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Published: April 26th 2006
John Snow
The water pump that fed Piccadilly cholera.So I just got back from 6 days and 5 nights in London. It's kinda weird, but I seem to have more friends there than here. The city is twice as expensive as Berlin, at least, but also probably twice as interesting. I did quite a lot, with my 7-day transit "Oyster" pass (L22.50), so I'll only mention the people and the new places.
Peeps: Cherokee Investment Partners, Jeff Pietras, Bill Christianson, Cynthia Cook, Sian Jones, John Warden, and many of Jeff's friends.
Cherokee is a NC-based firm that redevelops brownfields into attractive real estate. It was good to talk shop. Maybe they're hiring?
Jeff is a fraternity brother in business school, which was about to start its spring term. He lives two blocks from my hostel, in Bayswater...the hotel district if there is one.
Bill is the reverend at St. Michael's Paternoster Royal and runs the Mission to Seafarers. He just got admitted to the Company of London, which makes him eligible to be Lord Mayor in, say, two hundred years. His church is in the City. We had lunch on the Queen's birthday.
Cynthia is a ex-girlfriend of mine, who is now married, and
GW
Nice to see the colonies represented on Trafalgar Square we ran into each other in the Houses of Parliament. She was pretty much shocked to see me, perhaps since she pretends I'm dead, I don't know. She's finishing up her master's at LSE and will summer in Egypt in an attempt to learn Arabic.
Sian is a friend from a cruise many moons ago, and her family lives in Bedfordshire. Her boyfriend is stationed in southern Afghanistan (yikes) and he called her cell while we were having a juice. She clerks for a couple of committees in the House of Commons, and gave me a personal tour!
John is the father of two of my old students at Uppingham. We went to an Arsenal match together years ago, even though he supports Chelsea. He works for a publisher and is trying to move money from magazines to corporate real estate. Good bloke.
Jeff's friends are pretty fun...we went out in Notting Hill a couple of evenings, and played "Dartmouth rules" beer pong.
Okay, what's on in London? I went to Highbury to witness the final north London derby (arsenal-v-tottenham) played at the old ground. True to form, Spurs cheated, but the Gunners equalized late. I
Queenie
Isn't it Stalin's b-day, too? wasn't about to shell out the dough for a ticket, but being there was the next best thing.
I went to the National Portrait Gallery for (I think) the first time, and it was quite the revelation. Anything from Henry IV to David Beckham.
At the National Gallery there was a special exhib on "Americans in Paris" in the late 19th C. The big guns were there...Sargent, Whistler, Cassatt...but the selections from lesser-known artists were also quite solid. Plus, I like coherent exhibits. Sargent is always amazing.
Spurred on by some "Da Vinci Code" article in a magazine, I found the Temple, which is where the judges' fraternity is. The church there is Knights Templar and all that, and has the grave of William Marshal, knight extraordinaire.
Nearby is another old church that is the makeshift Romanian Ortho joint. Walked in on some chanting.
On Lincoln Fields is a medical school, whose Hunterian Museum was both free and interesting. John Hunter was among the first to make surgery a science, instead of a way for a barber to make an extra schilling. Kangaroo fetuses in formaldehyde, et al.
I went to Canary Wharf, the
Tower
Long queues, so I just circumambulated. new financial center built in the Docklands. It needs more people living there, but it's quite impressive, if a bit antiseptic. Eastenders will really feel the squeeze when the 2012 Olympic village is built.
Okay, that's enough of that. More on Germany later.
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Trucano
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Palo Alto
Thanks for the reference to my favourite Radiohead song of all time.