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Hey everyone. I'm back in the United States again after one heck of a vacation. First stop was London. Some great stuff there. I got to sample the truly international cuisine that's available in the place which is good because I'm not all that fond of the actual British food
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Don't blame you... I never really had any cuisine other than bog standard brit fare when I grew up, and coming to London was a revelation... Chinatown - yum.Various Japanese places - yum. The vegetarian Indian restaurants on Drummond Street that I used to live right next to - yum. Thai Metro on Charlotte Street - yum. In fact, almost everything = yum.
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(although roast lamb with gravy turned out quite well. I just wish the British would stop boiling all their vegetables).
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Indeed. Although I do have a partiality to well boiled carrots with my roast dinners, which IMO is the only great thing about archetypally brit cuisine.
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The only problem was I was travelling with my grandparents who refused to eat any Indian food, and I had heard that London was the best place to get real Indian food. :mad: My grandparents were probably avoiding Indian food for racist reasons, too, but there's no way to change them now.
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Hom hum. I'm no epicure, but London does have some great Indian restaurants, although I prefer the veggie ones to the normal meaty ones since I'm not a huge fan of curries. But gimme one of Chutney's Paneer Dosa's and I'm laughing all the way to obesity.
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Among the sites I saw were Kensington Palace, the Tower of London (with the Crown Jewels. Very nice), the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum and lots of men wearing funny hats.
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Ah, you tourist you. ;P
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Overall, it's a very nice place, and I would definitely visit again. I only had three complaints:
1. The streets are terrible. I don't think I saw more than five or six streets that intersected at right angles, lots of them are one way (and consequently I didn't know which way to look for oncoming cars when crossing them although some of them have helpful signs) and the street names are pretty poorly marked. I didn't see any street signs anywhere, so I basically had to navigate by landmarks (e.g. two streets down from the Albert Memorial, take a left).
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Yep, London has no right angle roads at all, simply cos the streets are all about 400 years old. Whilst confusing to the traveller, I like London's odd windy streets that go nowhere, or end up in some little square that contains some wickedly cool shops. Or a gang about to mug you. But hey, it keeps life interesting.
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2. The weather was pretty cloudy. I hear London is usually like that, and now I can understand why British people always head for a sunny place when they go on vacation.
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If you think London is cloudy - hah! Coming from north wales, I was agog at how a) warm b) sunny and c) dry London was by comparison.
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3. Smokers everywhere. I know I'm probably being really picky, but I can't help it. I was raised in a smoke free environment. That makes me so sensitive to cigarette smoke that I can actually distinguish a smoker from a non-smoker even if the smoker hasn't lit up in three days. And I can smell a cigarette being lit on the other side of some streets. And if I accidentally inhale a good whiff of smoke, I'll get a headache. In the UK, there are no non-smoking sections in restaurants, and there are a lot more smokers than in the U.S. At one point, some of my food tasted like smoke. Oh well.
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Yep, London is full of smokers, but it kind of goes with the London lifestyles. You're either an executive working a high power high strees job, or you're some poor sod who gets paid minimum wage and you feel pretty crappy about stuff (the poverty gap in London is huge). Either way, you're in London, so just by breathing you smoke the equivalane of 4 or more cigarettes a day just from traffic fumes.
There are plenty of pubs and restaurants with non-smoking sections; unfortunately they tend to be the cra@ppy ones in my experience.
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The people are generally pretty nice. The London population is a lot like New Yorkers with better manners. As I said before, I didn't see sdtPikachu anywhere. And I didn't see any Muslims who carried around a baby named Mohammed or referred to his wife as Haylay, so I probably missed Shadow_Link as well. But if either of you saw two Asian teenagers along with two Asian senior citizens and one Asian adult and one big white guy, that was us.
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I think in a city of over 8 million people seeing anyone you know is s small miracle, let alone someone you don't know from another incontinent.
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the girls were very good looking.
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No, I can't believe he said that either. Is this the same Xantar?
