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.