Sam Cook

London: Day 5

Sun, 12 Sep 2010 08:27:48 -0400

Figured i’d stick with random use of words and numbers in the titles and switch back to numbers.

Today was another late start but only had one thing to do, Camden. This meant breakfast and dinner in one go, the best way to do it, Full English. As the sign that led us there claimed “Best breakfast in London”. I have to agree, better may be on offer but it was certainly the best breakfast i had on the trip ;) plate was giant and portions were plentiful.

After becoming more functional with some food and coffee in us we trekked around the markets looking at everything on offer. For those that haven’t been to Camden it’s basically just a collection of markets (that’s plural markets, not market stalls). Most of them just sell similar awesome T-shirts, but they are awesome, so we forgive them.

Throughout my trip to London my feet had been hurting as a result of constant walking in converse-esque shoes. While generally they are comfortable, they are essentially just slabs of rubber on the soles of your feet and not well suited for massive walking. As much as i’d like to just blame the fact they are Primarni at £3 a pair, ive suffered similarly after long walks in my genuine Converse too, besides much <3 for Primark.

Anyway back to the point, my feet hurting for 4 days already led me to want some trainers. A quick search on my phone suggested a place in Camden called Trainerd which specialises in classic trainers. Sounded pretty win so we trekked around looking for it. After much fail trekking we came to the conclusion that it has since closed down :( I’m now in the process of customizing some Adidas instead, as soon as i’ve decided on colour scheme and text they’ll be mine! Best i can come up with for text at the moment is this very blog. So if that happens they’ll definately be get posted up here.

We stumbled across 2 very large robots stood outside one shop, Cyberdog. Intrigued we went inside to find it had 2 dancers in the first area of the store and lots of circuit board based accessories. The rest was cyber clothing which fit with the store name. It was enormous and they had a DJ raving the place up. Definately felt like the nightclub they all hang out in in the film Hackers. This is awesome! They randomly had an over 18s only section, which, if it wasn’t for the fact it had a pole dancer in it seemed pretty tame. This is where cyber face accessories existed and cyber goggles and masks. Pretty weird. I dare say annoying if you are a minor and wanting these cyber accessories. Unable to purchase them until you are 18 just because they decided the shop needed a pole dancer. Ah well, pole dancers are good.

Time for snacks. Camden is the best place for snacks entirely thanks to Chin Chin Labs ice cream shop (pictured above). This is truly geek food. You tell the scientist your flavour choice, he pours the flavour in from a bottle and then dons his safety glasses and gloves. He then picks up his metal cup, fills it with liquid nitrogen and adds it to the mixer. This quickly makes the liquid flavour become ice cream. Win. He then hands over to his glamorous assistant who offers a variety of sauces and sprinkles. I played it safe with chocolate put Sam picked the weekly special which was Lychees and Rose Water. Freakishly it did taste exactly like Lychees.

Previous special flavours have included Peanut Butter and Jelly with Bacon sprinkles!!!! Sad i missed that one. I will upload a video of him making the ice cream at some point, I want to see if i can make it less annoying to watch, being so close to him I was changing orientation from portrait to landscape throughout and don’t want people to have to keep moving their heads :)

Finally we got some haggling on thanks to Sam and she picked up some bargain clothes at my expense, so thanks to her for making them cheap :D

Went to Leicester Square for our final meal, deciding on Bella Italia which unfortunately had a waitress of fail, aside from being very slow and distracted she also managed to not tell the kitchen about our starters. We made up for this by having a second ice cream treat of the day with dessert at Haagan Daaz restaurant.

That was pretty much the end of the trip so back to my usual less eventful life. No more walls of text.

London: Day Four

Sat, 11 Sep 2010 09:08:40 -0400

Thought it was about time I added the final exciting days. Day 4 started a bit later than i’d hoped but it was a saturday and we didn’t really have anything planned so wasn’t that big a deal. Got a bagel from the station (oh how i miss so much tasty food on my door step) and headed off to get on Thames “cruise”.

Decided to stay on the boat all the way to Greenwich to see as much as was available from the Thames in one go and then went for a mooch to see what the town of time had to offer.

First was a big market with all sorts of food available. It was a tough choice picking lunch but the winner was a giant roast beef and cheddar sandwich. Partly because it was the first thing I saw, partly because seeing a huge melted lump of cheddar was just amazing as they rotated its holder and dripped it onto the sandwich :D Missus opted for a goat stew, she’s weird and likes to eat goat.

After finding a tree to sit under in Greenwich park to eat our lunch we trekked up the steep steep hill to see what all the time lark was about. They have a red ball on a stick that sits on top of the building, 5 minutes before each hour the ball rises and then on the hour the ball drops. I have no idea why they decided this is what should happen but who doesn’t love a big red ball.

Being the former ruler of the world they also decided the line where east meets west. People we queueing up to have their picture taken infront of a weird shape of metal (i did take a picture of it, just not with us in it) which was odd.

When we were heading back down the hill there was someone singing (and amped) at Queen’s House, seemingly named as a former royal residence. Turned out there was a wedding happening and some nice loud woman was on one side of the wall shouting it was someone she knows from Hong Kong’s wedding and shes amazed that she hangs around with such fancy people as she’s usually on the other side looking in.

What struck me as odd, about the wedding itself, is that Queens House is a public building and anyone can walk through the gates and mill about, as many people were. So why anyone would want to have a wedding there, and i imagine pay a substantial amount to do so, baffles me. Also possibly highlights the intelligence of the woman, who on numerous occasions has been free to walk through to the other side if she so wished (or realised).

Walking around a bit more of Greenwich we discovered a shop i think called Shake It which offered 101 flavours of milkshake. These were basically every chocolate bar, biscuit or fruit that existed and were made by blending said “flavour” with some ice cream. The end result is made of win. I had a Bourbon Biscuit flavour, which much like the Biscuits was amazingly delicious and Girl Sam had a Lion Bar shake.

Went back to the boat and headed to tower pier which i imagine is named for being by the Tower of London. There was little else there and that seemed needlessly expensive so we went to wetherspoons for cheap beer and free wifi :) which helped me upload some more snaps before annoyingly hitting the free Flickr limit (since removed as i paid for it, so i’ll have to start taking photos i guess, yay an almost excuse to buy an SLR).

In spoons a random old man came up to me and asked if id take a picture of him and his friends. He handed me his camera and then did nothing,for quite some time. I asked him if he wanted to be in the picture at which point he realised he should probably go and sit with his friends. I took the picture, he was far too happy, offered to by me a drink. That was nice, opted to be charitable though, what with it not being even remotely worth a drink.

Don’t think anything else happened that day, at all. Headed back to the hotel and did a big read of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Toodles.

London: Day 3

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 05:53:39 -0400

Falling a bit behind with this since its now day 5 but doing my best.

Day 3 was quite relaxing compared to the non-stop of the previous 2 days. Lazy start and a stack breakfast at Ed’s before shlepping to the London eye to be a proper tourist. Queue was pretty decent Nd only took about 10-15 minutes to get on.

Lots of repetitive photos from the eye and then went to the London Eye 4D experience as it was included. Just as well because if they’d have tricked me into paying for an advert I’d have been displeased.

We had already learnt the day before that misconceptions of the 4th dimension being time or anything like that were completely wrong. The 4th dimension, to any not in the know, is water.

Went and had a big mooch down the river, watching all the buskers doing magic or juggling or for the majority just wearing a costume and hoping that was enough.

Went and got some coffee and cake and sat in a park by embankment. Then went back to hotel stopping into Ed’s for a peanut butter malt and some fries with various tummy dips, including “wet” as we’d enquired about it. Wet means gravy (day 3 was all about the education).

We got ready for an evening at a comedy club in Chiswick. MC was Martin Davis, then there was Simon Evans, Dave Johns (who I’ve seen a few times) and “very special guest). Every poster or web site said he could not be named but on the website selling the tickets they had no issue telling us it was Andy Parsons off of Mock the Week.

There were signalling issues on the line we needed to use which meant after much rushing om arrival we got there at 8.10pm, thankfully I’d wrongly convinced myself of an 8pm start when it was really 9pm so bonus. Relaxed in a proper pub drinking actual pints that didn’t cost more than at home. Win.

Comedy was funny, true to its name. With some very quirky audience members making the MCs job maybe too easy. A young woman from Arizona was over here studying torture for a PHD.

After the comedy to top off yet another great day the MC got on our carriage AND sat opposite us and then proceeded to entertain us for the 20 minutes or so back to our stop. Awesome!

London: Day 2

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 05:36:55 -0400

Day 2 was the other half’s birthday. We started with tasty American Breakfast in Ed’s diner before heading to Madam Tussauds. Lots of pictures of that on Flickr.

While there we also got our hands frozen and scalded as is the process to make wax moulds of our hands. Sam chose the vulcan salute which almost came out whereas I opted for a hitchhikers thumb, sadly somewhere along the line this became a fist, stupid flaccid thumb.

After meeting celebrity waxy alter egos we had a nice lunch and coffee at BBC media village, although my lunch appeared to be wasp porn which put a slight downer on it as I was harassed by a horny wasp that didn’t understand no.

Then it was time for our tour of British television centre. First we went to the news area and saw a random news reader whose name means little to me, then off to studio 1 where they’d started to put together thy set for strictly. Then we saw studio 4 which was ready and waiting for the Michael Ball show, which explained the enormous congregation of old people outside. Apparently TOTP was a studio 4 production.

They showed us some random blue/green screen effects to explain the weather and then off to a “superstar” dressing room. Was alright, not amazing. Apparently one time when Prince was there everyone had to talk go his girlfriend and he’d decided he wasn’t going to use lifts or stairs so his bodyguard carried him up and down.

Then we got an interactive bit. A couple volunteered their kids to read the news and they wanted 3 people for a game show. They saw me and Sam avoiding eye contact and trying to talk the other into doing it. He picked me to do it so I played the ace up my sleeve “its her birthday!” Which thankfully I’d added to a comments box when signing up for the tour so he accepted and dragged her up. She nailed the quiz and won a BBC mug. Video to YouTube wheb I get home, its over 200mb.

While walking the corridors there was a picture of Peggy and myself and a random woman almost simultaneously said “get arta my pub”

Then as luck would have it wossy tweeted on day 1 that he and Mark Millar would be in WH Smith signing a new magazine. Woop. Sam’s birthday gets more win.

Ice bar for cocktails started off the evening. This is hidden. Away down a backstreet full of nice pubs, walls, floor, bar, seats, tables and glasses all made of ice. They give you a poncho with gloves attached on string like a child. Was pretty nice/different. Then down to its restaurant for some fancy foods. Reindeer sausage and quail amongst the tapas on offer. Was om nom nom.

That took ages so day 3 will have to wait.

Just click the image to be taken to more equally touristy snaps.

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 05:08:07 -0400

Just click the image to be taken to more equally touristy snaps.

London: Day One

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 03:22:08 -0400

Posting from my phone using an app and typing on a touchscreen so expect short posts full of typos and randomly replaced words (such as mustards and cynthias).

Yesterday was the first of a 5 day visit to London in aid of the other half’s birthday. We left the unusual Manchester sun in a rush which wasn’t the most comfortable. Arriving in London to discover it less hot, but more nice sun compared to Manchester mugginess.

After a brief back and forth trying to find our hotel we headed out to Leicester Square and snagged some decent seats for Avenue Q, before getting some much needed pizza hut for some relatively cheap food and drink.

Avenue Q made me do a LoL multiple times. Everyone loves puppets that swear and chat about real world things such as porn and being racist. I think I need me at least one bad idea bear of my own. They seem fun.

After the show we went back to the hotel to get a head start on sleep for long day today. Watched some random hotel tv which includes a German channel that was showing “Ladyrochers” a comedy sketch show. I understood random bits which made me smile, not enough to laugh at jokes but how likely is it that Germans have a sense of humour.

Can’t be arsed writing anymore. Little else happened and the internet doesn’t care.