First Weekend in London

I gotta admit. I could get used to this. Arrived in London last Sunday. Then 4 days in the office. Then a 4-day weekend for Easter, and now I begin a second consecutive 4-day work week. I even realized that, based on when I plan on using my vacation days (a short trip to LA for my cousin's wedding, and a few random days off for long weekends), I am probably looking at a maximum of 3 5-day work weeks while I'm here.

Anyways, on to the weekend. Unfortunately, nothing terribly exciting to report. As I've mentioned, I only have a handful of friends out here, and several of them left town for the long weekend.

Friday I basically spent relaxing at home, which was much needed to finally recuperate after the many weeks of partying in NY.

Saturday, I wandered the area of what I call "central London" - Leicester and Trafalgar Squares, Piccadilly Circus, etc. I'm not really sure why this appealed to me, as I've roamed this area countless times on my previous London trips, but at the very least, I managed to refamiliarize myself with the area. The best part was that I discovered that I actually live within walking distance of this area.

Then I met up with my friend Carol from Berkeley, and we went to the Earl's Court Exhibition Center (not 'Centre') to check out the Bodies Exhibition. Since I spent most of my weekends either sleeping or drinking, I never managed to check it out when I was in NY, but it was well worth the trip and highly recommended to anyone that comes to London while it is still here. Hard to describe the exhibition in words, but I'll refer you to Ali's blog as he posted about it a while back. Here's a couple pictures:




After this, I proceeded to drink for the first time in a week (seriously), and eat yet another bad steak. After going 0-for-2 with steaks in London, I've vowed to myself that I'm not gonna waste the artery-clogging calories on any more London steaks. However, I did manage to try 3 new beers on Saturday, which I'm pretty sure is a personal record for new beers in one day. My favorite was Kronenbourg 1664, a popular British beer (the Kronenbourg White Beer, which I tried on Monday, was even better and Carol actually preferred it to Hoegaarden - which I consider sacreligious).

After waking up with the inevitable Sunday hangover (why did I switch to Grey Goose after starting with 4 beers???), I attempted to do laundry in the washer/dryer in my apartment. The washing seemed to go okay, but drying was another story. I'm not sure if I just wasn't using the machine properly, but I ended up having to dry my clothes for like 200 minutes before they were sufficiently dry. I think I need to find one of those wash & fold places.

Then, the last 2 days of the weekend was spent pretty much wandering a lot more. The only places worth noting were an area called Camden Garden, which is a very Berkeley-like area of markets, shops, tattoo/body piercing parlors, and restaurants - complete with the Berkeley-like goth vibe; and the Mexican restaurant I went to for dinner on Monday night. Can't remember the name of the place, but I was very pleasantly surprised that there is at least 1 place here that serves proper Mexican fare. Obviously it doesn't compare to Del Taco or most other California Mexican restaurants, but it was relatively authentic Mexican food, with good drinks, and the only place I've seen so far that serves Patron. Needless to say, I will be back.

Lastly, just to answer the typical questions that people have been asking - the weather has been surprisingly good, with very little rain (although I still carry my umbrella with me practically everywhere I go), the food, generally, sucks, and the people have overall been nice. Now that people are back in town, I hope to pick up the pace of partying and actually entertain the 3 of you that read this regularly with some better stories.