London Day 3
(This is a part of a 7-day series about my trip to London.)
Date: February 13, 2008
Today was the first day I have had where I was truly "free". No commitments, no jobs, no assignments, nothing to do: instead, it could be all Tony, all the time. While that might sound like riveting television or a relative good time, I can tell you straight up that while it seems pretty good in the beginning, it gets pretty boring pretty fast -- especially when Tony is in a land where things are twice as expensive as he's used to.
The morning started auspiciously enough: full English breakfast -- four pieces of toast, a pooched egg, ham, sausage, roasted tomato, and beans. The beans I have always thought were a bit weird, but they're surprisingly easy to eat and pretty tasty in the morning. They add kind a pretty different, but tasty texture to the regular morning meal. I don't think it's something I'd start doing regularly at home, but there's really nothing wrong with them.
During breakfast, the owner of the bread and breakfast, Simon, brought me into the kitchen to show me how he made poached eggs. It turns out there's nothing fancy about it at all -- the trick is to be open to losing some parts of the egg. I thought the whole egg had to stay together, which turns out to have been fallacy. New knowledge always tickles my brain -- I can't wait to get home to pooch some more eggs.
With that, I started off into the London daylight-- some money in my pocket, and excitement in my heart. The first stop was Buckingham Palace: home of the queen, and on off-days, the place where they would be doing the Changing of the Guard. This, it turns out, is exactly what it sounds like -- the four guards at the front of the place swap spots with four new guys. The thing that makes it quite a spectacle is that it's accompanied with a lot of fanfare... literally. In addition to a marching band, there were "fans" watching the whole procession (I was one of them). The crowd was probably five or six people deep, and unfortunately, most of them were over 6', which means that it was difficult to see anything. I actually got there early enough to get a good spot, but I kept switching because it wasn't clear where they were going to show up, so in the end, I ended up with terrible viewing areas. If I go again, I'll know where to stand, but for now, I just have some bad pictures of other people's heads (in true London fashion, I held up my camera above my head to try to get a good camera shot, but ended up mostly getting pictures of the backs of people's heads), a vague memory of some marching band and guards with really big guns, and the thought that I should just watch this on TV.
This whole fiasco (including the waiting) lasted in the order of an hour, so with an hour wasted in the day, I started off again into the heart of London on foot. I traveled along the streets, checking out architecture, but rarely going into stores. Admittedly, the stores that I did go into were primarily the little food convenience stores to see what they sold for food, and how much it cost. These food convenience stores are extremely plentiful, but they're something we don't really have in Canada. Many are like just the sandwich and drink aisle of a 7-11, and a lot of them don't open past about 6pm or so (they're primarily for grabbing food on the go). Judging from how
many of these there are, I'm not sure that Londoners really sit down for many meals -- eating doesn't seem to be a big ritual for them.
Wandering the streets stated to get me kind of hungry, but I was antsy about paying £2.8 or £3.8 or £4.5 for a baguette with some meat and cheese when I wasn't sure that I'd even enjoy it. Just to give you a sense, it would be the equivalent of paying $5.60, $7.90 or $9.00 for one of these things. There were some Cornish pastries and meat pies that looked appetizing, but again, the cost seemed exhorbitant, and so deterred me somewhat. In the midst of my battle with hunger and cheapness, I suddenly found myself in the middle of Chinatown.
I have to say, the smell and sight of roasted duck, roasted pork and chicken were imcomparably intoxicating. After about five steps into Chinatown, I decided three things: (1) no matter how bad the Chinese food was, they probably couldn't mess up a roast duck, (2) I didn't really care how much that stuff cost, and (3) I had to eat something eventually! So I set out in Chinatown looking for some cheap eats! I settled on looking for places only with BBQ pork and roast duck visibly in the window -- this would allow me to weed out the "Chinese restaurants" catering only to Caucasian crowd, and were intended for the Chinese folks.
The meal of roast pork and BBQ pork ended up costing £4.8, which, for the comfort I felt afterwards, seemed well worth the price. It was an interesting thing being in a Chinese restaurant. For one, i could speak Cantonese, and I felt an immediate connection to these guys. For another... this will sound strange, but of course, the Chinese people don't have an English accent when speaking Cantonese. Those things came together to make me feel pretty comfortable in there. It's an interesting feeling to sort of feel "at home" when you're clearly
away. Very satisfying.
The rest of the day was also spent wandering around downtown. I ended up at the National Gallery again, and was again reminded of how cool it was to see art up close that I'd only seen in pictures before. It's definitely a cool feeling.
I spent the evening with Brad, who incidentally knew even less of London than I did. Jet lag kicked in around 4:30 and lasted about an hour and a half -- I could barely keep my eyes open. I fought through and made it to see Brad (for dinner). As we were wandering around, we saw a big commotion and hurried to see what was going on. It turns out that there was a big premiere for a movie, and some big names were going to the premiere. I'm told that Uma Thurman was in the mix, but the only picture I got was of someone's back who was wearing a red dress. I'll have to inspect it more closely later to see who it was.
Like at Buckingham Palace, the throngs of people were probably six people deep. It's kind of an interesting thing in London to see how differentiated the really really rich people are from the commoners. They really are THAT MUCH richer, and the commoners really do feel common next to them, but are really THAT EXCITED to see these people. The level of feverishness is kind of hard to describe. Perhaps it's just curiosity -- and the curiosity is fueled by two things: (1) there are so many OTHER people are looking upon the spectacle, and (2) there's just not enough room for everyone to see, creating the illusion (?) of demand.
Anyway, enough with trying to learn something in London. Tomorrow, I'm going to see a show.
Date: February 13, 2008
Today was the first day I have had where I was truly "free". No commitments, no jobs, no assignments, nothing to do: instead, it could be all Tony, all the time. While that might sound like riveting television or a relative good time, I can tell you straight up that while it seems pretty good in the beginning, it gets pretty boring pretty fast -- especially when Tony is in a land where things are twice as expensive as he's used to.
The morning started auspiciously enough: full English breakfast -- four pieces of toast, a pooched egg, ham, sausage, roasted tomato, and beans. The beans I have always thought were a bit weird, but they're surprisingly easy to eat and pretty tasty in the morning. They add kind a pretty different, but tasty texture to the regular morning meal. I don't think it's something I'd start doing regularly at home, but there's really nothing wrong with them.
During breakfast, the owner of the bread and breakfast, Simon, brought me into the kitchen to show me how he made poached eggs. It turns out there's nothing fancy about it at all -- the trick is to be open to losing some parts of the egg. I thought the whole egg had to stay together, which turns out to have been fallacy. New knowledge always tickles my brain -- I can't wait to get home to pooch some more eggs.
With that, I started off into the London daylight-- some money in my pocket, and excitement in my heart. The first stop was Buckingham Palace: home of the queen, and on off-days, the place where they would be doing the Changing of the Guard. This, it turns out, is exactly what it sounds like -- the four guards at the front of the place swap spots with four new guys. The thing that makes it quite a spectacle is that it's accompanied with a lot of fanfare... literally. In addition to a marching band, there were "fans" watching the whole procession (I was one of them). The crowd was probably five or six people deep, and unfortunately, most of them were over 6', which means that it was difficult to see anything. I actually got there early enough to get a good spot, but I kept switching because it wasn't clear where they were going to show up, so in the end, I ended up with terrible viewing areas. If I go again, I'll know where to stand, but for now, I just have some bad pictures of other people's heads (in true London fashion, I held up my camera above my head to try to get a good camera shot, but ended up mostly getting pictures of the backs of people's heads), a vague memory of some marching band and guards with really big guns, and the thought that I should just watch this on TV.
This whole fiasco (including the waiting) lasted in the order of an hour, so with an hour wasted in the day, I started off again into the heart of London on foot. I traveled along the streets, checking out architecture, but rarely going into stores. Admittedly, the stores that I did go into were primarily the little food convenience stores to see what they sold for food, and how much it cost. These food convenience stores are extremely plentiful, but they're something we don't really have in Canada. Many are like just the sandwich and drink aisle of a 7-11, and a lot of them don't open past about 6pm or so (they're primarily for grabbing food on the go). Judging from how
many of these there are, I'm not sure that Londoners really sit down for many meals -- eating doesn't seem to be a big ritual for them.
Wandering the streets stated to get me kind of hungry, but I was antsy about paying £2.8 or £3.8 or £4.5 for a baguette with some meat and cheese when I wasn't sure that I'd even enjoy it. Just to give you a sense, it would be the equivalent of paying $5.60, $7.90 or $9.00 for one of these things. There were some Cornish pastries and meat pies that looked appetizing, but again, the cost seemed exhorbitant, and so deterred me somewhat. In the midst of my battle with hunger and cheapness, I suddenly found myself in the middle of Chinatown.
I have to say, the smell and sight of roasted duck, roasted pork and chicken were imcomparably intoxicating. After about five steps into Chinatown, I decided three things: (1) no matter how bad the Chinese food was, they probably couldn't mess up a roast duck, (2) I didn't really care how much that stuff cost, and (3) I had to eat something eventually! So I set out in Chinatown looking for some cheap eats! I settled on looking for places only with BBQ pork and roast duck visibly in the window -- this would allow me to weed out the "Chinese restaurants" catering only to Caucasian crowd, and were intended for the Chinese folks.
The meal of roast pork and BBQ pork ended up costing £4.8, which, for the comfort I felt afterwards, seemed well worth the price. It was an interesting thing being in a Chinese restaurant. For one, i could speak Cantonese, and I felt an immediate connection to these guys. For another... this will sound strange, but of course, the Chinese people don't have an English accent when speaking Cantonese. Those things came together to make me feel pretty comfortable in there. It's an interesting feeling to sort of feel "at home" when you're clearly
away. Very satisfying.
The rest of the day was also spent wandering around downtown. I ended up at the National Gallery again, and was again reminded of how cool it was to see art up close that I'd only seen in pictures before. It's definitely a cool feeling.
I spent the evening with Brad, who incidentally knew even less of London than I did. Jet lag kicked in around 4:30 and lasted about an hour and a half -- I could barely keep my eyes open. I fought through and made it to see Brad (for dinner). As we were wandering around, we saw a big commotion and hurried to see what was going on. It turns out that there was a big premiere for a movie, and some big names were going to the premiere. I'm told that Uma Thurman was in the mix, but the only picture I got was of someone's back who was wearing a red dress. I'll have to inspect it more closely later to see who it was.
Like at Buckingham Palace, the throngs of people were probably six people deep. It's kind of an interesting thing in London to see how differentiated the really really rich people are from the commoners. They really are THAT MUCH richer, and the commoners really do feel common next to them, but are really THAT EXCITED to see these people. The level of feverishness is kind of hard to describe. Perhaps it's just curiosity -- and the curiosity is fueled by two things: (1) there are so many OTHER people are looking upon the spectacle, and (2) there's just not enough room for everyone to see, creating the illusion (?) of demand.
Anyway, enough with trying to learn something in London. Tomorrow, I'm going to see a show.
posted by tangaroo at 10:22 a.m.
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