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More London
Nnnng need to get to bed/up earlier.
Tuesday: walked north to the giant green thing on the maps. Turned out to be Hyde Park. London has LOTS of great big parks, it seems. A bird sanctuary was on the local maps, but either I never found it or it was locked up. I guess an actual sanctuary wouldn't let many humans in. Neat little water area, probably Albert Memorial. Emerged out the north, Paddington area? Had my first Italian food here, a decent bolognese (well, half-decent by my standards; I'm addicted to cayenne. I have no idea how the alleged carrot manifests in the sauce, btw. Sauce was better after I salted it) and weird garlic bread, more like breadsticks with garlic and butter on top. Had the house red wine, unnamed but described as medium dry, not too bad for me. Walked to Notting Hill, took tube to Earl's Court -- yes, because of Neverwhere -- nothing fancy there, just busy urbanness and restaurants. On the brain some old and possibly drunk guy was talking to young German women, and ended up harassing them about the war.
"1940 was our finest hour, we defended ourselves, and in the end Hitler was DEAD!" Try to imagine it in drunk/crazy drawl + English accent.
I don't get the laundry machines here. First one needing babysitting to wash. This one worked ok the first time, I think, but went nuts today. Hours of soaking, not enough spinning, my whites are now pinks, I've given up and put things up to dry.
Wednesday: at last, the Natural History Museum! Or not, the line is HUGE. Wait, there's a fast track for ticketholders, maybe I should just buy a ticket. Hey, I've seen live butterflies before, but Deep Sea sounds cool anyway. 8 pounds... "what's concession?" "Students. Are you a student." "Uh, sort of a grad student." "Do you have an ID?" *checks* "Not on me." "I'll give it to you anyway. 4.50"
Definitely got in faster. It's nice to have money and be willing to spend it. As for the Deep Sea exhibit... no aquarium stuff, like I naively imagined, which is fair enough given the problems. Lots of neat facts to learn anyway. Trieste was a manned dive into the Mariana Trench, 10912 meters down. I hadn't known that. There was a thing on how a sperm whale corpse gets eaten; 8 tons of bones may have 5 tons of oil. Bone borer worms exist. Japanese giant spider crab has 4 meter legspan. There's a tripod fish, and a Census of Marine Life which should be finishing up any day now.
After that I ended up mostly looking at geology stuff, especially gems and minerals. Shiny! I love the opals they had on display.
Some comic book writer made up a formulate for kryptonite (with no actual krypton); years later, a mineral with that formula was found, now known as jadarite.
I found kaiten-zushi. It wasn't very busy, but I went for it anyway. Free tea!
Thursday: went back to the sushi place for breakfast. Perhaps not the best idea: dead at 3:30pm, not even moving the tray until I went in. Still, don't think it's made me sick. Then off to the V&A again, as the most efficient use of limited time. Took a lift (elevator) to the 6th floor, which is given over entirely to ceramics. They've got introductory cases on the walls, and central "study collection" cases. Just tons and tons of ceramics. I wandered around stunned, snapping photos, then spent some time in a section on the making of ceramics. 4th floor had a somewhat smaller glass collection, with its own study cases, and an eh architecture section. 3rd had metalwork, which didn't move me much, apart from the weirdass keys. Then they closed.
Found a different kaiten-zushi, Kulu Kulu, which was much busier, though not necessarily better. Tea was free but with teabags, didn't seem very good. Tamago was excellent. Went by Keiko, they still weren't very busy even at 6pm. Went to an Internet cafe with free wifi but they closed at 7 so I wasn't there long. Pot of British tea wasn't very appealing. Haven been 'home' since.
It's been wonderfully cool for me. At Earl's Court I noted it was 59 F, and I was happy in a T-shirt. It's like what I wanted San Francisco to really be! Except SF actually has a dry season -- most of the year -- despite the cool fog; London's been very rainy. And humid or something, so I sweat a lot despite the cool. That or my body's started sweating a lot in general.
I've finally started looking at transportation to Edinburgh. EasyJet air is 35-60 pounds one way. East Coast Rail is at least 270 pounds, though that's with an open return. I'd like rail but geez. Will look for other lines.
Tuesday: walked north to the giant green thing on the maps. Turned out to be Hyde Park. London has LOTS of great big parks, it seems. A bird sanctuary was on the local maps, but either I never found it or it was locked up. I guess an actual sanctuary wouldn't let many humans in. Neat little water area, probably Albert Memorial. Emerged out the north, Paddington area? Had my first Italian food here, a decent bolognese (well, half-decent by my standards; I'm addicted to cayenne. I have no idea how the alleged carrot manifests in the sauce, btw. Sauce was better after I salted it) and weird garlic bread, more like breadsticks with garlic and butter on top. Had the house red wine, unnamed but described as medium dry, not too bad for me. Walked to Notting Hill, took tube to Earl's Court -- yes, because of Neverwhere -- nothing fancy there, just busy urbanness and restaurants. On the brain some old and possibly drunk guy was talking to young German women, and ended up harassing them about the war.
"1940 was our finest hour, we defended ourselves, and in the end Hitler was DEAD!" Try to imagine it in drunk/crazy drawl + English accent.
I don't get the laundry machines here. First one needing babysitting to wash. This one worked ok the first time, I think, but went nuts today. Hours of soaking, not enough spinning, my whites are now pinks, I've given up and put things up to dry.
Wednesday: at last, the Natural History Museum! Or not, the line is HUGE. Wait, there's a fast track for ticketholders, maybe I should just buy a ticket. Hey, I've seen live butterflies before, but Deep Sea sounds cool anyway. 8 pounds... "what's concession?" "Students. Are you a student." "Uh, sort of a grad student." "Do you have an ID?" *checks* "Not on me." "I'll give it to you anyway. 4.50"
Definitely got in faster. It's nice to have money and be willing to spend it. As for the Deep Sea exhibit... no aquarium stuff, like I naively imagined, which is fair enough given the problems. Lots of neat facts to learn anyway. Trieste was a manned dive into the Mariana Trench, 10912 meters down. I hadn't known that. There was a thing on how a sperm whale corpse gets eaten; 8 tons of bones may have 5 tons of oil. Bone borer worms exist. Japanese giant spider crab has 4 meter legspan. There's a tripod fish, and a Census of Marine Life which should be finishing up any day now.
After that I ended up mostly looking at geology stuff, especially gems and minerals. Shiny! I love the opals they had on display.
Some comic book writer made up a formulate for kryptonite (with no actual krypton); years later, a mineral with that formula was found, now known as jadarite.
I found kaiten-zushi. It wasn't very busy, but I went for it anyway. Free tea!
Thursday: went back to the sushi place for breakfast. Perhaps not the best idea: dead at 3:30pm, not even moving the tray until I went in. Still, don't think it's made me sick. Then off to the V&A again, as the most efficient use of limited time. Took a lift (elevator) to the 6th floor, which is given over entirely to ceramics. They've got introductory cases on the walls, and central "study collection" cases. Just tons and tons of ceramics. I wandered around stunned, snapping photos, then spent some time in a section on the making of ceramics. 4th floor had a somewhat smaller glass collection, with its own study cases, and an eh architecture section. 3rd had metalwork, which didn't move me much, apart from the weirdass keys. Then they closed.
Found a different kaiten-zushi, Kulu Kulu, which was much busier, though not necessarily better. Tea was free but with teabags, didn't seem very good. Tamago was excellent. Went by Keiko, they still weren't very busy even at 6pm. Went to an Internet cafe with free wifi but they closed at 7 so I wasn't there long. Pot of British tea wasn't very appealing. Haven been 'home' since.
It's been wonderfully cool for me. At Earl's Court I noted it was 59 F, and I was happy in a T-shirt. It's like what I wanted San Francisco to really be! Except SF actually has a dry season -- most of the year -- despite the cool fog; London's been very rainy. And humid or something, so I sweat a lot despite the cool. That or my body's started sweating a lot in general.
I've finally started looking at transportation to Edinburgh. EasyJet air is 35-60 pounds one way. East Coast Rail is at least 270 pounds, though that's with an open return. I'd like rail but geez. Will look for other lines.