Royal London: Lonely Planet video

Recently I had the chance to search out royal sites around London with Tom Hall, Lonely Planet's UK Travel Editor. The video takes in Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace, of course, but also drops by Scott the Horse and the best, and most historically accurate, way of reaching the Tower of London. There's more tips on seeing the sites in this piece I did for Lonely Planet.

Spring Travel & Blueberry Tips for ABC

I talked five ways to relax this spring for ABC News Now. Yes, that's the Kentucky Derby rounding out the list.

Favorite Sign (in the World)

Sunday afternoon in Muswell Hill in North London. I went to a wine shop to get a gift bottle for the next day -- never did find one -- and found this sign outside an unexpectedly closed wine shop. It is the best sign of all time. Or should I say, 'the best sign of aPP time'?

Ah, English summer

After a fairly protracted trip from Germany to England, involving a tram, four trains, a tube and a Toyota Prius (the last five miles of the trip were therefore fairly environmentally friendly), we have now arrived into a glorious English summer, where I am delighted to report a steady and persistent drizzle is upon us.

The transport for most of the way was fairly smooth. The German side of the equation was, as one would expect, efficient and on time. Travelling from the village of Walberberg to the airport of Cologne/Bonn was a relaxed and easy affair. Of course, as soon as we entered the side of the transport system which involved English transportation mechanics, it went a tiny bit off the rails. The flight was delayed slightly, but not too much. The train that then whisked us into central London was, at least, rather timely. And then I decided that a patented guided walk along the Thames from our arrival point at London Bridge, to our meeting point for lunch with some friends just near Westminster, was in order.

If you don’t have much time in London, and are just passing through, a walk from London Bridge to the Houses of Parliament is one of the easiest ways to get as many sights in as possible. Just take the Thames Path along the south side of the river and you will see a whole manner of sights, starting with Tower Bridge, passing the beautifully recognisable St. Paul’s Cathedral, past the replica of the Golden Hinde, along the front of the rather imposing former power station that is the Tate Modern (and accompanying odd looking Millenium Bridge over the river), past the quaint Gabriel’s Wharf and then onto the South Bank arts area proper, where you can take in the hilariously angular South bank arts centre area, including the Royal Festival Hall and the Hayward Gallery. If you happen to be in slightly less of an Easyjet inspired rush, you could even stop at some of these destinations for a peruse. In our case, however, we rushed on, past the skating park under the South Bank and to the Jubilee Bridge, from where you can see the massive ferris wheel that is the London Eye, and right down the sweep of the Thames to the Houses of Parliament and the Ministry of Defence buildings. If I had had even the tiniest amount of time to spare, a visit to Gordons wine bar, just next to Charing Cross and set in an underground cave, would have been entirely in order. Sadly this was not to be.

Obviously, when doing a rapid fire walking tour, it is important to know your audience. Rambling on at length about the brilliance of Sir Wren’s architectural triumphs is likely to fall on deaf ears if your charge happens to be more interested in which parts of the Thames featured in the most recent Harry Potter movie. I predict I will be strung up when my other half reads this.

Finally, after swinging through Trafalgar Square, and peering down the length of the Mall to the dot that was Buckingham Palace, we arrived at our lunchtime destination, a friendly pub on Whitehall, just across the road from the Horseguards and number ten downing street, possibly setting a world record for number of sights seen in a forty minute walking tour.

Lunch was a passable affair, despite the efforts of the barstaff to keep us sat at our table, and not destroying the system by ordering actual drinks from the actual bar. They exacted their revenge upon us by delivering Vera’s salmon well after the rest of us had finished. The food was excellent nevertheless, one of the finest pub burgers I have had in a long time. Some people measure restaurants by their eggs, personally I prefer a less complex and more meat filled burger ranking system. This one did well.

After lunch it was another quick dash across London, this time by tube (although if we hadn’t been lugging heavy backpacks, the new cycle hire scheme would have been put to good use, there are stands literally everywhere) to Paddington, where our train to Oxford had happily been cancelled. It’s always a pleasure to introduce someone new to the vagaries of the English transportation system, and the railways in particular. Still, with some helpful advice from a nearby staff member, we navigated our way to Oxford via an alternative route, and managed to arrive only two minutes later than we had planned. Where our lift was awaiting, to carry us in fine style to our lodgings for the next few days. More on these to follow in another post.

Farewell Angleterre

I have now wrapped up my six day trip to the UK’s capital, during which time I met up with a lot of people, ate a lot of fine food, wandered around in the sunshine and, I admit, went through a veritable swathe of beverages.

On my last full day in the UK my brother and I felt it would be inopportune of us to miss out on spending at least a short amount of time in the pub. We popped out to one of his many locals in the afternoon, where I tried some of the further ale options, which Phil peered at suspiciously before continuing on with an expensive sounding premium continental lager.

Shortly before arriving at the pub, we stumbled across one of the new bicycle hire racks which are being installed all across central London, allowing people to pick up a bicycle, and for a very nominal fee, transport themselves to another bicycle stand somewhere else in the city. There are, I am led to believe, thousands of bicycles about to appear at these stands all over the city. Always nice to see more options for commuting or just cheap transport being opened up, although I have often suspected people willing to cycle on the roads of London to be a teeny bit mad. What with the buses and taxis and cars and, well, all manner of metallic objects that would usually beat a bicycle at a game of chicken. We debated the pros and cons of the bicycle hire scheme with a chap who was also inspecting the new system, before meandering our way to the actual pub.

Not a lot else seems to have changed in London since I was away. A giant new skyscraper is being erected over London Bridge, which looks like it will be suitably futuristic. One of the artistic impressions renders an almost Blade Runner-esque view of the London skyline once this spire, shaped like a  shard of glass, is completed. I expect that to be pretty impressive when finally done. Otherwise, people have moved houses, or jobs, or had kids, or got engaged. Life is, therefore, going onwards as it is wont to do. The city, and indeed the nation, had not entirely ground to a halt in my absence, which was nice.

My final few waking hours on my last day were naturally spent in another pub, meeting up with a friend to say farewell. As we were leaving this venue, we re-encountered our friend from the bicycle rack, who, to put it mildly, had clearly already partaken of more than the odd glass of something. Swaying gently, he exclaimed how delighted he was to meet us again, and regaled us with stories of his saxophone playing life. His name, interestingly, was Charlie,  the same name as the Czech chef from the now infamous buffet incident. So the visit was rounded off nicely, finishing in much the way it had started, in a pub, talking to a stranger called Charlie.

I am now back in Germany after a lovely flight with Easyjet (I can confirm that it is possible to go from bed to in-flight within two hours from central London, but I would not recommend this as a course of action if you want a stress free travelling experience), and I have to say, it is nice to be back. Absence does, it seem, make the heart grow fonder. The weather is glorious, I have a wedding to go to (suit provided courtesy of my dear brother, I promise to look after it carefully), and everything continues to look, well, joyful. To everyone I saw this week, thanks for coming along folks!

What drinking culture…

You know that relative or friend of the family that your parents don’t really talk about, who turned up every now and again out of the blue when you were a kid and you weren’t really allowed to go near? Possibly he looked fairly straggly and smelt a little, well, musty? He would usually sleep on the sofa and be regarded, overall, as a bad influence. Well folks, I’m proud to report that my first foray into being that slightly crazed friend of the family has now started, after I visited some friends of mine down in Sevenoaks who have a young son.

I will, however, start the tale a little bit earlier, as I went out to lunch with another friend who works on Whitehall, that bit of London between Trafalgar Square and the Houses of Parliament, where our new Prime Ministers live. My other friend Craig, it turned out, despite living in London for countless years, had never seen Downing Street, where said leaders live, so it was a good opportunity for him to get a bit of the touristy thing done. Plus we were able to sit in the hour of sunshine that the weather gods deemed the day was going to have, quaffing a couple of fine ales in the process. Conveniently Kat’s lunch came with a free glass of wine, so we were all able to get started with the drinking just after midday.

Which brings me, conveniently to the title of my blog post. I had forgotten quite how ingrained the drinking is to the entertainment over here. Meet up with friends, naturally, the venue will be the pub. Want to sit in the park for the afternoon? No problemo, grab a few bottles of Pimms and pootle over. BBQ in the sun, you’ll find crates of Budweiser on hand. It’s certainly not a problem (well, quite the opposite, I have waxed lyrical about my love of English pubbery before), but I do suspect that when I head back to Germany I’ll be lying in a darkened room feeding my liver with herbal teas and the like to get over the week of excess.

Drinking aside, (temporarily, I assure you) I then popped out to Sevenoaks to meet up with some friends with the aforementioned small child. I am not, by any means, a child person. We usually circle each other warily before realising neither of us has anything to offer the other one, and then quietly leave each other alone. Said child pretty much ran screaming from the room when I appeared. A tremendous start to the relationship, you will no doubt agree. Having concluded that I was not da-da, and some time of suspicious peering at my dreadlocks later, I was presented with a Postman Pat puzzle to complete. I rather foolishly picked the twenty four piece option, and then spent quite some time flummoxed by it’s complexity while Jesse looked on, rather pityingly I suspect. A look of pity from someone under two years old for a puzzle of ages four and up is not something you really want in your life.

Still, the afternoon was mostly sunny, so naturally we headed out to a beer garden to sample some of the local Kentish ales, before returning back to the house for a delightful steak and roast potato dinner. I stayed over, which was even better, as I was then presented with a full on English fry up. Jesse had a whale of a time with the fry up, particularly with the ketchup. i am starting to think that there are advantages to being small and innocent looking when it comes to painting the carpet with tomato sauce. I just can’t get away with it like I used to.

Then I left Sevenoaks and returned to London. Sevenoaks, incidentally, is the home of BP’s beleaguered CEO, who has recently been reported in the press as having installed some solar panels in his property. I’m not sure how many solar panels you need to install to offset the carbon footprint of 50,000 barrels of oil a day pouring into the sea, but i’m not sure a back garden in Sevenoaks is really going to cover it.

Today, my brother, who has spent the last five years of his life chained to his Blackberry, is adjusting to his first week day of unemployment. He has bought himself a copy of the aforementioned Split/Second racing game, and is relaxing on the sofa in front of the 43inch TV, wondering I imagine, why he didn’t get round to retiring sooner. My dear old mum has worked out that she can buy things from Amazon via my site and earn me about 20p a go, much easier than actually sending me money. At this rate I may even be able to afford to keep travelling. I’ll drink a glass of water to that! Enjoy your day folks.

Fine afternoons and discoveries

There is perhaps a view, if you have read the last couple of entries of my blog, that I have largely spent my time on my trip to the UK imbibing alcohol and propping up bars. I can report that this is not entirely the case. My brother, for example, has learnt two new things about the flat he has lived in for over two years. Firstly, that it has a roof terrace, and secondly, there is a garden outside that you can sit in. So, some knowledge has been gained at the expense of my liver. Sadly he is only in the flat for another month.

The knowledge involving the garden area was taken advantage of to fine effect yesterday, as the sun continued it’s blistering attack on London. A good friend of mine popped around to visit and ever so kindly brought with him a couple of rather fine bottles of wine. Well, the Rioja ‘99 was certainly delightful. We will perhaps extend the benefit of the doubt to the slightly sparkling rose. So we spent the afternoon, yes, drinking in the sun. But it was a high quality of wine, sitting under the former Hartley's jam factory chimney, so the experience was a little different at least.

Following the wine we moved upstairs and watched a game of football, largely from my point of view because I wanted to ensure Paul’s winning streak continued. He had predicted a Spanish win, which was delivered in extra time, following a decidedly less interesting game than the third place play off, the outcome of which Paul had also correctly predicted. For those of you interested in the odds, the odds of Paul being correct this many times in a row were 128-1, with a couple of assumptions. Not bad going for an eight legged tank dweller. I am still intrigued as to what he is going to be up to following the world cup, and if a betting investment strategy is something to consider pursuing.

Finally Phil cooked us all a tasty dinner, green curry with prawns, and then we went and wilted quietly in the ongoing oppressive heat, which, I am told, is going to go away shortly, so we can all get back to complaining about where summer is and how you just don’t get the heat you used to. I’ll drink to that.

Technology – brilliant stuff

I am not a technology luddite by any means, in fact, I would say quite the opposite, but for various reasons, mostly involving living in a tent for a year like some sort of hermit, I have been away from changes, and in particular the rapid pace of Smartphone evolution.

I was, of course, aware of the iPhone - the book of Jobs is hard to ignore wherever you are - and certainly the technology has been available for longer than a year and a half. But quite how ubiquitous this device has become only became apparent when I got to London and met up with all my friends, where it turned out that everyone I know now seems to have one. And it was quite amazing really, a large group of people converging in London, and all it took for us to find each other was the Google maps location feature pinged between each other, and folks who weren’t so familiar with the intricacies of London parks were still able to locate us. No doubt the Google equivalent phone OS, Android, would have been just as good at this. Still, it was quite handy, and good to see that technology is moving beyond the gimmicky to the genuinely useful. The rest of the day, technology aside, progressed nicely, moving from park to bar, we even managed to take in a cocktail in one of my favourite London cocktail bars, the underground, and excessively warm Frevds. Worth checking out if you are ever in the area for the cheapest and deadliest Long Island Iced Teas known to man.

Whilst speaking of technology incidentally, I had some other encounters with its darker side. My brothers car, for example, vexed no doubt that he had left me in it whilst he went off on his final office based errand, severing his five year blackberry noose, decided to lock me inside and set the alarm off, convinced I must be up to no good. Phil returned and turned it off, naturally some time after some people had wandered past and given me odd looks. I was also nearly thrown out of Tesco's for using my camera, apparently capturing images in store is against store policy. Rock and roll folks.

The final piece of the technology update was a rapid fire walkthrough of some of the key Playstation 3 games that my friend Craig had acquired over the last year or so. I used to be an avid gamer, so it was nice to get a quick overview of what had come out. A quick blast through Heavy Rain, a game which is essentially an interactive film (and therefore hard to blast through, but we touched on some of the more interesting parts, such as where I had to hack my characters own finger off), some platforming fun with Nathan Drake in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and then a bit of a beat-em up in the massively huge scale God of War 3 (the scale really is quite dizzy in the game, as you battle the gods themselves. Also fairly violent it must be said, as I pounded Poseidon's Head into a bloody pulp.)

Finally we all settled down to some racing in the frenetically paced Split/Second, which seemed to involve less actual racing, and more blowing everything up around us. Tremendous fun.

This was all set to the backdrop of the hottest day of the year and the smells of gently barbequing meat, which we enjoyed at Craig’s new house, which was lovely. We sat outside for the rest of the day, and partook of some American beer to keep ourselves cool, before settling in for the evening to watch Germany defeat Uruguay in one of the better games of the tournament, keeping Paul safe in his tank to face another prediction day. He has tipped Spain to win tonight as I understand it, in a dramatic break from his usual role of only predicting Germany games. I expect a lottery prediction helpline to be set up shortly.

After this we had fun watching Zombieland, an enjoyable road trip movie with Woody Harrelson (and a brief cameo with Bill Murray which really made the film) and distressingly dark humour, before I hopped on the night bus back to my brothers house, and enjoyed listening to the leather capped Special Brew clutching passenger wax lyrical on a number of topics close to his heart. Night buses clearly have not evolved since I left.

Today will be a relaxing Sunday, watching the British Grand Prix, perhaps some scrambled eggs and then Phil plans to whip something up for dinner tonight. Should be good. Enjoy yours, whatever you are up to.

Who is Mr. Satoshi?

Yesterday was my first day back in London for over a year, and I think it is fair to say that the return was celebrated in style. The details are a little murky, we started off around lunchtime with a quick refreshing ale in the previously referred to Woolpack, with a vague idea of taking a wander around London and re-visiting old haunts - by the evening we had acquired a Czech chef on his fourth day in London who tagged along with us to a book launch in Angel, where I then had to extricate my dear brother from a buffet that he unfortunately fell into. Rock and perhaps indeed, roll. Or rolls. More food themed jokes to follow.

I’ve never been to a book launch before, and I suspect that seeing one through a slightly befuddled haze does not perhaps add to the whole thing (or maybe it does? who knows), but it did remind me a little bit of a wedding. There were speeches, everyone was being congratulatory to the author, beverages were being consumed and a fine buffet was laid on. Until it was laid on. (I’ll stop now.) After the buffet experience we made a fairly hasty exit back into London, where we said fond farewells to our new culinary friend, whose fourth day in London had presumably met all of his expectations for entertainment, and retreated to the safety of a local pub.

I have not as yet read the book who’s launch we attended, but the jacket did make it sound interesting, themes of self discovery and intrigue against  the backdrop of Tokyo. I think we may have received some signed copies, so I probably will read it, but I can’t give you my opinion of the actual content. Based solely on the party and speeches (this is a pioneering new technique for book review I am developing, work with me) I have every hope that it will be a winner. It is available on Amazon, and no doubt, at all reputable book stores. It’s the first novel by a chap called Jonathan Lee, and I hope it does well, because I can only imagine the effort required to actually turn an idea into a book, and then get said novel into actual print and onto shelves. If you want to check it out for yourselves, here is the Amazon link to the novel, which is titled: Who is Mr Satoshi?.

As for me, today will largely follow the same overall themes as yesterday I suspect, meeting people and catching up, perhaps over drinks. My brothers girlfriend is a saint of a person, having plied me with a variety of restorative cups of tea and delightful slices of toast to get me fighting fit again, despite the fact I wandered around the flat in the middle of the night making a lot of noise in an attempt to create toast. An interesting drinking fact for you, two slices of toast in the middle of the night do not ward off a hangover. I will leave you with that thought for now, as I go to enjoy Englands hottest day of the year to date, with a heat wave warning issued, and temperatures set to hit thirty one degrees. Toasty. Enjoy.

To Londinium

I sadly don’t have a time machine, so can’t visit London as the Romans built it 2000 years ago, but I am popping over to London tomorrow for a few days to catch up with a whole variety of people. The wonders of cheap flights mean that somehow I can get from the nearest airport to us, about 15km away, to London Gatwick, and back again, for about thirty British pounds.

It will probably cost me more to get the train into London than the flight from Germany.

Admittedly, for this price I am not allowed any actual luggage, the luxury of a pre-booked seat and well, I'm probably just holding onto the wing rather than travelling inside the fuselage with everyone else, but such is life travelling economy.

I really like London, it is certainly one of my favourite cities as cities go. Two thousand years of culture and various civilisations attempting to either build it or flatten it have left their mark, and you definitely get a sense of history as you walk around it.

I lived in London for two years, and observed a change in my opinion of the place. Before I moved there, I was of the mindset of the non-Londoner, that being that it was a large, unfriendly and crowded place that you would have to be mad to live in. Plus the fact that many Londoners went on about it like it was the promised land compared to other UK cities irked somewhat.

And yes, there are certainly some flaws to a London existence. It’s not exactly cheap to live there, for starters. Rent is hilariously measured per week instead of per month as with the rest of the more financially astute country. Usually because if you actually look at the monthly cost of rent in London the figures don’t fit on the page properly.

Commuting in London is another fairly poor experience. There is, certainly, an absolutely fine transport system, and if you are travelling at any time other than rush hour, you can usually get some form of public transportation from point A to point B at any time of the day or night. Even if the night buses can be a tad scary.

But travelling at rush hour the whole thing turns into a complete nightmare, as the entire working population decide en masse to flood the system to well beyond capacity. Cattle travel better. In fact, I’m pretty sure laws exist to ensure cattle do travel better. There’s nothing quite like being pressed up against some sweaty armpits on your way to or from work to really make you question the whole purpose of life.

So, those are two fairly significant flaws with the place. But if you happen to have sufficient cash that the rent problem is not an issue, and you can somehow wangle a career or living location that allows you to largely circumscribe the rush hour commuting issues, then it turns out it’s a rather jolly place.

For starters, whilst it is a big place, a number of factors conspire to make this less of a challenge.

Firstly, an amazing and fairly cheap transport system exists to whisk you from point to point. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, London is less like a city, and more like a series of interconnected villages, each with their own character and reason for visiting. (Well ok, some of them may not be entirely worth visiting, but the thought is there.)

If you want culture and history, you can walk around the South Bank taking in all the theatres and arty venues, from the Tate Modern to Shakespeare’s Globe, then pootle down to the Houses of Parliament and through Westminster, down the corridors of political power and round to Trafalgar Square to peer at the lions and be saddened that the pigeons are no longer fed by tourists keen to get covered in bird shit.

If it’s the alternative scene you’re after, a quick tootle on the Northern line later and you’re in the heart of Camden, picking up weird stuff at the markets, feasting on goat curry and taking in the up and coming music scene.

If you’re more in the market for talking about sailing, rugby and fashion whilst quaffing  pints of some overpriced lager, Chelsea and the Kings Road will have you covered. Actually it’s a pretty lovely area too, and not too far from the Natural History Museum, where you can lose yourself for free for a long time. And if history doesn’t float your boat, the Science Museum next door rocks.

There are oodles and oodles more parts of London that I could talk about, but generally, it has something for everyone. If you’re into live music, you could find a venue pretty much every night that is showcasing some form of talent. Theatre is well and truly covered in the West End, arguably the worlds finest theatre district.

And if the city is just too much for you, London has a lot of parks. Central London for example, has 4,900 acres of Royal Park. You could go further afield and take in the free swimming baths of Hampstead Heath, a 320 acre park to the North of the city, which on a clear day affords tremendous views across the city. And if all you want to do is drink and eat, well, it’s safe to say you are covered. Stand in SoHo, for example, and there are 167 pubs within a kilometre. That would be an exciting pub crawl.

My favourite activity in London, other than finding a lovely beer garden (the Woolpack on Bermondsey Road has a fine example), is just walking around and looking at all the buildings and people. From the London Eye, to the Royal Courts of Justice to the Houses of Parliament. Even Battersea Power Station. It’s a wonderful city and great to experience.

Ok, lyrical waxing over. I’m sure further updates will follow, and no doubt I’ll miss most of the above on this trip, filling it instead with visits to pubs and bars whilst catching up with friends. Another fine activity, I’m sure you’ll agree…