Bad Teeth Good Shoes

I remember someone once telling me that the British are famous for having bad teeth and good shoes. It was pretty funny at the time although I really didn't have enough first-hand experience to know if it was true. Now that I've been to London, I can definitely say that I saw some great shoes and some bad teeth. I don't know if either were better or worse than anywhere else but it got me thinking about other British/English cliches like the one that says British food is not very good.

My experiences with British food prior to this trip was at English and Irish pubs in the U.S. where they serve a mish-mash of food from the region including fish-n-chips, curried this-and-that, and so on. Other than that, I only had trips to Ireland and Scotland years before where I figured the food would be similar. The food in both of those countries turned out to be really good so I was looking forward to sampling the local food and drink in England.

My first meal was about an hour after arriving to town and it was at a fairly dirty-looking Indian take-out place near the B and B. I ate a super-greasy curried chicken and rice dish that was both cheap and surprisingly good. For dinner that night at a local pub filled with about 50% tourists, I ordered the "Pub Food Combo" and this is what I got:

It was a combo of mostly fried foods like chips (french fries), fish (as in fish-n...), bangers (sausage), mashed potatoes, a meat pie, gravy, and a couple of other items. It was sooooo typical and touristy that it made me happy. They must make a mint on serving up food like this to tourists. My guess is that it costs about $9 U.S. for this combo but they charge something like $23 U.S. for it. It turned out to be pretty good but nothing to write home about (oh, wait...).

The next day I ordered a meat pie with veggies. Growing up my parents used to make what we called "pot pie", which was similar. It's a pastry shell with a meat, veggie, and gravy filling that gets baked. I loved them as a kid and this meal made me reminisce about those days.

You might notice that I ordered an Aspall's cider for my drink. One thing that's great about being somewhere in the U.K. is that they serve draft ciders for folks like me that don't like beer. As with the apfelwein in Germany, I had more than a couple of them while there.

On my last day in town, I went to another local pub and ordered a beef-and-veggie dish along with another Aspall's. It was just okay to be honest and a bit pricey at something like $19 U.S. not including the drinks.

The food in London turned out to be good but not great. I didn't have any one meal that stands out in my memory like I did while in Ireland and Scotland. I'm sure with a local I could get much better since they'd know where to look. So let's review:

Good Shoes? Definitely.

Bad teeth? There were some.

Bad food? Not really. Overall pretty good but it left me wanting to dive deeper...maybe with a local guide next time.

Cliches debunked? Maybe.

Cheers for the fun quick visit London. See you next time.

London Part 2

My last post about the trip to London was mostly about the places that I visited while there. This one's more about some of the interesting things that I saw.

I mentioned in the last story about the kid's nursery rhyme London Bridge. I figured that I'd show a photo of the real London Bridge, which seems to be structurally sound much to the relief of children all over the world. It's basically just a multi-lane concrete span with the words London Bridge on each of the support columns:

It's not nearly as nice looking as the nearby Tower Bridge, which I think is a more iconic image of London. On the other side of London Bridge from the Tower Bridge, just in front of the Tate Modern Museum, is the Millennium pedestrian bridge. I liked this view of the bridge across the Thames where you can see Saint Paul's cathedral to the left, the pickle-shaped Gherkin building to the right, and a bunch of other interesting-shaped buildings between them:

I've written in the past about how there are certain things that I'd like to see one day but that aren't something I'd plan a whole trip around. They're places like the Taj Mahal or Teotihuacan that I'd like to see but only if I was already going to be in the area. One example is when I got to see Picasso's Guernica painting while in Madrid last year.

While in London, I got to see another of the items on that list: the Rosetta Stone. This 2,000-year-old chunk of rock was originally carved in Egypt. It has the same text written in Egyptian hieroglyphs, Egyptian Demotic, and ancient Greek, which has allowed modern-day people the ability to translate the Egyptian hieroglyphs. I've especially wanted to see the Rosetta stone since I went to Egypt last year and got to see lots of hieroglyphs first hand. The picture isn't too great since the stone is kept in a glass case but it was very cool to get to see such an important artifact up close and personal:

This next item is not even in the same league as the Rosetta Stone but I wanted to take a photo for my sister-in-law Zahra who loves Freddy Mercury and Queen. It's a giant statue of Mercury advertising a Queen musical taking place at the Dominion theater in London. I figured she'd like it:

As you probably know, they drive on the "wrong" side of the street in the UK. You may not know it but about one-third of the world's population drives on the left side including Japan where I lived for a time last year. A couple of google search results suggest that people have been traveling "on the left" for a very long time so that they could use their right, dominant hand to defend themselves from people passing to their right. I'm not sure of the validity of that story but it is easy to visualize.

When I'm in left-hand driving countries, every time I cross the street, it's a bit nerve racking because I conscientiously have to think about it: look left-right-left instead of right-left-right, which I'm used to. I'm sure that many people end up getting hit by cars while they're on vacation in London since you have to actively think about it every time you cross the street. I definitely appreciate that they've taken the time to paint "Look Left" or "Look Right" at almost every corner.

Something that was a little surprising to me was the happy hour traditions that I saw. In Spain, people generally go hang out in an outdoor cafe or inside somewhere if they go out after work. It's part of the tradition to have lots of outdoor cafes in Barcelona and California but, probably due to the typical weather in London, bars and restaurants just aren't designed with outdoor seating all that often. I saw many scenes like this one below where people would go into the pub, get their drinks, and then go back outside to hang out on the sidewalk in front of the place. It's a fairly informal and fun practice in a city that seems on the surface to be relatively formal.

Finally, one of the other things that I've heard about all my life is the term Greenwich Mean Time. I had never spent much time or effort thinking about it except when I'm crossing the international date line 12 hours away. While we were over near the O2 arena, I saw a plaque showing the location of the mean and couldn't resist getting my picture with it. Also, it turns out, that my watch has been off by three minutes for who knows how long.

Even though it's super pricey, London's a fun town to visit at least once. I got to see and experience a bunch of fun and interesting things while there, including gorging myself on Cadbury chocolates and pub food, which I'll write about next time.

London Part 1

Way back in March Diana bought us a trip to London as a birthday gift for me. The idea was that we'd do a few days there when my 90-day tourist visa was up and then come back to Spain with a new 90-day visa. Unfortunately, we later learned that the way tourist visas work in the Schengen EU countries (which England is not a part of), I could only be in Spain 90 out of every 180 days. Damn. Anyway, we decided that we'd still go to London for the few days and that I'd fly back to the U.S. from there and she'd head back to Spain.

We arrived into London on Wednesday morning and visited all the tourist hotspots during our three-day speed visit. One of the things that I had always heard about was the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace. Umm...maybe because it was summertime or something but the place was a zoo and we couldn't see anything of the event. I got this one picture of actual guards in the plaza in front of the palace but I didn't get to see much else:

We bailed on the rest of the show and took a walk along the Thames river stopping by Westminster Abbey on the way. We didn't end up going in because the entry fee was something like $25 so we contented ourselves with some photos out front.

Can I just mention that I couldn't believe how expensive everything was? For example, the metro costs 4.40 Pounds (approximately $7 U.S.) for a pass that can be used all day after 9:30am. There's no cheaper single-ride option. I know part of the problem is that the U.S. dollar is almost worthless right now but, wow, was it expensive.

We eventually worked our way down to the Tate Modern Museum and hung out there for a couple of hours while one of London's rain storms passed by. I'm thinking that London's a little like Seattle in that when the sun actually does come out everyone says how beautiful the city is and how lucky they are to live there. In between those eight days per year though they stay inside and drink hot beverages.

Our next stop was a quick pass by Shakespeare's Old Globe Theater. The original was destroyed by fire but it was still cool to check out. Ironically enough, there's an exact copy in Balboa Park in San Diego so it seemed very familiar to me.

We walked all the way up to the famous Tower Bridge, which I guess many people confuse as the kid's nursery rhyme's London Bridge. The bridge is fantastic looking and there's an old castle off to one side.

Later we passed by the Royal Albert Hall, which is supposedly a great place to see live shows. One thing is that the name shouldn't be confused with a Prince Albert, which is something completely different.

Diana wanted to go check out the O2 Arena because of its textile construction. We took the metro up there and walked around inside and out. The structure was supposed to be temporary but they're now trying to keep it alive as a shopping and entertainment destination. The building's design is super cool, even for a non-architect like me.

On the way back towards the hotel we stopped to take some photos in front of the Parliament building and Big Ben. It was cold, windy, and rainy, which just seemed right somehow since we were in the heart of London.

London is nice to visit and it's probably the "easiest" place outside the U.S. I've ever gone to. I guess it helps that they speak an unusual form of English that's a little tough to understand but you can work your way through it and figure out what they're saying most of the time.