trip report: Paula and Wal's Wedding - London, August 2003

Auld London
----------------------------------------
London, the city of... fog, rain, pollution and high prices... Carol and I
took a week off to visit some friends of mine, Paula and Richard ("Wal"), who
were getting married.  More about them below.

The plan was to take a week and bum around London, do a little clothes
shopping, drinking in pubs, meet up with friends, maybe catch a show.
All were accomplished.

London in August is supposed to be awful, and the city was pretty empty, we
suspect with people leaving for holiday.  However, the weather was actually
quite nice, with only two short, light rains during the week, low humidity
and temperatures in the 60s F.

wandering
----------------------------------------
Unfortunately, our sleeping patterns were way off-kilter the entire time,
both because of jetlag, and because of my mad-dash to complete projects
before leaving (that, and packing only hours before the flight).  I kept
waking up at 5am and Carol more like 11... yuck.  I therefore took the
opportunity to wander London's streets (Kensington and Paddington), something
I like to do in major cities.  The stats:
 - 83 pubs, all with the same white chalkboard outside.
 - 21 indian "curry" restaurants, none seating more than 20.
 - 8 american fast food places (2 McD's, 1 KFC, 1 BK, 1 subway, 3 Starbuck's)
 - 1 "great american bagel"  (cough choke horror as ex-new-yorker)
 - 2 "chinese" (unlike California, where "chinese" would be "cuisine of
 north-east china during the 17th century, vegetarian, served by monks" or
 "taiwanese street food from these four blocks")
 - 4 internet cafes
 - 10 newsstands
 - 2 micky's fish and chips.  not sure when they were fried, perhaps the previous week.
 - 43 hotels, each with a dozen rooms.
 - 4,217 flats, all facing each other.  Should've been named Sardine Arms.
 - 22 real estate agencies, all "letting" the same depressing, overpriced flats.

accomodations
----------------------------------------
Quality Hotel, Paddington.  Great price, but you paid for it.

but great mass transit is a luxury-- cabs have nothing on the tube, the buses
and the trains.  Gatwick airport is 30 minutes by train from downtown, leaves
every 15 minutes, and runs 24 hours a day.  We went clubbing, hopped a bus and
sat upstairs, checking out the sights.

the American Trade Deficit, an interlude
----------------------------------------
I've been bothered by our trade deficit as long as I can remember-- how can
we keep running a deficit forever?  Kirchoff's Law, right?

On this trip, it became clear what we "export": virtually every film was from
Hollywood, many/most of the music and magazines, many of the hotel chains,
all of the big "chain" restaurants, etc. etc.  Oh yeah, the computers run
Windows and other american software of course.  That, and weapons and
cigarettes.  Addicted to death.

arthur and the show
----------------------------------------
Turns out Arthur, an old friend of mine from Berkeley, was due to be in
London at the same time.  Arthur and I have been drinking coffee and playing
chess in berkeley cafes for 10 years, now, and back in the day, we even
worked together at Inktomi, now he's an investor in Addamark, in a weird way,
making him my boss.

Anyway, we traded hotel names and met up in London, went for a pint in the 
rain, walked back over the bridge while the electricity was out (stopping the
trains), and went to the national theatre to see Tom Stoppard's play,
Jumpers.  It was fun and... intellectual... based on pop-culture references
circa 1972.  But hey, Carol and Arthur were into it, so that's cool.

Funny moment: there was a single, elder gentleman who sat next to Carol and I
(with last-minute seats, Arthur was seated further up).  Anyway, this guy
turns out to be a play director, and was here researching whether Jumpers
still brought down the house, because of friend of his was considering
putting it on in Seattle.  "you'll know if I fall asleep" ha ha, right?
Well, he nodded off during the first act.  so much for my big london theatre
experience.

the shopping, camden
----------------------------------------
In Carol's family, "shopping" means clothes shopping, right?  In my family,
it means grocery shopping.  And yes, when on vacations, of course, I check
out the local grocery stores, compare availability, local tastes, prices,
etc.  Doesn't everybody?

Anyway, Carol dragged me through London's clothing stores, torturing me with
the timeless questions every guy dreads.  My revenge was to stop at every
restaurant to examine the menu, even pubs.

We finally hit mutual nirvana with Camden Market.  Imagine Haight-Ashbury
(SF), Telegraph Avenue (Berkeley), the Saturday Market in Portland, The Ave
(Seattle) and New York's St. Mark's Place -- combined, then tripled.  It was
completely overwhelming, with underground catacombs, outdoor stalls, a
walk-through sneaker shop with 20 foot ceilings ("shoeaddict"), an entire set
of catacombs for a single store specializing in clubs clothes for the techno
scene, another for punk, then another for goth, another with all latex,
another with 50's, next to a 60's specialist, then a 70's, then pre-war
styles, then antique furniture, modern furniture, latin american furniture,
american furniture, and and and... it just keeps going.  We only got there
after lunch, so we were screwed-- walking continuously for hours, and still
not seeing everything, much less stopping in to investigate.  We stayed until
the last shop closed, kicking us out, exhausted.  back to the hotel, drop off
the brazilian hammock I bought and the clothes she got, dinner at a killer
curry joint, back to the hotel for a "disco nap", prep and go out, grab the
37 bus to the 73, and hit club Smile, the best we could find as tourists
deciding at the last minute.  Slug a couple of Smirnoff Ice's (when in
rome...), upstairs a horrible DJ trying to mix funky beats, downstairs a
mini-scene, with a guy adding words (well) to a junky beat, way-too-loud,
back to the main stage spinning techno (anthem) at 160BPM and 120F, even with
fans on full blast, Carol's awesome shoes, skirt and thigh-high stockings (!)
got us some introductions, chat with kids 5-10 years younger, but between the
smoking and air pollution, they looked the older.

We stayed out, partied more, crashed, got up again to make the wedding, which
they mercifully set for mid-afternoon.

Paula, Wal and the wedding
----------------------------------------
Paula is an old, dear friend, who I met back in the grad school days.  He's a
product designer in London's financial district.  She has the travel bug, and
met Richard (who goes by "Wal", short for Wally) while driving a commercial
truck in South Africa.  At the wedding reception, the tables were given names
of exotic cities, like Zanzibar.  It looked cheesy until you realized that
these were actual places they'd been together.

The wedding and reception were held at Stanhill Court, a traditional-looking
mansion in the british countryside, not far from Gatwick airport.
Remarkably, the food was quite good, speeches were tasteful *and*
entertaining, and the weather was nice-by-california-standards.  The London
air pollution paid us a dividend of a gorgeous sunset and large, yellow moon.
After the sun set, they put on a fireworks display that dropped jaws, both in
complexity, size and proximity.

the people
----------------------------------------
People we met wanted to know about why Americans don't smoke, and about our
no-smoking laws.  Conversely, we were pretty shocked to see a major city full
of smokers and few gyms.

Otherwise, travelling with Carol is awesome-- everybody wants to meet us,
and we make friends instantly.  At the wedding, some old friends of Wal's
were saving seats for "cool kids", which I realized because apparently, I
passed the test, for the first time in my life.  Somehow, I doubt it was my
accent.  In a pub, some super-cute women were hanging around while their
similarly metrosexual(*) boyfriends shot pool.  We walk up and it's like a
scene from Legally Blonde, with Carol chatting them up on girl-stuff, while I
shot pool with the guys.  "what do you do?" (crack, nothing sinks) "build and
repair computers. and you?" (crack, drop a ball) "I'm in software" (drop two
more balls, sip the pint) "oh.  you're from the smart side then."  (end of
conversation)

(*) trim guys who dress hip and have good haircuts men, but who are straight.

the pubs
----------------------------------------
I love hanging out in London's pubs, in part because I like drinking and
especially like good beer on tap.  The new thing: not only do the pubs have
reasonable cider and wine "for the ladies", but they also have good food.
Some of the best meals we had were in pubs this time.  True, so were some of
the worst.  In America, if a restaurant brags about its food on the menu,
walk away-- but if they obviously-care about the ingrediants and have obvious
house specialties, it'll be good.  In London's pubs, it's the opposite-- look
for braggadicio, and walk away from understated places.  Also, they don't
call them "bangers and mash" anymore, for some reason-- now it's "sausages"
and they tell you about the mash (garlic, onion, red onion, minced sage,
whatever), even though (duh) it's all about the quality of the potatoes.
Which reminds me: the eggs, tomatoes and potatoes *rocked* in London, unlike
"the states", where we've genetically engineered them to survive 50 foot
drops onto cement.


random photos:


We don't get clouds like this in California.
(large)

The happy couple!
(large)

me, still dressing like I'm at work (Trafalgar Square).
(large)

Carol strikes a pose, there's nothing to it.
(large)

Candid carol in the Dicken's Pub, "the longest pub in London", yeah, right, whatever.
(large)

yes, this is real.
(large)

One of the hundreds of crazy shops in Camden Market.
(large)

A shot from above Camden -- this is a *tiny* portion of Camden.
(large)

Sorry for the engineering-geek-out, but the downspouts in London were fascinating to me.  This one was particularly interesting, because of the three types of connections coming into them.
(large)

some truly enormous trees in the park (check out the scale versus the people).
(large)

Some swans in the park
(large)

centered version.
(large)

classic photo of Trafalgar Square
(large)

another classic photo of Trafalgar Square
(large)