London: Day 3

Ut oh, I better go faster or I'll be blogging about London until 2024.  I blame my kid for bailing on our weekend coffee event.  I tend to get a lot of writing done then.

Day Three - May 8 - we rode The Eye.  I've been on it before, and it's a little too touristy for my taste.  And I think they crank the price up as a way to keep the ridership manageable.  But it's a nice view and, at the time, we hadn't decided to go to the Skyview cafe [and when we did, that was Jen and me, Aeryn was off to elsewhere].

We did find a little cafe in the basement with horrible reviews.  The horrible reviews were about the service.  The baked goods were AMAZING.  And at least when we were there, service was fine.  Seems to be the ovens baking for a lot of the other places right along the Eye Walk.

I bet you're jealous of the beautiful weather.  Jen and Aeryn are in that photo, although Jen is behind Aeryn.  When I went up to take this, it was up some stairs and a guard was guarding to prevent anyone going up, near as I could tell.  But he got engaged with some pretty tourists, and I simply walked right behind him and up to the top.  When I came back down he saw me and followed me down and pulled out the barricade and pointed me out to another cop / security guard. I think he was embarrassed I was such a ninja.

From the skate park near The Eye.  

Here....have a photo where I'm not actually at the top of the arc.  That's how lazy I was about photos.  What you won't find here - but that's over on Flickr - is my family looking hot and exhausted.  I think the sheer number of people/tourists generally wore them out.

I include this photo because last time I was in London [2007] I was doing software training for a group of developers with another trainer from the US, Bruce. I took this photo and sent it back to the rest of our team and joked that Bruce had been standing there only a moment earlier.  One of the other trainers flipped the fuck out.  She was so mad.  I think how mad she was made it even funnier for Bruce.  We  joked about it for the next decade+.

After my family finished up for the day, I went on a walk.  Hit the Millennium Bridge, the Tate, and several bars, including The Swan next to The Globe Theater [in retrospect I should have gone to the Globe, even if it was to see something I didn't want to see].  While I was drinking at The Swan, there was this guy chatting up his date, and I was live chatting the details to Ming and Kyle.  He was so cheesy and she was eating it up.  I think I truly missed out on my shot at being a player in London.  It did not look difficult.

The Tate. I hadn't been in it before, only moseyed around the outside.  Beautiful place.

This view was actually described in Ben Aaronovitch's Whispers Under Ground which I was reading while on vacation.  It was incredibly weird to read as it reference Willesden, all the tube stations I stopped at, Kensal which was near where we stayed, and so much more right in our general hood.  I strongly recommend reading it [it's third in the series, but that one was "most London so far" in my opinion] if you're in London.

St. Paul's from the bridge.  We didn't go in this time, although I dragged Jen past it later.  I've been in there before, back during college. I described the whisper area to Jen, although I didn't highlight how wonderful the view is from up there.

From the deck at The Tate.

A fun display between bars [ha, punny] for my family as they're big Tony's lovers.  We ate at our Vrbo a few times and Tony's served as dessert.

Walking along the lawyer-y side of the Thames.  NOT pilfered antiquities.  There's a sign on it highlighting that it was the first thing damaged during WWII bombings. Egypt gave one to the US and one to the UK.  Now I've seen them both.