Last Call in London

First blog back on American soil, damn. Not feeling great, but am relieved and happy to be back home. The comforts of home shouldn't be understated. The good water pressure, heat and ac, sinks that drain and toilets that work, the physical space, readily available ice/water, and much more. I could and might write a whole blog on these differences that you don’t really notice until you spend extended time away. Also this is not to complain because I wouldn’t trade the past 37 days or so for the world. Well worth enduring some minor inconveniences and a tiny cold coming home. Great simple problems to have and I'm grateful for my experience.

Alright back to recapping the rest of the final leg of the trip. I’ve been lazy the past couple days and haven’t sat down to write. We also may have packed more into London than any other place we visited even though it feels like I've said that about everywhere I went. I swear this time is for real.

Where I left off was last Thursday which was our first full day in London. We had to get our paper tickets for the Billy Strings show from the box office at Royal Albert Hall so our morning we spent walking through the beautiful Hyde Park. We ran into some more random British dress-up during our walk through with cavalry in full uniform doing drills on their horses. They had the bosses critiquing their every move as they rode around. I can’t believe that’s still a regular occurrence over there. It was definitely cool to see because it’s almost like coming across a play while walking through the park, but still absurd.

We picked up the tickets, admired the venue then walked to the High Street in Kensington on the west side of the park.

We had a delectable breakfast with tea at a place called the Ivy right there. My first proper English tea was a peppermint one and I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. We didn’t do High Tea and crumpets in the afternoon like true Brits though.

We stopped by a famous pub in that area called the Churchill Arms. It built in 1750 and Churchill’s grandparents were regulars there which is how it got its name after WW2. Cool place for a pre-noon pint.

Since we hit all the big landmarks day 1, we went to a couple more pop culture ones day 2. Took the tube on up to Abbey road which is obviously underwhelming once you get there but good to see. Yes, it’s just a crosswalk. Here’s tommy walking it. The historic studio is right next door. We then popped on down to the Sherlock Holmes museum which was much the same as Abbey Road.

That night we had some quality Chinese for dinner at a place called Yiqi. We were staying steps from Chinatown so figured we had to get it for one meal and glad we did. The food was awesome.

From there we took the tube out to Wembley for the England Wales friendly. The pubs around the stadium were packed and we happened to walk into one that was filled with Welsh fans. The lads were singing ballads and hammering pints. We made our way into the stadium and were shocked when we got a beer in there and walked towards the entrance to our seats. A security guard stopped us and pointed at a sign that said “No Alcohol Beyond This Point”. It’s an insane rule for a stadium, but you can only drink in the concourse of the stadium. This just means everyone is hanging there pre-game and there’s a massive crowd at halftime drinking too. It's a logistical nightmare makes zero sense, but we found out more that it’s strictly for soccer games in England. Any other events at Wembley or other British stadiums the rule isn't in effect. It sounds like the lads got a little too drunk and crazy tossing beers on the field and are being permanently punished now. It definitely didn’t stop the futbol fans from hammering drinks though. England demolished Wales and we saw three nice goals but the highlight for me was the Wales fans. They were in one corner of the stadium just going nuts the entire 90 minutes as they got killed. In the second half as they were down 3-0 they all had their shirts off and were jumping up and down singing fight songs. They kept the energy all game long.

We decided to watch the phillies game that night afterwards since we had a spot that we knew was playing it. It was also the earliest start time at 1108 pm BST, all the others were 1238 or 2 AM. The place Passyunk Avenue was incredible and they had a great setup for the game. They were also staying open until 4 am for the birds after and they had a crowd there. It was a rowdy place to watch it but couldn’t have been a more deflating end to the late night watching that season-ending error.

On to Friday. We were hurting a bit after finally getting to bed around 3am. We took it easy touring-wise that day. We just walked over to Buckingham palace and around the parks in that area. It was ok but unless you’re doing a tour it’s not as cool as the Tower or Big Ben. We popped the tube back over to the old area of White Chapel and hit The Ten Bells pub for a pint. The British dudes next to us had already had a few on a Friday afternoon by the time we got there and they started chatting us up. The accents were great and the one guy was from the north so he sounded completely different, similar to people from Liverpool. He was tough to understand but so animated. When we asked who their soccer teams were the one northern guy said they don’t even have one up there, all they do is some thing called Moorish dancing. He started explaining and acting it out and we were cracking up. Seems like some sort of dress up square dancing type of thing after we did some research here: https://www.worldwanderingkiwi.com/2016/09/england-guide-morris-dancing/.

We had a mediocre dinner in Leadenhall after that and then went back to the Royal Albert area for the show. What an unreal venue. We got in about 20 mins early after a decent wait to get in. The staff was overwhelmed, not used to that type of crowd. We were on the floor and the view and acoustics were unbelievable. The Billy Strings experience were high energy all night and you could tell they were all pumped to be playing in such a historic hall. Great night and one of the best shows I’ve been to. We were also surprised by the decent amount of British fans there.

The final day was beautiful weather and it reminded me that we should take a riverboat cruise on the Thames which we did. We had hit most of the main areas throughout the city but this took us all the way to Greenwich and to see Canary Wharf which is the newer business district. Greenwich had an old market that was lively and the Royal Observatory is also there which has one of the best views in the city. Good decision by us to do it and we both loved it.

Had to fit in some Indian food for dinner since that was also something we both had heard about the city. They have a high Indian population and therefore many good Indian restaurants. We were not disappointed. My lamb shashlik tandoori was maybe the most flavorful dish I had all trip and came out sizzling.

We went for more entertainment on the final night. We were debating seeing a play but landed on some live standup at a club called The 99 in Soho/Covent Garden not far from the airbnb. It was an intimate venue of maybe 100 people but every seat was filled and we were ushered into the front row when we got there. That made for a hilarious night since 3 out of the 4 comedians did a ton of crowd work. Tom especially got called out for being the nicest guy in the crowd with his appreciation of the jokes but then the MC juxtaposed that with him slaughtering things at an industrial scale when he heard he was in the "meat production" business. 3 of the 4 comedians were also very good so it was a night full of laughs. The one guy did bomb though which was interesting and awkward to see live. This guy Jeff Innocent was the real deal and had us dying: https://www.jeffinnocent.com/. That concludes the entire recap, sheesh. Can’t believe it’s over but I am damn glad that the travel day is behind me. 

I have a lot more learnings and thoughts from the trip but I'll get to them later. One is that two sweatshirts for a 40 day trip was probably not a great call.

I'll check back in at some point....