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London trip-report

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Aimless:
once Intermittently Crappy Weather Bertie passes and the weather picks up again we'll be spending a lot of time munching on sammiches and reading in parks, gardens etc :) the savoy woulda been like volunteering to be robbed, we steered clear of their bourgeoisie tea

Aimless:
So we made it there and back, safe and sound and only a little worse-for-wear :) We had a good time and, though I was more of a grumpy old man than usual, I have few regrets.

Getting there was much easier than I remember it being the last time we went. Heathrow seems to be a "better in than out" kinda place, and I appreciated the smooth tech-facilitated passage through. The wife was stopped once because she looked like she was under 18, but no-one tried to offer me a walker :o

At the airport, we bought two visitor oyster-cards and topped those up a couple of times during our stay. These were among the best purchases of our entire trip! Less awesome were the two lycamobile sim-cards we bought. During the entire trip, we (mostly I :o) were plagued by incredibly crappy connection, patchy coverage and constant ads from lycamobile. Worst of all, we could not send texts or make calls to Sweden. The one good thing about lycamobile was that we had unlimited internet, which proved to be a life-saver as well as a source of constant anger (more on that later). GPS was good, too, and I'll concede that it may be unfair to expect the same coverage in London's subway as I get in Stockholm's.

Getting to our little studio flat in Queen's Park was easy and I was very pleased with our accommodation. It was small, but clean and neat and cosy. For some reason, they'd chosen to fit the room with two dozen extremely harsh soul-searing bluish-white LED-spotlights, which was hell to come home to at night, but we could use the light above the stove for a cosier ambience. We had about 2 non-contiguous minutes of wifi-access, which made planning things (and listening to spotify :o) a little more difficult. Nevertheless, I was happy. We were very close to the subway station, and getting to most places was a piece of cake.

But where did we go? Well, we're kinda rubbish tourists, so much of our time was spent meandering through the city from one restaurant to another. We walked by the river, went to the Oxo Tower, did some shopping... we made sure to check out Camden Market (where we found some great presents and saw some wire-fu) as well as Borough Market (no kangaroo-burger, but a damn' good serving of injera). Hurricane Bertha had fortunately been downgraded to Intermittently Crappy Weather Bertie, and we had a few days of sunshine.



One lovely day, we sauntered around in Green Park where we came across the friendliest old man and his two adorable demon-spawned grand-nephews. We chatted for an hour and learned about the ancient martial art of conkers, and then we were joined by an Irish family and talked about Irish banks. Oh yeah, overall, Londoners were surprisingly friendly when they weren't trying to push us down the stairs or in front of speeding cars :) also on the theme of People, we met up with an old classmate of mine whom I hadn't seen since 4th grade, and it was hella fun =)

I liked the London subway system. Trains came often and mostly on time, and, apart from an unpleasant experience where rush-hour and a rain-shower came together in a perfect human storm of rage, journeys were pleasant. Tube stations were usually less modern than in Sthlm (especially on the hateful northern line), and nowhere near as accessible, but some were instead far more futuristic than I'm used to:

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KGFliPXASE
I stood there, transfixed, for several minutes.

Food-wise, the undisputed highlight was the dinner we had, at Clos Maggiore, to celebrate our first wedding anniversary. I don't know if we were unusually lucky, but we got the perfect table (at my request, a cosy corner-table where we could sit side-by-side), friendly, fun and impeccable service with great attention to detail, perfectly executed and very tasty dishes (I'm not a fan of rabbit, but the braised shoulder of Loire-valley rabbit was probably the most satisfying starter I've ever had) that were fairly priced, a house red that stood head and shoulders above most restaurants' special selection (their wine list was the size of a novel, way beyond my ability to parse) and, wonder of wonders, my favourite dessert wine in the whole wide world to go with the most scrumptious dessert. Even the music was great, and we left the place very very happy :)





Wrt entertainment, I regret to say we did see some TV (I've decided I prefer British commercials to Swedish ones), and saw Guardians of the Galaxy again (this time in IMAX, and god DAMN is 3D ever so much better that way! The movie was also a lot more enjoyable this time around). However, what I enjoyed most was the theatre! I have generally been averse to paying to watch shows here in Sweden, apart from amateur student productions. Swedish theatre is (in my limited experience) often distractingly weird or extraordinarily melodramatic and I feared this would be the case with British productions as well. How wrong I was! We only saw two shows--The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time and The Phantom of the Opera--but both were just so much fun. The theatres themselves were pretty and gave the whole experience an air of luxury, but it was all about the actors and the lighting and the sets and the music and both times I was just enthralled. Next time, we'll screw everything else and just go to shows.


END OF PART ONE

Aimless:
PART TWO

As I said earlier, I spent much of the trip silently or vocally swearing at my phone, at its apps and at the internet as a whole. Rarely have I experienced so much tech-related frustration as I did during this trip, and it threatened to ruin much of the experience for me. I suspect I am tech-addicted, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect things like bookings, looking for directions, searching for shows etc to work without constantly having to start over from the beginning. But the less said about this the better. One app did work flawlessly, and that was the one for thetrainline.co.uk which took us to the most pleasant phase of our trip: a Welsh country wedding :D



the trip there was enjoyable, though seat-reservations were unexpectedly cancelled and though Paddington felt like the mythical Pandemonium. Once there, man, everything just felt so good. Everyone was busy, and we were feeling a bit shy, but we did meet lovely people and just enjoyed ourselves. I was introduced to the concept of glamping, which I've brought back with me to Sweden, but we slept in a room in a barn that's in the process of being turned into a house. I slept better than I had in weeks, and, the next day...







It was all kinda



But, in the end, it was



Especially for the man of the hour, the well-spoken, courteous and very lucky gentleman pictured above, who no doubt has a wonderful life ahead of him together with his lady :)

The following day, after a night of great food, good company, dancing (to a rockin' playlist) and blissful sleep, we took off to Cardiff, where we spent a final pleasant night and day gorging ourselves on grilled meats before heading back home to Sweden. I had the great misfortune of seeing The Broken Eye at a Waterstones and then discovering, too late, that it wasn't out on Kindle yet. The ginger had the fortune of finding, like, six awesome fantasy books. And that brings my report to a close. I can't wait for the next go :)

Barmymoo:
It sounds like overall you had a fabulous time! There's never any signal on the London Tubes, it's not just a Lycamobile thing, but I'm surprised signal wasn't better in London in general. The futuristic talking hologram is a bit creepy... they have a similar one in Euston station which tells you not to fall down the escalators.

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