Thursday
Now, what to do? We shopped, of course. At Covent Garden, I bought a bow tie which shows four different patterns depending on how you tie it. All four are pretty bright. I think it’s spiffy but we’ll see what the general public thinks when I wear it.
Then we decided to go off to Canary Wharf so that
We then went off to the Passport Photographer on Oxford Street west of Bond Street to get his photos taken for the visa. I’ve used them for my last two passports and they are really good, very quick, and relatively cheap. What to do then?
Go to a pub, of course. We ended up first at the Admiral Duncan, where
Go to Ku bar, Chinatown’s only gay pub, for another drink. Another bourbon-and-Diet-Coke for me. No Chinese other than
Off to Queensway to medet HWMBO and go to Kiasu, our current favourite Singaporean restaurant. Well, they must have changed chefs because, when my beef rendang arrived, the beef was in huge chunks (one bigger than my BlackBerry) and it hadn’t been simmered long enough, thus it was stringy rather than meltingly tender. Sigh. We will give them another chance in a few months to see whether the old chef has come back, or the new chef has finally gotten his act together.
So, we’re finished with dinner. What to do?
Go to a pub, of course.
This morning dawned cloudy and cool. But today the visitor to London I was meeting for lunch was the famous Dr. David Cornell, the urologist who is the head of The Circumcision Center in Atlanta, GA. I met Dr. David online as moderator of various email groups, but we have always missed each other here. Luckily we connected this time. Dr. David is a couple of months younger than I am, and is just the most delightful lunch companion. We discussed the state of the economy, medical care here in the UK vs. that in the US, and so on and so forth. We went to Eathai Thai restaurant on Wardour Street. What a great restaurant! I even tried calamari, which being seafood doesn’t normally appeal, and it was really good. The green Thai curry was absolutely great. The pea aubergines (eggplant) were tender, rather than hard little balls that pop in your mouth.
We parted at Piccadilly Circus, and I decided to go out to Westfield shopping center in West London near the BBC Broadcast Center at White City. It has just opened within the past few months, so I thought it was worth a trip. It was really a worthwhile trip. It reminds me of Vivocity in Singapore, and is better designed than Bluewater in Kent, and is certainly easier to get to. Bakerloo to Oxford Circus, then Central Line to White City, take a left outside the station and walk for 250 yards. It’s worth another trip (and I will drag HWMBO there shortly). I bought him a belated Christmas/birthday gift, a Sudoku machine, which he loved, and went into Starbucks, but the queue was too long and the seating too crowded. So what to do?
I took the Hammersmith and City Line from the newly-opened Wood Lane station to Aldgate East, and walked to the Beigel Bake on Brick Lane, where I bought a large rye bread (“Don’t cut it!”) and then took the 35 bus home.
This has turned out longer than I thought it would be, but it’s been an interesting couple of days and I thought it would be good to get it down for posterity.
you make me sound like a party queen..
but for the friday night, i think i killed more than a few dozen pears.. ha more than 8 pints of bulmers..from kudos to ku.. and to G A Y to find it closed and to ku club and.. erm yeh.. more beer tomorrow at canal st.. my god. what has become of me..
You are much younger and in much much better shape than I am. We envy your youthfulness and willingness to keep going when we are just longing for our warm beds.
Sooner or later Father Time will catch up with you (he’s kinda old so you’ve outrun him so far) and you’ll par-tay a bit less, but enjoy it a great deal more than even you do now.
Up for lunch today before you go back to Mancs?