January 16, 2008

• The Trip

  Brief outline here.  Downloading pictures and labeling them and such.  Accidentally deleted three pictures from my arrival in London. Feh, don't download tired!

  Also, American to Yorkese index:
  street = gate
  gate = bar
  bar = pub

  12/28/2007 - Arrival, London.  Jet lagged and smacked silly by it.

  12/29/2007 - Wandered the area, including Bedford Square, Bloomsbury Square, Tottenham Court Road, Sicilian Ave, Fleet Street, and proceeded to get lost until I got to King's Cross.  Miles arrives - hooray!

  

  12/30/2007 - British Museum, which is in spitting distance of the Academy Hotel where I'm staying.  The "Terra Cotta Warriors" from China are at the Museum, visiting the first time outside of China, ever.  We get up somewhat early and get in line.  500 tickets reserved for walk-ins and drop-bys.  We wait, and wait, and wait on the queue, and with 20 people in front of us, they run out of tickets.  Wah and phooey.  Nonetheless, a fine museum despite my jetlag and apparent injury to my left foot.  We visit Covent Garden that evening and wander a bit around Theatreland.

  

  

  12/31/2007 - Sleep late (yay).  Walk to Russel Square.  Explore the area just a bit, as my foot is definitely not well, and I'm limping my way through London, heh.  Get some wine and wait for Z-Man to show up.  After he arrives and cleans up a bit, we decide to try to catch the fireworks.  Foolish us.  Camping out on the bridge at 3pm would have been the smart thing to do.  We go to a really, really great little Greek place, wine, dine, brave the crowds, and give it up as a lost cause.  Head back to Covent Garden where we drink in the new year, seeing occasional flashes of light, but no real fireworks to speak of.  Hooray, it's 2008! We make it to SoHo after a small death march of drunken lostness (oh, well, Miles), and go to Freedom club and I actually enjoy myself (at a club! I know!)  

  1/1/2008 - Struggle out of bed and take the train to Milton Keynes, where Miles parked his rental car.  His regular car died and is now scrap.  Z-man and I have to sit in a different car from Miles and we manage to miss our stop.  Explain embarrassedly to the conductor, but fortunately, it's only like a 10 trip back.  Meet some of Miles' awesome friends who feed us, and then hop in the car for the long trip to York.  It goes from being rather SF-like in the South and London to being decidedly more humid, foggy, and chilly up in the North.  Meet up with Ian and we all go to Jaipur Indian restaurant in York, some of the best Indian food in England that I've tried.  Ohhh, so good.

  1/2/2008 - Sleep late, drive through the Yorkshire moors, see the Hole of Horcum (hur hur!), and travel to Whitby, a coastal village on the North Sea.  So cute, and so cold.  Bram Stoker wrote chunks of Dracula there, and we see the Graveyard he was supposed to have haunted.  Attempt to look for ammonites on the shore, decide that the wind is like an icy knife and head to a pub for hot alcoholic beverages.  Hooray! Drive down a bit to Robin Hood's Bay, which is seriously cute.  And still cold.  Head to another pub. Warm up, head back.

  

  

  1/3/2008 - Snow! Wake up to snow in York.  So pretty.  And so warm compared to Whitby.  Ian is laid low by a NORO virus.  M, Z, and I explore some of York, including the old ruined abbey, the Holy Trinity church, the White Swan pub, the Shambles, and Betty's tea room.  Investigate the local Absinthe at the Primal Eye pub.

  

   

  

  

  

  

  

  

  1/4/2008 - Miles now has the NORO virus.  Z and I walk the walls from Bootham gate to Monk's gate.  Explore the Minster.  Go back to M and I's place and decide that the trip we'd planned to the Lake District was simply not going to happen.  Also learn that there were avalanche warnings for that area and terrible road conditions.  Am secretly relieved we're not going.  Whitby was fucking cold.

   

  1/5/2008 - Ian, feeling a little better, drops us off at Clifford's Tower.  We explore that, the York Castle Museum, and then warm up at a little café nearby.  Z-Man now has the NORO virus.  What the hell? We manage to limp back to Clifton Green and let my man rest.  I play lots of SimCity while waiting for the Black Death to take me.

  

  

  1/6/2008 - Ian doing better, Miles not as bad, Z-Man doing better.  Ian drives us all to Boroughbridge, nd then Knaresborough.  Stop for tea in Knaresborough and have some sticky pudding.  Delish.  Z-man encounters the difference between crumpets and muffins.

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  1/7/2008 - British Transportation Museum in York, where the Eye of Yorkshire is parked.  It's a ferris wheel like the Eye, but much smaller, and mobile.  It is set to travel every three years to another part of England.  Gorgeous views.  We then head to the walls again and walk another section of it, passing by Micklegate Bar.  Walk past Clifford's Tower to look for an Ancient Music museum that turns out not to be there anymore and is now a meeting/performance space in an old glorious small church.  Stop at another cool pub.  Walk to another one (the Black Swan), and then head to the Happy Valley Chinese restaurant, which is actually in a row of buildings that are the oldest still standing commercial shops in Europe.  Z-Man marvels how many old buildings are still in use.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  1/8/2008 - Part sadly with the boys, and Z-Man and I head back to London by train.  We hie it to the Russell Hotel, explore Leicester Square area, eat at Simurgh Persian restaurant (delish!). We find the shiny, tiny Chinatown by the Sqaure.  Awwww, cute! Head back to the hotel and sleep together on the tiny double bed.  Damn reservation glitch.  I almost fall off. Heh.

  

  

  1/9/2008 - Z-Man's last day.  I drag him through the Tower of London.  Beautiful day! The Yeoman Warder was very amusing.  We get to go inside St Peter ad Vinculum -- Saint Peter in Chains, where many famous Tower prisoners worshipped and said parishoners' remains are also entombed under the church or in the vault.  This includes the 9-day Queen, Jane Grey, as well as the much-maligned Anne Boelyn.  Relax a bit and bid farewell to my honey.  Alone, I go back to a spot I'd seen by the British Museum, Tas restaurant, which turns out to be Turkish -- and freaking great.

  

  

  

  

  

  1/10/2008 - Don't sleep well, so get up early, repack, shower, and head to Heathrow.  Watch more tv and movies on the flight than I have in all of 2007.  But it was a good flight.

  I'm still a little jet lagged and tire early, but it was a fantastic trip despite NORO viruses (which I somehow escaped!) and self-inflicted foot injuries.

  • 11:34 pm
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