It's an Exciting World

Steph and I started this week well with going to a castle. This castle also happened to be a climbing gym, and we went with Nancy and Punit. It was an amazing place with so many bouldering walls. They had the towers as the top roping and lead climbing, and maybe if we get good enough we’ll make it to the top of one of them. It looked amazing. I stayed on the bouldering and was able to do some V2’s, which is good for as long as I’ve been away from climbing. My forearms are sore and I tore some skin off a finger, but nothing too bad. We went out with them afterwards to a restaurant called Bean, which is a chain in London.

We walked around the parks in the area, since we didn’t know when we would next be there on a nice sunny day. It was sunny but cold, as the lake was almost entirely frozen over. The park was mostly a big field, but was still nice to walk through.

Monday we went to a neon live drawing event at the Old Queen’s Head. The bar was amazing, being both incredibly intricate, fancy, and cozy. We had a drink downstairs before heading up to draw the model. They had a series of art styles they walked us through for the event, and then we had time to do freeform drawing. I had a few that turned out ok. Steph had a few that turned out great.

After the drawing event we were just in time to go to the comedy night at Camden Head. We saw eight acts, but my favorite part was the MC playing the audience. We were in the front row so she picked us out to make jokes about. She had a really hard time making jokes about me, but she was able to play Steph off some of the other audience members.

On Wednesday we went to the Canary Wharf lights installations. It was an interesting time, and we got to have some delicious ramen at Ippudo. The lights were mixed in quality and didn’t have too much of a unifying theme. I especially liked the giant globe, the hanging fiber optics, and the misty fountains with colored lights.

Thursday evening I participated in a MTG draft at work. I did pretty well, winning two of my three matches. We have been making the apartment more homey with some pictures hanging, and the kitties have been so cuddly.

Sunday we went to the British Museum for some of the rooms we hadn’t really gone through yet. We focussed on the Native American, Fertile Crescent, and Islamic sections on this trip. We wanted to go to the Assyrian Gates section, but the rooms were closed. We could still look at the large gate guards, just not the rooms behind them. We also took a peak in the library, but will have to go back to go through that room a bit more.

We then wen to a restaurant in SOHO called Brasserie Zédel. It was French art deco, and was one of those places with a seemingly secret entrance that was through a cafe, down a hall, down some stairs and through a movie theater like lobby. The windows were probably just frosted glass with lights behind them.

We relaxed at home for a bit, and tried to go to Camden Head in Angel for a comedy night, but showed up too late and they were full. We then headed to Laki Kane, a tropical themed restaurant and bar. It was amusing how they styled themselves as Thai in some places, Southeast Asian in others, and had things that were vaguely tropical all over the place no matter where from (Cuba, Hawaii, Dominican Republic, Thailand). The vibe was great, and the food was good.

I had a nice walk along the canal and made it down to two more big basins. I can’t wait to get a SUP on the canal. I also saw a few more canal side places to have dinner, but definitely not in the winter.

We cooked dinner for Nancy and Punit. The carrot ginger soup turned out amazing. We played some Drawful and had a great conversation over dinner. Nancy made a burnt cheesecake that was delicious, and Steph’s egg and tofu dish was tasty. They were so nice and will be taking care of Archer and Lana when we are in Florence.

This week started out slow with New Years. I did the audio tour of King’s Cross, which was a nice walk and good info. Steph and I relaxed for most of the rest of the day. I was sad when Michelle was the only one to call in for book club, but not too surprised. The book wasn’t the best for a discussion anyway, so I’ll let it slide instead of rescheduling. The next book, Cloud Cuckoo Land, should be a great discussion, as it has all sorts of interesting social and political commentary.

We played a game of Wingspan on BGA with Nancy and Punit. It went pretty slow as they were learning. Steph won with a set of really valuable birds. Punit had some powerful combos with the Corvids, but not the fully overpowered one as we’d turned those cards off. I had a great food combo, but couldn’t turn it into enough points without the eggs.

Steph and I went to an exhibit at the British Library the next day on Alexander the Great. I expected a few more non-book elements to it, but it is the British Library, so I suppose I was wrong to hope that. They had a nice suit of armor and a few paintings. The illuminated manuscripts were amazing. I also found it funny how so many of the texts on display tried to show Alexander as being Muslim or Christian, when neither of those religions existed at the time. The honest ones that didn’t try to claim Alexander were the Zoroastrianism texts that said how much they hated him for destroying their holy places and texts. After the exhibit we stopped by the Euston Tap, which is a unique bar in a monolithic building in front of Euston Station.

The next evening we went to a show at the Barbican, which was a live play with large puppets as an adaptation of My Neighbor Totoro. It was very well done and adorable. The first appearance of Totoro had it take up nearly the entire stage. It must have been 40 feet across and 20 ft high at the top of the belly.

The rest of the week was normal life, with lots of work and rain in the evenings keeping us in. Saturday we played some Terraforming Mars against Paul and Yutong. It was a close game, with one milestone being the difference. It was great to chat with them during the game, although it sounds like Yutong is having a hard time at work.

It was a slow week, but it good to feel like I’m getting a bit of a routine set up.

We had a lazy Christmas Sunday. We played some Ship of Fools together, and the final round of Wildermyth with Michelle and Michael. We also, of course, had calls with family. That, plus cleaning up the place took up the day. Steph got me some socks and warm leggings. I got so many kitty cuddles, with them both snuggling up to me when we were playing games. After vacuuming Lana hid and wouldn’t come back out until pretty late. I think she hears it and it reminds her of the plane. If I start in the bedrooms she goes to Steph and starts shaking.

We also started planning more of our time in London with a restaurant list/map and museum list/map

For Boxing Day we went on a bit of a walk and did a little shopping in Islington. Most things were still closed, so it was pretty empty everywhere. We walked along the canal to the tunnel under Islington, then went up into the greenway path until we hit the high street. We went to an outdoors store Steph wanted to visit and grabbed some nice socks and shoe cleaner. Our shoes had been destroyed by the snow and wet, including all the salt and grit that went with that. I took about 20 minutes to clean them up, which I’ll need to do every few weeks going forward most likely.

We played some more ship of fools, and got much further. I decided to go for a nice long walk along the canal past Camden. As I got to Camden the market there was very busy, and it took a bit to squeeze through the crowd. Just past Camden the canal walk was closed, and I hopped on the surface streets to get to Regent’s Park. I walked along just the close corner, but could see into the zoo from the path. The camels looked super fluffy and smaller than I would have expected. I took surface streets back, to make a loop of the walk instead of an out and back.

We watched some Netflix series on London and Florence to get ideas of more things to do, and got some very nice additions to our lists.

The next day was Boxing Day (Observed) for the London offices, so I took it easy while still getting work done. I just focussed on writing the year end reviews for myself and others. Steph and I also did another boxfit class at Frame, which was better than the previous ones and more intense. Afterwards we decided to drop by Nando’s, since it is a must eat place in London. The piri piri sauce was tasty, but La Vic’s orange sauce is better we think. The heat was too forward in the sauce, with the flavor taking a back seat. I stopped by the grocery stores looking for after Christmas deals and picked a few up. I got a Christmas Cake, which was surprisingly good, but very dense. I also grabbed some more plants to add to my growing collection.

The kitties have been really eating up the plants, but I don’t mind as they haven’t been puking like they would with the lemongrass. We decided the ribbon on the Christmas cake would look good on Archer, and it did. But he didn’t like wearing. He did like playing with it.

Many things seemed closed this week. I went to the office, but they weren’t serving food, and the kitchens had been cleared out. They didn’t even have coffee, with the machines turned off. I tried to go to the crypt gallery, but when I showed up 30 minutes after the listed opening time online, it was still closed. I grabbed a pasty nearby for lunch, and then headed home a little early to work from there and eat Steph’s delicious cooking.

Steph and I took a quick trip to the British Library, which is less than a ten minute walk from our place. We went through the permanent collection, which has a lot of amazing books and documents. They have a lot of old bibles, with the oldest from 350-400CE. They also had a few copies of different Magna Cartas. A number of other documents from famous authors, inventors, artists, and musicians were on display; all of which were people I just recognized on reading the name. Most documents weren’t possible to read, even if they were ostensibly in English.

We took a day to go around to some museums in Kensington: The Design Museum, Japan House, and Kensington Palace. Getting there was interesting, as you take the Circle Line to the Circle Line, since it isn’t actually a circle, but a loop with a tail.

The first stop was the Design Museum, and I got tickets to both the exhibits there. I’d also picked up the National Art Pass, which was entirely worth it. We went to the Surrealism exhibit first, and parts of it were interesting, while others we thought were just odd. I was amused by some of the language describing the process where “he let his body take over from his mind” really means “he didn’t plan anything and was probably on drugs.” The Dali art was the stand out part of the exhibit. The second exhibit was on ASMR, but was pretty completely ruined by screaming children and children running around with noise making toys. We did enjoy the small room about Bob Ross and how his Joy of Painting was unintentional ASMR with the sound of the brush and the soft spoken positive voice. They had three paintings there that corresponded to the episodes being shown, and I think they were original Bob Ross paintings from those episodes, but I had a hard time confirming that. I did get a little bit of ASMR from the studio where you can mess with the mic setup yourself. We also went upstairs to the Designer Maker User exhibit, which was interesting but had a strange layout.

We then headed to Japan House where they had an exhibit on Japanese carpentry methods. It was a great exhibit, with better design than the design museum in our opinions. They had some hands on parts and a great set of videos of woodworking that I found pretty entrancing. Steph also enjoyed all the cute and well designed things in the shop while sipping a macha latte.

We walked through Hyde park to lunch at Pizza Pilgrims, where we got the top bunk seat. The pizza was pretty good, but had a really soggy bottom crust so it had to be eaten with fork and knife.

We then stopped by Kensington Palace. They had two main exhibits, the first on the young princess Victoria, and the second on the King and Queen’s apartments. The rooms were gorgeous, and with the National Art Pass it was free to visit. If we are in Hyde Park again we could just stop in if they have space.

Before and after the Palace we stopped by the Round Pond and watched all the birds. There were an amazing number and assortment. There was a swan that always had it’s head low, a black swan, several types of geese, ducks, coots, gulls, and pigeons. At the tube station the Piccadilly line was stopped due to a signal issue, so we walked to the next station and hopped on a different line. I cooked some soup while Steph went for a massage when we got home.

For New Years Eve we decided to do an escape room in the morning with Nancy and Punit. We had a great time in the escape room and did really well. We only needed two clues and we breezed through all the puzzles. They did a really good job of this one, and it was harder, but we had a better idea of what to expect. Nancy and Punit did a great job of figuring out the puzzles they were on, and we escaped with 13:30 to spare. Afterwards we went to Dishoom, which was of course, delicious.

We had a day of some chores and planning after that until a cheers of prosecco at midnight.

We had our first rainy week, and at first the mix of rain and ice on the sidewalks made for a very slippery shopping trip on Sunday. I got soaked and it was a cold walk, despite the temperature being higher than the previous week.

That evening we decided to see Avatar 2, and it was a decent movie. The visuals were amazing, but the story was a bit convoluted and many of the decisions didn’t make all that much sense. We went to Everyman again, and it was a nice theater experience. I think I chose the right seats and we got dinner at the theater. The only thing that was a little annoying was I had a tray of glasses and plates and nowhere to put it after I was done without leaving the theater.

We were finally experience true British weather with the endless drizzles. It was grey and lightly raining for several days in a row.

Our air shipment from California arrived and we unpacked it all. It was mostly kitchen things, and all the rest of our clothes and blankets. The shipment had a strange smell to it, so we ended up washing everything. The kitties were happy to have the soft blankets. We were also happy to have our actual blankets we normally sleep with. I certainly slept better, although Steph was too warm. We will need to dial in the sleeping arrangement and temp.

We also finally got our bank account set up and I spent a while tracking down how to do direct deposits, and automatic transfers for all the utilities, rent, and getting paid.

The next morning we hopped the train for Luton, and on to Prague.

We got back from Prague and gave the kitties lots of cuddles. There was surprisingly nothing really to clean up beyond some scattered litter. The kitties were doing well and just a little hungry.

I ran a lot of errands the next day as they are serious about their holidays in the UK. Pretty much everything will be closed on Christmas and the day after, Boxing Day. We will be walking around the city a bit to see what is going on, but I expect it to be pretty quiet. The Christmas markets similarly don’t actually run on Christmas, and they were all being taken down on our way back from the airport.

Christmas Eve evening we went over to Nancy and Punit’s place, which is just on the other side of King’s Cross. We met their friends Alex and Jonathan. Nancy and Punit had made an amazing spread of food, and each other person brought a little something to start with. I really enjoyed the conversation and the people seem like they would be great to hang out with around London. They introduced us to the reduced ticket prices, and a few other local gems that we need to look up. We ended up playing Sushi Go Party, which is a version of the game we hadn’t played before. I had a great time and we look forward to seeing them again.