London Town

Joshua Tree was awesome, but our 3/8ths life crisis was too severe to be conquered by desert camping alone.  A big international trip was in order.  After throwing about a bunch of ideas on a bunch of continents, we decided on England and Ireland.

Back in HS, Melch and many of our friends had gone to London, but I was unable to make the trip.  I'd always been a bit bummed about missing the experience.  The experience will stay missed, but the city is still there, and the city held some interest to me as the former place at the top of the world's largest empire.

More importantly, Heather had taken it as her adopted home and we hadn't seen Heather in a long time.  It's a progression that happens - you see someone every day in high school, then every few months through college, then yearly or less.  I've been fortunate enough to avoid that progression with a number of my good HS friends, but Heather and I had traveled in many different and mutually-distant directions.  Rhode Island and California for me, Texas, Florida, Washington (state) and London for her. Long story short: we were overdue!

To put some icing on the cake, it turns out that Ireland is close to England.  While this proximity hasn't always been a welcome fact for the Irish, it was a welcome fact for this partial-Irishman.  I'd always wanted to go and while it would be a bit rushed, I figured we could at least introduce ourselves to both countries in the vacation time allotted.  Putting yet MORE icing on the cake?  We could make it to Ireland for St. Patrick's Day!  That's a story for another post though.

Our initial reunion with Heather and our sightseeing foray into London is the traffic of this post's stage, and it begins as any good story should - with friends and food.

Heather and Melch sharing some eats in Heather's kitchen the evening after we arrived in London

 After putting our things down and (barely) gathering our bearings, we headed out for a tour of downtown Putney.  We picked up some loot along the way:

Send me and Melch to a European market and this is exactly the sort of stuff you'd expect us to return with

The Chief Engineer of the family goes to work

Dinner was pasta, after dinner there was yoga at Heather's local gym.  There might have been something after that, but you'd have to ask someone who was less jet-lagged at the time than I if you hope to find out what it was.

The next day was Saturday, but we got up early enough that it was still Friday by my body's watch.  No matter, we had plans.  London wasn't going to sightsee itself.  There's a bus/boat tour combination that shows off a bunch of the downtown London sites and we had tickets with our names on them.

Sweet looking riverside tavern on the Thames

Globe theater!  Wish we'd had time to go.  Next time!

Tower of London.  Pretty crazy stuff went down there, but it looks cool on the outside.

Obligatory

Parliament

Eye of London

First English pub ale.  Pub tourism was pretty high on my list of priorities.

Tower Bridge.  Less internationally famous than London Bridge, but way cooler

Not pictured?  Everything else!  Buckingham Palace, Baker St, a bunch of other London-y stuff.  After the tour we had some time for window shopping in the swanker areas of London like Piccadilly Circus and Regent St.  Not bad for a first day.