London: Aug 31: Notting Hill Carnival (again) and more

I had Monday off because it was what the Brits call a bank holiday.

First, I took the opportunity to re-visit the Notting Hill Carnival for lunch. It was more packed than yesterday, and there were more parties on the street, sometimes with real musicians (drummers). I also saw more policemen than the previous day. Walking became a crawl once or twice. The police definitely managed the flow of people; for instance, I tried to leave the district on the same street I entered, but I couldn't -- police had made it a one-way pedestrian street. I had to detour a few blocks to find the proper way out. Furthermore, there were crazy lines not just for food but to enter the nearby tube stations. (They closed the main/closest tube station due to crowds, but nevertheless the other tube stations nearby were so crowded that we had to queue to enter the station.)

After my festival re-visit, I met up with Di Yin and two other people to hang out for the afternoon. We met at Harrods, one of the Britain's famous department stores. Naturally, having met there, the first thing we did together was to wander through it. It's a big store; it appears to have everything.

We spent the middle part of the afternoon wandering through the very English Regent's Park. It's pretty. It was a warm, sunny day, a perfect day for a stroll in a park. We only walked through part of the park.

In late afternoon, I brought them to tour my company's offices. They were impressed with our micro-kitchens and canvas beach chairs, among other things. We relaxed for a spell, then called it a day and went our separate ways.

I snapped these pictures during the day's outing. Di Yin also took some. That link goes the first picture she took this day. The rest of her pictures are relevant. If you're in slideshow mode and begin seeing pictures of our local neighborhood, Southfields, you've finished the set and have cycled back to the beginning of her album, which are pictures I already linked to.

London: Aug 30: Notting Hill Carnival

On Sunday, we attended the Notting Hill Carnival, a Jamaican-themed event and one of the world's largest street festivals/parties. The entire district was closed to cars! We wandered through the district and found the festival just goes on and on. Given the crowds, the visible police presence wasn't a surprise. It boggles the mind that there were so many people everyplace we visited, yet the festival was spread over the whole district. And it was loud: there was music all over the place, all played through speakers, usually mounted on trucks, plus many people with whistles (the purpose of which, other than adding more noise, I know not). Also, I was happy to notice that practically every vendor sold food. :) (This was perhaps a good thing, as that meant there were enough vendors to service the crowds.) The food choices mainly consisted of grilled jerk chicken, curried goat, rice & peas, and Asian food (satays, fried noodles, and egg rolls). (Obviously, only those first three are Jamaican.) Finally, I'll note the Carnival has a parade but, unlike the SF parade, the route wasn't fenced, making it easy to cross.

I took a good number of pictures at the festival. Di Yin also took some pictures. The link goes to her first picture of the Notting Hill Carnival; when you see a picture of me holding a plate with a fried plantain, you've reached the end of the relevant portion. Her later pictures are for the following day; I'll link to them in my next post.

Oh, and as you'll see from the food comments in the pictures, it was an unexpectedly great food day.

After about four hours, the ringing in our ears and the density of the crowd drove us away.

We went home, had tea, sat around for a while, then headed to Putney Bridge, a downtown area near our apartment, for Sunday roast. Sunday roast is a traditional British meal served at pubs. It consists of some form of meat roasted with potatoes and vegetables. Given its uniquely British status, I knew I wanted to have it once while in England, and Di Yin and I managed to fit in on this day.

We tried it, deemed it good, and returned home for dessert.

London: Aug 29: Being A Homebody

On Saturday morning, August 29, 2009, Di Yin and I went jogging in Wimbledon Common/Putney Common. It was a beautiful day with big, puffy clouds. The Common is a large pleasant space: a combination of forests, fields of straw-grass, wildflowers, a lake, and a windmill.

Later, I returned to Wimbledon Common with a tupperware and picked blackberries. I gathered blackberries from three different patches in the Common to hedge (hehe) my bets.

For lunch, we walked down to the Southfields tube. On the way I took a few pictures of the vicinity as I realized I didn't take any pictures of my neighborhood when I wandered around the previous day. Incidentally, Di Yin also took seven pictures of our neighborhood. The link goes to the first picture in the sequence; when you see a picture of me with my android phone, you've reached the end. The later pictures are not relevant to this post; I'll link to them in other posts.

We got lunch from the French deli, Chanteroy, that I spotted the previous day. I had a good ham & brie sandwich (naturally, on baguette), though I think I might've liked Di Yin's ham & emmental sandwich more. (Emmental is a mild, hard cheese in the Swiss family.) We also had the blackberries; these were of course a mixed bag: some plump and ripe, others ripe yet pleasingly tart, and others still maturing. None were bad; all were just a reflection of the changes berries undergo in their lives. In less exciting news, I finished the meal with a plum, leftover sweet brown cheese from Undredal (Norway) on baguette, and a few bites of something labeled a chocolate croissant but was really chocolate bread. (Nevertheless, it was good).

In the evening we cooked dinner at home, a fact I mention because I wish to record that we had a good ginger beer made by Fentimans.

London: Aug 28: Marylebone Neighborhood

On the way to work on Friday, August 28, 2009, I decided to browse Southfield's town center (my local town), though its size makes me more inclined to call it the cluster of stores near the tube station rather than a town center. It took thirty minutes to see everything and conclude it was a normal town: a couple markets, a few pubs, a few other restaurants, a bakery or two, a butcher, a fishmonger, a beauty parlor, a couple real estate agents, a couple outposts of banks, etc. (basically everything that you'd expect). The only place worth mentioning is an apparently-very-popular hole-in-the-wall French deli named Chanteroy. That description is compact and apt: although I'd been looking in the window of every store in Southfields, I almost missed this one because the storefront is so narrow, the signs are obscured by overhead construction, and I thought the door might've simply been part of the adjacent shop. The only reason I noticed it was because of the queue of people into the doorway. I tried to look in. There's a long deli counter. It's really narrow: the distance from the counter to the wall is the width of a person, so I couldn't push my way further in to peek at the cases. There seemed to be many tarts, and the people behind the counter were stuffing things in baguettes. The entrance smelled of cheese because the cheese selection is at this end of the deli. I hoped to try it at some point (and did try it, on a later day).

In the early evening, I walked the neighborhood around the Bond Street tube station, Marylebone Lane, and Baker Street. It's a decent neighborhood, average for a good city. The part closest to Bond Street and on Marylebone Lane is cuter and has more local restaurants than the chain-infested area near the Baker Street tube station. Marylebone Lane itself is quite attractive. After my walk, I met Di Yin at a restaurant in the neighborhood, the Golden Hind, which, from my research, is supposedly one of best fish and chips joints in London.

During the day, it rained intermittently (despite no prediction of precipitation at all). I can't recall going more than fifteen minutes without taking out my umbrella, or fifteen minutes walking around with it open.

Over the course of the day, I took a couple pictures.

London: Aug 27: Belgravia & Mayfair

On Thursday, August 27, 2009, I planned to go walking in the afternoon, but ended up starting my excursion sooner than I planned because of a fire in my office building. Using a book of walking tours of London, I walked through the neighborhood of Belgravia and among its white 19th-century mansion-row-house buildings. Because it was such a beautiful day, and the walk having taken less time than I expected, I continued with another walk from the guidebook, through the nearby and similarly elegant and upscale district of Mayfair.

I took these pictures during the walks.

London: Aug 26: Science Museum Lates

In the evening on Wednesday, August 26, 2009, I met Di Yin and some friends to go to the Science Museum's program named Lates. Once a month, the Science Museum opens late and adds some special, temporary activities and lectures to its program. The theme of this day's Lates was crime scene investigation, but we didn't actually manage to get into any of the special programs. (We tried to go to a CSI-like talk but the queue was over an hour, and we tried to go to the investigate-a-staged-crime-scene event but were told it was booked that entire evening for parties of four.) We did go to one special, though un-themed, activity: a silent disco, in which every person gets headphones (with two radio stations) and dances. You don't know what the other dancers are listening to! And, a nice bonus compared to real dance clubs, you get to control the volume.

We spent a while browsing the museum, especially the interactive exhibits. It was fun. (I can't compare it to other science museums because I rarely go to them.)

I took one picture in the museum, not of any of the events related to Lates but rather of a poster I thought might be worth examining later.

Once we all got hungry, we ended up at a fairly good Indian restaurant, Khan's of Kensington. It also had very good service, quite a contrast to dinner the previous night.

London: Aug 25: British Museum Part 2

On Tuesday, August 25, 2009, once again a regular workday in London, I continued my pattern of disappearing for a few hours by returning to the British Museum. I saw almost the rest of the museum (see first visit); comments on what I saw and thought on this visit are in the pictures.

In the evening, I met Di Yin, one of her friends, and a friend of that friend, and we went to dinner at a restaurant on Brick Lane (Shampan II) with mediocre food and horrible service. Even discounting that the restaurant wasn't particularly good, I think I'm gradually learning I don't like Bangladeshi food. We also stopped by a famous bagel bakery, Beigel Bake, which does business 24/7, and watched them twist bagels and stir a vat of bagels in boiling water in the back. The shop also bakes its own bread (allegedly good) and pastries (probably not good).

Aug 24: Edinburgh Assorted, plus Glasgow

We awoke and ate breakfast at our hotel. Di Yin left for Glasgow (about an hour away by train) for a meeting; I had most of the day to myself before I was to meet her in Glasgow in mid-afternoon.

After dropping my baggage off at the train station, I began a series of walking tours that covered a wide swath of Edinburgh. It was a beautiful day, and the sights and pictures stood out much more than the previous day. These pictures capture the highlights of what I saw, but I won't bother in either the pictures or this post to mention every little spot I visited. Given the breadth of my exploration, I wish I recorded a walking map of my day -- it would look impressive and give a sense of the amount of Edinburgh I covered.

I first stopped by the University of Edinburgh's Old College to visit its art museum, the Talbot Rice Gallery.

Later, after hitting more of the University and two nearby parks, I stopped by the National Museum of Scotland, which covers Scotland's history. It's a large museum, and I was impressed by the scope and quality of its objects and the quality of its displays, but found the museum's building's design, with no natural flow, so disorienting that I quickly left. This is surprising and particularly disappointing, as the building was designed specifically for the museum.

Finishing my first walking tour in my guidebook and starting my second, I visited the Princes Street Gardens. Nestled under the cliff by Edinburgh Castle, these gardens are beautiful. I know where I'd bring my lunch every day if I lived in Edinburgh.

I found and briefly browsed a large craft fair by a church.

Then, I ventured north, into Edinburgh's New Town, which was designed and built in the 18th century. My first stop there was Charlotte Square, one of its main parks and with many notable historic buildings surrounding it. Just as George's Square (a park I stopped by in the morning) was taken over by a festival, so was Charlotte Square, this one for a book festival. I wandered through. I observed that the bookstore at the book festival was primarily organized by publisher. Interesting.

I rambled a bit far north of downtown proper to the neighborhood of Stockbridge. It was like downtown in architecture, but has fewer pubs and more regular shops and markets.

I then walked through the neighborhood of Northern New Town, consisting of long blocks of nearly identical (though pleasant-looking) granite buildings and similarly up-scale stores.

I trotted back to the train station, picking up a quick lunch on the way, and caught my train to Glasgow. In Glasgow, I needed to transfer from the Glasgow Queen Street Rail Station to the Glasgow Central Rail Station. This required a walk through downtown, mostly on Buchanan Street and other large pedestrianized streets. It's a nice area of Glasgow to see, and I wish all transfers could be like this.

In Glasgow, I met Di Yin, and we caught a train that would take us all the way back to London. To get back to London, we actually returned past Edinburgh first. heh. (This made my Glasgow excursion a bit silly.)

Anyway, the train rides were pretty; for the journey through Scotland, we followed the North Sea (and hence had water views) but even without the sea the vistas were appealing. We passed fields and fields and sheep and cows and Christmas tree farms and sea and other farms and more. In addition to my pictures from the journey, Di Yin also took some as well, starting with that one. If you're in slide-show mode and see pictures of buses to Scotland, you've cycled back to the beginning of her album and have exhausted all the pictures from the train trip.