We’re on our way to England tonight for three weeks.
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On our first day walking around in London, it was hard enough getting used to cars coming at us from the “wrong” side. But on top of that, English drivers have a disorienting habit of parking facing both ways. This is something you never see in supposedly chaotic NYC.
It doesn’t matter if you’re circling the drain as long as you maintain an indomitable stiff-upper-lip attitude.
Note: this isn’t intended as a comment on post-imperial, post-Brexit Britain — it would hardly be appropriate for a Trump era USAian to get haughty that way.
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It doesn’t matter if you’re circling the drain as long as you maintain an indomitable stiff-upper-lip attitude.
Note: this isn’t intended as a comment on post-imperial, post-Brexit Britain — it would hardly be appropriate for a Trump era USAian to get haughty that way.
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Bayswater Rd, London: I’m grateful that London has taken responsibility for helping me, a humble tourist, live to see another day.
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Kensington Gardens, London: Sorry to say, London has outclassed NYC beyond dispute on one dimension: a Rolls Royce ice cream truck.
London, north bank of the Thames: From a distance you see this gilded monument on an impossibly high plinth—compare the humans at the bottom of the photo for scale—and you assume it was erected to celebrate some military triumph.
Draw closer so you can read the inscription? Nope, it commemorates the 17th century fire that wiped out most of London. I don’t think there’s anything like this in Chicago or San Francisco. I just don’t know what to make of this.
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London, north bank of the Thames: From a distance you see this gilded monument on an impossibly high plinth—compare the humans at the bottom of the photo for scale—and you assume it was erected to celebrate some military triumph.
Draw closer so you can read the inscription? Nope, it commemorates the 17th century fire that wiped out most of London. I don’t think there’s anything like this in Chicago or San Francisco. I just don’t know what to make of this.
We spent the day mostly rambling around London’s parks with our tea friend K.
We took an hour or two for a gongfu session at Mei Leaf in Camden Town. K went low and slow with a green from Habian County in Sichuan: low temperature, slow drip of hot water into the gaiwan, slow decanting. The first steep had a crazy thickness of texture, almost like matcha.
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We spent the day mostly rambling around London’s parks with our tea friend K.
We took an hour or two for a gongfu session at Mei Leaf in Camden Town. K went low and slow with a green from Habian County in Sichuan: low temperature, slow drip of hot water into the gaiwan, slow decanting. The first steep had a crazy thickness of texture, almost like matcha.
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> We flew overnight. I basically didn’t sleep a wink, but the next day I was as good as new.
Jetlaggadocio
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London, south bank of the Thames: when someone says something like “well, you won’t be seeing him for awhile—they threw him in the clink”, now I know where the expression comes from.
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The wastebaskets in London’s royal parks are so swanky, I’m not sure my litter is worthy of them.
London’s Tube vs. NYC’s subway (provisional):
Tube’s more expensive.
Subway, unlike Tube, runs all night.
Tube has plush seats vs. subway’s hard plastic.
The Tube map doesn’t give you enough information to know how many places you can get to directly from a given station. Instead, it shows you what line(s) your station is on. But “line” in London isn’t as granular as in NYC; it’s more like, “is this station on the IRT, BMT or IND” (if your NYC subway memory goes back far enough.) That is to say, the Tube is confusing in a way that NYC (and German transit systems too) aren’t.
When an NYC subway line goes out of service they run free shuttle buses shadowing its route. When a Tube line goes down, you need to figure out how to get where you’re going using regular buses.
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London’s Tube vs. NYC’s subway (provisional):
Tube’s more expensive.
Subway, unlike Tube, runs all night.
Tube has plush seats vs. subway’s hard plastic.
The Tube map doesn’t give you enough information to know how many places you can get to directly from a given station. Instead, it shows you what line(s) your station is on. But “line” in London isn’t as granular as in NYC; it’s more like, “is this station on the IRT, BMT or IND” (if your NYC subway memory goes back far enough.) That is to say, the Tube is confusing in a way that NYC (and German transit systems too) aren’t.
When an NYC subway line goes out of service they run free shuttle buses shadowing its route. When a Tube line goes down, you need to figure out how to get where you’re going using regular buses.
If you’re an ordinary American and you learn that English people say “sort it” to mean “take care of it”, you say to yourself, “oh, that’s interesting.”
But if you’re a USAian who’s taken a CS fundamental algorithms course, at the moment you find this out, your mind temporarily disengages from the external world entirely.
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If you’re an ordinary American and you learn that English people say “sort it” to mean “take care of it”, you say to yourself, “oh, that’s interesting.”
But if you’re a USAian who’s taken a CS fundamental algorithms course, at the moment you find this out, your mind temporarily disengages from the external world entirely.
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This morning we set out for Kew Gardens, the great London arboretum, to use an inadequate term: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kew_Gardens
It was to have been a 3-hop Tube journey, but when we got to Notting Hill Gate, the first transfer point, we learned that the lines for the rest of the way were inoperable till 11 AM.
So: bus to Hammersmith, then another to Kew, a much slower journey. On the ride to Hammersmith, a voluble guy from Marseille sat down next to us and undertook to tell us his life story. He’s lived in England with his partner for 6 years, most of which time he’s been studying to become a London cop. And he’s finally achieved his goal! No matter he doesn’t have a British and does have an extremely thick accent.
Anyway, now we can deal with London buses too.
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This morning we set out for Kew Gardens, the great London arboretum, to use an inadequate term: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kew_Gardens
It was to have been a 3-hop Tube journey, but when we got to Notting Hill Gate, the first transfer point, we learned that the lines for the rest of the way were inoperable till 11 AM.
So: bus to Hammersmith, then another to Kew, a much slower journey. On the ride to Hammersmith, a voluble guy from Marseille sat down next to us and undertook to tell us his life story. He’s lived in England with his partner for 6 years, most of which time he’s been studying to become a London cop. And he’s finally achieved his goal! No matter he doesn’t have a British and does have an extremely thick accent.
Anyway, now we can deal with London buses too.
On a warm late spring day, it’s paradise to wander through the meadows and woods, and just hang out on the grass or a bench when you feel like it. There are many, and varied, huge old trees. And you certainly wouldn’t want to neglect the flowerbeds, not with roses in bloom.
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On a warm late spring day, it’s paradise to wander through the meadows and woods, and just hang out on the grass or a bench when you feel like it. There are many, and varied, huge old trees. And you certainly wouldn’t want to neglect the flowerbeds, not with roses in bloom.
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Kew has a number of huge glass houses hosting plants from around the world that aren’t especially fond of English weather.
But for me there was one disappointment in our visit to Kew Gardens. I was hoping to find some trace of Robert Fortune, the buccaneering botanist who got away with massive industrial espionage against the Chinese tea industry in the mid 19th century, bringing many of the spoils back to Kew:
Apparently ordinary visitors could look at his stuff in the Economic Botany collection decades ago, but it isn’t open to the public anymore:
Rediscovering 174 years of Tea - Tea Journey
The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew houses a remarkable cache of tea leaves and tea material culture collected over the past 174 years.
Tea Journey (teajourney.pub)
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But for me there was one disappointment in our visit to Kew Gardens. I was hoping to find some trace of Robert Fortune, the buccaneering botanist who got away with massive industrial espionage against the Chinese tea industry in the mid 19th century, bringing many of the spoils back to Kew:
Apparently ordinary visitors could look at his stuff in the Economic Botany collection decades ago, but it isn’t open to the public anymore:
Rediscovering 174 years of Tea - Tea Journey
The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew houses a remarkable cache of tea leaves and tea material culture collected over the past 174 years.
Tea Journey (teajourney.pub)
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I don’t think I could prove that English gallows humor is different in some specific way from, say, the German or Jewish varieties, but I like it a lot.
Nothing much was happening in Speakers’ Corner.
But we fell in with a procession of Sikhs on their way to their annual demonstration marking a 1984 massacre and calling for an independent Sikh homeland in Punjab.
It was a mellow crowd, and Spouse and I had a good conversation with a Sikh couple. I was surprised to learn there are about 2 million Sikhs in the UK.
We eventually left them behind and walked to Trafalgar Square where we originally intended to go and where, coincidentally, the big Sikh demo was being prepared.
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Nothing much was happening in Speakers’ Corner.
But we fell in with a procession of Sikhs on their way to their annual demonstration marking a 1984 massacre and calling for an independent Sikh homeland in Punjab.
It was a mellow crowd, and Spouse and I had a good conversation with a Sikh couple. I was surprised to learn there are about 2 million Sikhs in the UK.
We eventually left them behind and walked to Trafalgar Square where we originally intended to go and where, coincidentally, the big Sikh demo was being prepared.
After Trafalgar Square, for no good reason, we made our way to Soho. We happened upon a Hare Krishna temple’s cafeteria and went in for a late lunch.
Judging by the employees—sect devotees?—unlike in NYC, London Hare Krishnas aren’t white reformed druggies, they’re people born Hindu. And the customers are, too.
The food (vegetarian of course) was quite good and cheap for its quality. The place runs super efficiently, with a much higher employee-customer ratio than you’d normally see except in a luxury restaurant. No doubt this is made possible by the employees working more for, shall we say, love than money?
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After Trafalgar Square, for no good reason, we made our way to Soho. We happened upon a Hare Krishna temple’s cafeteria and went in for a late lunch.
Judging by the employees—sect devotees?—unlike in NYC, London Hare Krishnas aren’t white reformed druggies, they’re people born Hindu. And the customers are, too.
The food (vegetarian of course) was quite good and cheap for its quality. The place runs super efficiently, with a much higher employee-customer ratio than you’d normally see except in a luxury restaurant. No doubt this is made possible by the employees working more for, shall we say, love than money?
Because we could see on the map that London’s Chinatown was nearby, we walked through Soho to get there.
London’s Chinatown is unlike any Chinatown in the USA I know (maybe 8 in NYC alone plus SF, DC, Philadelphia, LA.) It’s so orderly! Maybe 15 blocks with no vehicular traffic, profusely hung with thousands of red (paper? plastic?) lanterns, and lined with many many restaurants and other shops, lots of which seem pretty posh. *Of course* tea means bubble tea.
The whole district was busy on a Sunday afternoon, more so than Soho proper. The crowd was varied, and you could tell the district must be recommended by whatever media Chinese tourists refer to these days.
There must be a story behind the project that is London’s Chinatown, and I’d like to know it.
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Because we could see on the map that London’s Chinatown was nearby, we walked through Soho to get there.
London’s Chinatown is unlike any Chinatown in the USA I know (maybe 8 in NYC alone plus SF, DC, Philadelphia, LA.) It’s so orderly! Maybe 15 blocks with no vehicular traffic, profusely hung with thousands of red (paper? plastic?) lanterns, and lined with many many restaurants and other shops, lots of which seem pretty posh. *Of course* tea means bubble tea.
The whole district was busy on a Sunday afternoon, more so than Soho proper. The crowd was varied, and you could tell the district must be recommended by whatever media Chinese tourists refer to these days.
There must be a story behind the project that is London’s Chinatown, and I’d like to know it.
