


I took off for So. Kensington Station and headed over to the Abbey, waterfront, etc.. Ended up walking back through the theater district, most of the way back to my hotel. People like to sit in the middle of the street here.


And why, oh why, won't somebody tell me why don't they have these wonderful blessed delightful brilliant little signs on the escalators in the NYC subway? I can't say how happy these made me, I really can't. Simple pleasures. This is pretty much the only part of the London metro that's better than NY's, however.

Sunday was a beautiful day. After church downtown, right behind the Gurken, with Grant and Jenny, we walked over to a market across the river, apparently its a farmer's market / produce thing during the week, but on weekends its pretty quiet, even at the cool little pub / restaurants that are open there. So, we had another awesome meal of... YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSssssss


Then there was more walking around and seeing the sights. Like, extremely useful stairs, for instance. Also the Tower, London Bridge, the whole other side of the river including the Shakespeare house thing, back over to St. Pete's, down to that circle with the big pillar with the lions at the bottom - right in front of the museum - can't remember then name, then more Hyde park, then back to parts northerly to meet up with Brian and his friends for drinks and dinner. That was a big day.


Also, this sign is awesome.












As is this one.










Also, here's a few more pictures that I don't really have the energy to type anything about at the moment, other than to say that they were taken in London, and the one in the tube station got picked up off my Flickr page (see here) by some magazine that requested to use it in some article, along with one that I took at the South Kens station, so that's cool.

This much I will say about London - I had what is arguably the best 10 minutes of my 2007, as well as not-one-but-two of what I considered the worst 10-minute-experiences of my year as well. So it was a brief trip of some pretty crazy downs and ups. I don't hope to return too soon.