Dates: December 24, 2018 to December 31, 2018
I feel very lucky that we got to spend a great deal of time in London. We put £50 on our transit cards and used all of it over the course of the week. We walked a ton, we saw a ton. London is very much a different place than any other European City I’d been to as it is filled with so much activity and life. R had been there before but this was my first time.
It’s hard to summarize everything we did there. A lot of museums, a lot of shopping, some nice bars, some middling coffee (sorry England, lock it down), some Indian food. In summary:
Museums:
Tate Museum—free and wonderful. Clear efforts to represent diverse artists. The building is also great with some quality gift shops.
The British Museum—also free and the one that’s famous for having all the stuff the British stole from around the world. The Rosetta Stone is there, which is amazing (the best take I heard about the Rosetta Stone: it aided the translation of Egyptian hieroglyphs because there is the same message written in three languages, one of which was Ancient Greek and still understood at the time of its discovery. But the takeaway is that multicultural and multilingual societies have existed for thousands of years). I definitely was looking for more vibranium, but I guess Killmonger got it all.
The Victoria & Albert Museum—also free! Good for you Britain for making things so easy to see. Their highlight was a casts exhibit—meaning a display of replicas of famous sculptures. It was strange.
The Tower of London—decidedly not free. We bought tickets ahead of time, but we got there two hours before closing and we were told that the queue for the crown jewels was too long. We reset our tickets for the next day… and the queue was still insane. In the end we didn’t see the jewels. But we did see a very terrifying animation about how Richard III maybe killed two children.
Westminster Abbey—also not free, also booked ahead of time. Doing this meant not waiting which was great. The church is beautiful. It has a crazy amount of memorials. Like a crazy amount. You’d be walking next the grave of Queen Anne and then there would be a plaque for Cecil Rhodes. It was great to see my old friend and personal role model Henry V.
Indian Restaurants
Little India—we landed on Christmas Eve and these guys were open for dinner and lunch the next day so we ate there twice. Delicious.
Dishoom—very hip space reminiscent of Beatnik, but the food was less vegetarian and GF friendly (which is a bummer for Indian food).
Bars
The Library Bar—this might have been waaaay too nice. Like much of London, this was pretty pricey and needed reservations to get further than the outside room. The drinks were good and R got an elaborate, built-it-yourself gin fizz that came in three separate glasses and included potato chips garnish. Also a hotel bar, so pretty great.
Hide Bar—attempted to find a coffee house, but ran into lots of places closed for the holidays. Needless to say, we had a great noon drink. Londoners love gin.
Happiness Forgets—a nice underground bar underground in Shoreditch.
Cafe Pacifico—a Mexican restaurant with a good bar menu. They also had tacos, but honestly weren’t terribly good.
Shopping
Too much to list here. Harrods is the craziest place I’ve ever seen. They sell cars? Also, in general, it was a bummer to see how expensive London is.
Miscellaneous
The only notable coffee in London was probably Monmouth Coffee Company. A few places we heard about were closed for the holidays, so maybe there’s more.
Have you had beiju? It’s cassava flatbread from Brazil and we got it from a food truck. It was literally the greatest thing that has happened ever.