Wednesday

[solipsistnation]

Wednesday! We set a wake-up call so we wouldn't sleep until noon! This got us out of the house around 11, and we tubed down to the Tower of London for some actual tourism. The Tower gives a pretty good impression of what it must have been like to live there in Ye Olden Dayes-- it's a big chilly pile of stone. The most interesting part was really the graffiti that hundreds of years of condemned prisoners carved into the walls of the various towers. There are lots of professions of faith from various Jesuits and the occasional expression of love. Also a fairly large detailed astronomical chart and some pithy sayings. They're _everywhere_, too, scraped into the stone with, I suppose, small knives and eating utensils. I guess if you're stuck in the Tower for life, you might as well devote some time to learning amateur stonecarving...

From there, we walked down the Thames toward the Millennium Bridge and the Tate Modern. Crossing the bridge we spotted 2 messages being handed off, 3 murders, 1 attempted murder, and a number of very suspicious cell phone calls. You'd think the local intelligence community would figure out that a landmark footbridge was probably not the most subtle place for their shenanigans, but this is a city steeped in tradition and I suppose even the secret services can't help themselves by now. (Seriously, every spy show I've seen set in London has all kinds of stuff happening on that bridge. You could play a drinking game based on it.)

The Tate Modern was pretty huge, and we wandered through surrealists and cubists and vorticists (a movement of which I was previously unaware). By now we'd been on our feet for five or six hours and were about ready to head back to relax a bit before our social evening unfolded so we didn't spend a huge amount of time there-- it certainly warrants a more thorough exploration than we managed yesterday, but we did see some great art (and some less-great but still interesting art) and acquired postcards.

Then back to the hotel for an hour or so of relaxing and resting our feet, and then off to The Queen's Head and Artichoke, which turned out to be quite pleasant. A smallish group of Culture Listees had arrived before us and plied us with drinks immediately upon entry. As it turns out, good conversation and friendly people on the internet are good conversation and friendly people in person, too! We were joined by pir, who seemed to be getting along quite well. Sadly it seems that the RPS person I was hoping would arrive didn't, but it was pretty crowded anyway. Oh, British beer-- I shall miss you when we return to the States... Lots of electronical music and British SF writer nerding transpired, and we enjoyed some tasty tapas, including delightfully grilled halloumi. Yum. Nikki and I headed off around 9:30, got back to the hotel at about 10, and managed to get to sleep earlier than usual. I didn't even wake up in the middle of the night and did wake up around 8:30, so perhaps I'm adjusting to the local time zone finally.

Today I think we're going to try to get tickets to A Midsummer Night's Dream and pay one last visit to the British Museum. Also we need to find stamps as our collection of postcards is getting kind of ridiculous. Otherwise, today we're going to find a couple of places to eat that Nikki has picked out and mostly take it pretty easy. Tomorrow we're off to Wales, which promises all kinds of public-transport adventures-- tube to train to bus to... walking a mile or so, maybe? All kinds of fun.

Comments

[sauergeek.livejournal.com]

Too bad you've fled for the Wrong Coast, as NERAX is coming up at the end of March.