December 2008
24 posts
1 tag
1 tag
1 tag
Ready for home
I am ready to get out of London. Yes, I will miss the warm weather, but I miss my wife and kids so much it actually hurts. I think I need about 2 weeks of solid hugs before leaving on my next trip over here.
Tonight Mike Walker (American coworker) and I went out. Mike is Mormon, I am not. Mike is not terribly adventurous in his eating, I am. But Mike is a great guy - and resourceful - and he...
1 tag
1 tag
1 tag
London PB&J
Ask many Europeans if they like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and you’ll usually get a turned up nose. “Yuck,” you invariably hear, “that mixture of sweet and salty makes me sick just thinking about it.”
Well, here is my version of London PB&J. It’s called Arrosto, the ‘Carvery and Coffee House’, specializing in of all things, coffee...
1 tag
The Monument
The London Underground Monument Station is great for walking to work. It tunnels under one of the more complicated and hairy intersections and comes out the side of a building that is conveniently on my path.
It took me a week to see it, the alley where I exit is just up the street - a quarter of a block, really - from the Monument to the Great Fire of London.
The monument is pretty tall...
1 tag
“Aaaargh! Wanker!”
– Motorcyclist legitimately yelling at me after I stepped out into traffic without seeing him.
1 tag
The weekend continues
I went to see my friend Doug again today. Besides being a great friend, he is the best guide to London that I know. I had two goals this weekend - make it to Borough Market and Spitalfields Market. When we got together, the first thing he said was, “I want to take you to a really cool place - Brick Lane which is really close to Spitalfields Market.’ How great is that?
Doug never...
1 tag
“I went to see Major General Harrison hung drawn and quartered. He was looking as...”
– From a plaque on the side of a London Pub called Hung Drawn and Quartered. Attributed to Samuel Pepys, 13th October 1660.
1 tag
Tourist day
Today I finally got a chance to put on my tourist hat and make a go of London. I asked some of the people sitting around my desk where I should go and the consensus was walking along the south edge of the Thames river. So I planned a day out with Mike Walker (fellow American, long-time co-worker, super parent and all around good guy) and we set out. The plan was to visit the London Eye and then...
1 tag
My own birthday party
I wanted an ‘authentic’ English pub experience for my birthday, so I asked one of my co-workers to show me London.
The Walrus and the Carpenter is a pub just steps away from the front door of work and seemed a logical place to start. The bar is named for a poem in Lewis Carroll’s ‘Through the Looking Glass’. The poem is the inspiration for the Beatles song...
1 tag
1 tag
1 tag
All Hallows by the Tower
All Hallows by the Tower is London’s oldest church, with a congregation that dates back to 675 AD. It’s storied past includes being damaged by bombs in World War II, the marriage of John Quincy Adams (1797), and the baptism of William Penn (of 1644).
The church is surrounded by new buildings and the property line is just 20 feet from the building where I am working. I just thought...
1 tag
It has almost been a year since the Rickman...
1 tag
Monthly tasks
I have some household tasks that I do every first weekend of the month. Every time I do them, it seems like the month flew by and almost nothing happened since last month. But that isn’t exactly true for November. I came and went to London (twice). December to January promises to beeven better. I will go back to London, return to celebrate Christmas with my parents in Wisconsin, then host my...
1 tag
4 tags
Overheard after Brita arrived back from...
Brita: I am going to play by myself!
Leif: Can I play with you?
Brita: Sure!
3 tags
