London Download

Time slowed down when I was in London last week. Depending on how you calculate it, I was there for between nine and eleven days, and I did a staggering amount of stuff. It felt really good, and made me think seriously about how much more of Vancouver's reefer fog I can stand. I'm pretty sure London is too expensive, crowded, crumbling, dirty and smelly for me to return there, but the energy and panache of the place was undeniable.

I stayed with Scott and Amanda in Aldgate East, on the eastern edge of the central city core. It's a slightly dodgy area but their place is brand new and quite swanky. It even has water pressure, which for London is exceptional. It's also close to Brick Lane, which is perhaps the best place for East Indian cuisine in the entire universe. Scott and I ate there on three separate occasions, and each time was pure heaven for my tastebuds. I also ate at my favourite sushi place, Asakusa, had lunch twice at Wagamamas, grabbed a couple of minor feasts in Chinatown, and polished off brunch at Spitalfields markets. I also grabbed a fine early dinner with my dad at my favourite pub, The Westbourne, ate Malaysian in Notting Hill, and obliterated a mountain of Thai at The Warrington in Maida Vale. I even managed dinner at Orme Court, which is a high honour, reserved for a lucky few.

I caught up with tonnes of friends, met a few new ones, and even spent some quality time with my dad, who was in town starting up a nine-week European tour. He and I talked a whole lot, and not only about rugby. He did also pull out this classic comment:

Me: "Dad, have you heard of Tivo?"
Dad: "Uh... I think so, he was that rapper who was killed a few years back."
Me: "Uh no Dad, that was Tupac."
Dad: "Ah yes, sorry... Chewbac."
Me: "Not Chewbac. Tupac."

Close friends and family are a genuine delight, and it was great to spend time with both. As well as food and people, I saw a few sites - The Tate Modern, The Millenium Bridge, Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, the London Eye, The Monument to the Great Fire of London, Westminster Abbey, Kew Gardens and Greenwich. The Tate was the only place in the list I'd seen before, and they were all excellent. Kew Gardens deserves particular mention - I'll definitely have to go back and devote an entire day to wandering around there. I made it to Cambridge for the end of Rosie's wedding celebrations, saw the Robotic Gandytron before he headed back to Bangkok, and danced the night away with Bubbles and the rest of the Cambridge Crew until jetlag fell on my head like a two tonne heavy thing. Amanda's DJ buddies held a club night in Soho, so I went along to that and had a ball, as I did at a late night sci-fi book chat with Sam and Paul over red wine and chocolate.

It's always a bit unfair to judge cities during holidays, but I think I'm far more London than Vancouver. I crave the stimulation and motion of a bigger city, as well as the company of people who need to do more with their weekends than smoke a bowl. That said, writing off the next eight months would be fairly stupid, so I should really take some of that London fizz and sprinkle it around to wring every last bit from Vancouver.