I don't get much opportunity to do 'touristy' stuff; the stereotypical sights and spots which attract thousands of foreigners every day, none more so than those in the Capital itself. And so, ten months into my life in London, an opportunity arose which I could not pass up: show an old friend from America (high school) around London during her first two days in the fair isles. My thoughts during the whole experience were, "Why have I never done this before?"
We started at Paddington station. Some time later we managed to arrive within the same part of Paddington station, and headed to a convenient coffee shop which rhymes with Bartucks to prepare for the day ahead. After a stroll through Hyde Park (Why had I never done that before?) we took a train to King's Cross to gaze at the lack of platform 9 3/4, visit the Harry Potter shop and see a man who may have had the best job ever - he was a rail-based pest controller. And he was carrying a large falcon. No word of a lie, this man was casually strolling around one of England's most famous stations with an impressive bird of prey perched on his gloved arm. This day was going to be great.
After King's X, it was a bus to Southbank, to take in the river and the bank's world-class entertainment and attractions! Except lets face it, the Thames isn't hard to take in and the entertainment was disappointingly sparse on Monday afternoon. Still, got some bloody good ice-cream (the first of many) and had a nice stroll.
From there we visited Trafalgar Square (again, I'd not had chance to go since my move, and we chose a beautiful day to visit) to sunbathe with the lions under the watchful gaze of Admiral Nelson.
The final stop of the day took us to London Bridge for a pint on the riverfront at a great riverside pub in the Hays Galleria. Which was a Nicholson's pub, which granted me my new employee discount, but more about that later. The drinks were perfect and food we ended up having was delicious.
And then we had an indor BBQ (George Forman's Lean Mean Grilling Machine) at Richard's along with drinks for dinner.
Day two started with another meeting at Tarmucks - this time we were actually able to find one another far more easily - and then we were off to visit the Queen! The Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace is a wonderful tourist and British attraction. Featuring such exciting sights as: Police Officers on horseback, footsoldiers in red coats (The Red Coats are coming! The Red Coats are coming!) and bearskin caps, some of whom were also ahorse. And the marching band, easily stealing the show playing such classics as The Theme from Indiana Jones, The Imperial March and My Heart Will Go On. Brilliant stuff.
Day duo continued to improve as The American was introduced to the wonderful concept of a Cheesemonger. The concept that a shop could specialize in selling little other than numerous varieties of cheese caused a minor excitement aneurysm, but she quickly recovered and was nibbling happily on the samples available for tasting. I bought a very expensive pork pie, another new experience (and another very good one, though she wasn't too keen on the sweet chili scotch egg) which we shared for lunch on a little city centre greenspace we stumbled across en route to Leicester Square. On final arrival to the cinema-swamped stomping ground of the world's biggest film releases, we decided to have a drink (well, I had a drink), wonder Chinatown, buy tickets to a comedy show, and make our way to a far more obscure attraction: Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese.
The full run of events that took place in our short time in this particular pub (enough for us to finish one drink) would occupy an entire blog post to themselves, and by this point I imagine you're tired, so I'll condence the entire experience into the funniest moments: Thames Water pub crawl, 'you're rather attractive', and dogging. I'll let your imaginations run riot there.
We met Richard again for dinner before all heading to the highly anticipated Mostly Comedy at the Leicester Square Theatre. The show featured two warm-up Fringe acts and we were three of an audience of 12. It was absolutely wonderful. The first act, comic duo Doggett & Ephgrave, based their entire show on a slide show. A risky maneuver for a comedy show as there can be no room for error or improvisation, and at times the room was quiet but they got plenty of laughs. The second act was the acclaimmed stand-up and Metro columnist Richard Herring, who's writing I have long admired and who had a cameo role in Rock Band VS Vampires (sadly I wasn't on set that particular day, so missed the opportunity to strike up a conversational friendship with this semi-famous personal favourite of mine, setting up a flaky pretence to saying hello after the show, portraying a vague air of fame and fortune to my friends. Friends who know me well enough to realise that said air is, in fact, complete rubbish). By this point I had consumed a lot of alcohol (5 pints) so going for another drink afterwards seemed like the most sensible idea. And then, Soho! Which turned out to be perfectly barren on a Tuesday night in early June.
However, through the haze of smog and beer goggles, I spied a neon sign down a little alley. It said simply "The Bar". This had to be good. And as we drew closer the blackboard outside declared 'DJs dedicated to 60s and 70s soul.' It was tiny, it was underground, it serverd alcohol and the DJ was genuinely playing vynals on two decks. I let the soul train take me all the way home.
Actually it was the N343 but that doesn't sound nearly as fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment