To London Town

I'm back from London after a week in the rainy city. Luckily the weather was amazing! We had a few slightly drizzly hours in the middle of the week, but that didn't even warrant an umbrella and on Friday we were happily without coats during the day. Sun was shining and the temperature was in the mid 50s fahrenheit. Myriam and I were couch surfing again, so the cost of the trip was minimal. We stayed with 2 different hosts this time since our holiday was longer than usual (2-3 nights is customary length for surfing, though I've met some folks who stay in one place for months)
Our first host, Dave, is an elementary school science teacher for 10 and 11 year old kids. He was really fun, and tall, Aussie born he moved to London about a year ago. On our first night there we arrived about in London St. Pancras train station about 5 and made our way to Putney. The neighborhood was adorable as all get out. When we found Dave's place it was about dinner time. Dave said he just got home from a snowboarding holiday so the cupboards were bare. With that we put our bags down and went to the grocery store. Dave gave us the option to walk or take the bus. We decided to walk since the weather was so nice. We made a pesto pasta dinner with a sun dried tomato pesto sauce and lots of veg. I've never heard of any but the usual basil pesto so it was a nice surprise. After dinner Dave brought out Jenga (or rather Tension Tower, a jenga knock-off, but identical in every way). Jenga is a funny game there aren't any winners, just losers and everyone else. Must say though, I didn't lose like a pro in both rounds!

Tuesday Myriam and I went to the Tate Modern which was quite cool. I'm not much of a fan of modern art for the most part, but there was plenty of Picasso and Pollock to make me happy and half a dozen pieces I was quite impressed by. I'm liking Pollock more and more with each piece I see and we all know Picasso has had my heart forever. There was one piece that Myriam wanted to see again regardless of what we did with the rest of the day. I don't remember the name of the painting or artist. It was a large blue canvas with a small section of red at the bottom and yellow and black at the top. It was infuriating to me which is difficult to describe because as much as I hated it, I must admire it for evoking such strong emotion. Ok, here's the best I can do to describe my take on it...
The blue of the piece was gorgeous, so I was pissed off that the ugly yellow and red were there, but without the yellow and red, I don't think the blue would be remarkable at all. I'll have to see if I can find a photo of the painting I'm talking about. Hm, da-da-da....moving on.

That evening after Amber got off work we picked her up at the mall and all 4 of us went to a blues club downtown that Dave really liked. They have live music every night of the week, so it was really good fun and packed (in a nice way, not the over crowded way the pub in Paris was) Dave was nice enough to offer couch space to Amber, so we all four went home after the blues bar. In the morning after everyone else had gone to work, Amber Myriam and I set out for a bit of shopping. The girls bought some new tights and leg warmers (man, the early 90s are back in a big bad way here, is it the same in the states?) and I bought a new pair of shoes: cute little black mary janes with a scallop cut on the edge. Amber gave Myriam and I fresh haircuts and Amber and Myriam bought glue on nails for a goof. I think they're having fun with them, they were all the same length or shorter than my nails, so I had a glass of wine while they glued. haha We called it an early night around 9 because it was gonna take us a bit of time to get back across town to Dave's and we didn't want to keep him up too late waiting for us on a school night. When we got home, Dave was just chilling in the living room so we all hung out for a bit. Watched a couple comedy acts on YouTube. I schooled Dave on George Carlin and Myriam on Tim Minchin who is my newest discovery. He's a hilarious songwriter/comedian. Minchin, coincidentally, is from Perth the same hometown as Dave! Small world.

We were supposed to change couches on Thursday, but our second host mixed up his schedule and already had visitors staying on Thursday night. So Dave, angel that he is, ran it by his roommates and let us stay an extra night. On Thursday we went to the National Gallery just off of Trafalger Square. Some really stunning pieces in there, my favorite was "The Execution of Lady Jane Grey." In it the Lady is wearing a white silk dress which managed to look more real than actual silk. I was quite awestruck. I read a bit more about the painting in the museum's computer lab, or whatever you'd call it. It was an online library of all of the pieces in the museum. If you're ever in London, make this a must-stop, photos of the painting don't nearly do it justice. Towards the end of the day we got a text from Dave asking if we were interested in going to a pub quiz. Hells-yeah! So we went home and made some dinner and met some of Dave's teacher friends for the quiz. I kicked a bit of ass at that, f.y.i., though not enough to get us the win. I about jumped out of my chair when one of the questions turned out to be "Which of England's monarchs was only in power for 9 days?" Wouldn't you know it was Lady Jane Grey!!!! Well I was so excited by this coincidence I nearly shouted the answer. So I think everyone else in the pub got that answer right. haha Just goes to show the real power of museum field-trips; Gives you the edge in a pub-quiz!

On Friday we got a bit of a late start as our second host, Sam, was in the hospital from the night before. Seems he twisted his ankle pretty bad dismounting a bus. We talked with him for 15 minutes or so after we got there, but that was all we saw of him. We headed out again to pick up Amber after work. We got a late lunch at the mall and hung around for a couple hours while she finished up work. We were all going to go out to her house for a bit, to freshen up and get ready for a night on the town. I was meeting Amane, a friend of Gudrun's I met over our New Year holiday, at 8 in the center of the city. By the time we made it through the Friday rush-hour crowd in the tube, it was time for me to head back for my meeting with Amane. Unfortunately I had decided to wear my new shoes this day and they were giving me killer blisters! So, well and truly surpassing Amber in her hobo style, I borrowed the socks from Myriam's feet! She was wearing tights too, so could manage without but I was dying. Not one of my classier moments, but it must have looked hilarious/disgusting watching two girls swap socks on the sidewalk outside the tube station. I had a coffee with Amane and a friend of hers in Neil's Yard and a beer at First Out Bar before meeting up with Myriam and Amber again. Amane went home because her stomach was upset. The three of us, Amber Myriam and I, went to a bar which vaguely resembled a freshman year basement party but with slightly better music. It wasn't the best night ever, last call was about 1am and then we wandered around looking for another place that was open. London closes early even compared to the states. Especially early contrasted with Brussels. That's all, we got a bit lost on the night buses and ended up taking a taxi across Acton to save some hassle. Got about an hour and a half of sleep before we left to catch our train back to Belgium. Sam was still asleep, so we left a note and Amber didn't show up at the train station in the morning to say good bye, so we had a quiet departure. We almost missed our train because we accidently read the arrivals board instead of the departures and there was a train FROM Brussels that was running 20 minutes late so we were putzing around in the station. Luckily I decided we should head to the platform early, which turned out to be only about 2 minutes before our train pulled out of the station. Close call.