Hammersmith Stroll

Just an update on school related stuff:  I am now officially done with the RADA program, having received my "Shakespeare in Performance" diploma following our final showing of "Measure for Measure" last Tuesday.  I'm going to miss Shakespeare, but there's lots of the UK left to explore.

One of my Christmas gifts this year was a box containing 50 London city walks.  Anna and I picked No. 46 at random and set off on a warm evening two Sundays ago to Hammersmith, a suburb southwest of downtown London.

It took us a while to find the route they had mapped out, because the first step was to pass underneath a "giant overpass" and head toward the Thames.  After getting out of the tube, the chore was not finding the giant overpass, but getting around it.  (They have a system of herding pedestrians in London via railings on the sidewalk, making it impossible to cross streets in places you might need to.  It's worst when you're stuck on the street side of the railing.)  Eventually, we crossed the road and happened upon the old copper-plated bridge crossing the Thames.

We made a right at the bridge and passed the riverside pubs and cottages.  Some of it reminded me of Nantucket: the old homes covered in wisteria with small front garden gates.  Rickety old houseboats lined the docks.

We also witnessed, in real time, the rising tides of the Thames, and were nearly caught by them.  We climbed down from the docks to the rocky shore, out onto a peninsula, spotting a black swan cruising in the stream along the way.  After about twenty minutes on the peninsula, we headed back to the docks, only to find the stream had started to approach on either side of us, and before our eyes, the peninsula became an island.

On our way back to the tube later in the evening, we had drinks at the White Lion pub, where we sat outside and watched a jazz band play the Flinstone's theme song.  After a beer and a burger, we were ready to head home back to King's Cross.

Easter Ireland

I was in Ireland for the birth of my niece, V.W. Harvey on April 10th.  Phil, Jon, Joel and I crashed for three nights at my good friend Meghan's apartment in the heart of Dublin at Temple Bar.  We spent two days outside the city, hiking in Howth on the eastern coast, and south of Dublin, in the Wicklow mountains.

It was Good Friday evening when we first arrived at Meghan's place, and we soon discovered there was no alcohol on sale anywhere in the city (apparently, this is the one day when the Irish actually don't drink).  This was probably all for the best because we had a long hike ahead of us on Saturday.

Ireland in early April is probably the greenest place on Earth.  The hiking in Wicklow was arrestingly beautiful.  I was a little motion sick as we rolled through the country side, passing sheep pastures and old country cottages, but off the bus we treated ourselves to large servings of lamb stew (evidently some of the lamb that I passed on the drive) and we had satisfied stomachs for our late afternoon hike.

That night, back from the hike, we decided to make up for a sober Friday evening and hit up the bar.  One of Meghan's friends from the Tisch Dublin program documents a band in Ireland, so we got free admittance to watch them play at a loud, three-storied, pub club.  That's when I got a call from my girlfriend Anna saying she noticed that Lizzy Cocks had posted on my facebook wall congratulating me for being an uncle.  So, whatever old people say, facebook has its merits.  We rushed out of the club to grab a round of whiskey in true Irish fashion in honor of the niece, and I headed back to Meg's apartment to call my brother and congratulate him (for all his hard work in bringing Virginia into the world).

The next morning I went to Easter mass at St. John's, a Catholic church outside of Temple Bar.  We slept a little late, so we were on time for the eleven o'clock service.  To be totally frank, it was one of the most boring Easter services I've been to.  The only really entertaining part was listening to an old lady with huge, red-rimmed glasses do the first two readings in the thickest Irish accents I had heard all weekend:

"An' den dey touk Jaisus an' dey naayled 'im up on uh tree."

We had an American couple sitting in front of us.  I could tell by the husband's huge Pittsburg Steelers bomber jacket.  He got particularly doused by the holy water as the father passed down the isle and the wife leaned into him, smiling:

"Does it burn?"

Not exactly the most formal of services to be expected on Easter Sunday, but I still felt pious nonetheless.

We spent the rest of the day touring the Jameson whiskey factory north of the River Liffey.  Joel, Meghan, and I "volunteered" to be post-tour whiskey testers.  At the factory bar, we sampled Jameson and compared it with JD and Johnny Walker scotch.  I had a good buzz for the rest of the Easter afternoon.

After a brief tour of Trinity College on Monday morning, we flew back to London with a solid Dublin experience under our belts.  But most importantly, I was grateful to hear that Virginia made it into the world safe and sound.  I can't wait to meet her!

Biggie in London

A little longer hiatus than I had hoped, but we're back in business.

The second half of spring break I spent with my brother.  He arrived at King's Cross around 10:30 pm Wednesday night, March 11th and we made a fruitless attempt to pop into a pub for a nightcap pint.  (Apparently, I didn't know until now that London pubs close on weekdays at 11 pm.)  Needless to say, this didn't bode well for the start of the trip, but we made up for it in a hurry.

On Thursday morning we hit up some of the touristy spots in London: Brick Lane, a long, cobblestone street teeming with Indian restaurants.  After a tasty mimosa and tikka massala meal, we made our way South toward the River Thames for a look at St. Paul's Cathedral, then across the Millennium Bridge to see Jackson Pollack, Claude Monet, and many others at the power-plant-esque Tate Modern building.  On our way out, a friendly older British gentlemen caught my attention and asked me to take a survey.  He bumbled around with some papers for a while before asking me ten minutes worth of questions about the exhibit.  In the end, I couldn't even tell him who sponsored the exhibits, which was probably not what he wanted to hear.  Still, I felt like seeing such fantastic work for free obligated me to answer some questions

That evening, Pete and I paid homage to a restaurant that has played a big part in family traditions over the past two decades: Trader Vics.  This one was particularly cool because it was in the basement of the London Hilton.  We walked down a spiral wooden staircase into a low-ceilinged, bungalow-aquarium atmosphere.  The bar is situated in the center of the action, visible from all tables.  On Mom and Dad's bidding in celebration for my 21st, Pete and I treated ourselves to Mai Tai's, Navy Groggs, Bongo Bongo Soup, Crispy Duck and Pu-Pu Platters.  We also paid 7 pounds for a large bottle of Fiji.  (Water and bread are never considered complimentary items at British restaurants, a hard pill to swallow this semester.)  Nevertheless, it was a mouth-watering, savory meal, one that harkened back to the fond memories we had shared in other Trader Vics halfway across the world.  Biggie has now been to five different Trader Vics: one in Beverly Hills, two in San Francisco, one in Emeryville (the home base) and now in London.

On Friday we visited the Prime Meridian, in Greenwich, just southeast of the city of London, exactly zero degrees longitude.  It's certainly an arbitrary location for the middle of the world; nevertheless, the world's clocks would be completely chaotic.  There we saw a bust of Edmond Halley, man who discovered the famous comet that passes Earth's orbit once every 76 years.  We thought it would be appropriate to take a picture, seeing as we had just been to Trader Vics, a place where Dad has consistently used the gag: "Oh, look it's Halley's Comet.  Taxi!" but they did not allow photos in the observatory.  We were still able to photograph a meteorite, the oldest object in the solar system currently on Earth, but we were reprimanded by observatory staff.

That night we went to see the late showing of a Burlesque Carbaret, where we witnessed a double-jointed man stick himself through two tennis rackets.  We also watched a woman play a kazoo with her vagina to the tune of "God Bless America."   One day this might be my line of work.  Aim high.

The highlight of the trip was, undoubtedly, our trip to Arsenal to see the football match between Arsenal and the Blackburn Rovers.  We arrived about two and a half hours before game time and wandered around the stadium looking for a box office.  When we discovered there was no chance of getting day-of-game seats there, (even in a stadium of 60,000 capacity these games sell out three weeks in advance) we tried our luck in the very classy scalper community.  Unfortunately, most scalpers we passed were looking to purchase tickets.  Also, they asking us in hushed voices, mouths hidden under zipped-up bomber jackets, hands in the back of their jean pockets.  We even witnessed one exchange happen behind a pub where the scalper pulled his tickets out of a McDonald's bag.  For about two-hours, it seemed all hope was lost for watching the game...

Just as we were ready to take the tube home, we made contact.  One scalper herded us toward another friend.  He took Biggie by the shoulder and passed us off down the alley way, almost like he was giving us momentum to walk quicker.  We soon found ourselves approached by another man, a shorter bald guy who took us behind the pub looking for 300 "quid" (AKA pounds) for each ticket.  We lowered it down to 80 each, but not before carefully inspecting the tickets.

"How do we know these are real?" Pete asked.

"How do I know your money's real?" the man replied.

"OK."

"Look, I wouldn't do that to you, mate," he insisted.

Something about his tone seemed fishy, but it was our last shot, so we bought them.

We got the green lights through the stadium gates and made our way to what turned out to be terrific seats, second deck above the Arsenal side right corner.  We saw three out of the four Arsenal goals in a game in which they won, 4-0, so everyone went home happy.

On Pete and my last morning of the vacation, we made our way to the Houses of Parliament to eat lunch and watch Big Ben.  When the clock struck one, it was time to head back to King's Cross to get Biggie on the tube back to Heathrow.

A busy, but very successful vacation.  We took London by storm and won.