Last week I was lucky enough to have two awesome USC friends come and visit me. Deborah was with me Monday/Tuesday for lunch and Juliana came in Thursday and stayed over the weekend. On Monday Deborah dropped her stuff off in my room and then we took a walk in the beautiful weather up to East London to do a self-guided street art tour.
We started with the Eine letters on Middlesex street, ending up at his HAPPY.
Then we walked all over the area, developing the skill of spotting street art.
Loved loved loved the stuff this drip artist did - he was a master of trump l'oeil
Roa's famous crane
an Invader mosaic
lots of cats
Drip artist doing what he does best
and tiny little street arts
(and maybe some things that don't quite count as "street art" but were fabulous none the less)
We took a slight detour into the "pop-up" mall, called Box Park that is made out of study wooden boards and shipping containers then started down the second half of the tour on Redchurch street. We had a brief struggle there trying to comprehend Eine's ANTI and PRO walls. Our conversation went something like "Propro....Prop, ro....Prop...Pro! Pro!ohhhhh ANTI ANTI ANTI PRO PRO PRO!" Then we laughed hysterically at ourselves for a few minutes.
Below are probably my two favorite pieces, it took capturing them on camera to see the compositions come together.
We stopped briefly to pick up tickets for that night's showing of Bel Ami at the Aubin Cinema and continued on our street art journey.
And then up at the top of a tall building
And most exciting - Street art in action!!
We stopped in the Cargo beer garden to admire some plastic-protected Banksy works
Then finished up the route we were following with one of the most amusing and meta works
There were still a couple of hours before the movie started so we took the Tube from Old Street to Camden market and I dragged Deborah to the store closing sale of the Camden Snow/Skate/Surf shop. I tried to bargain with them for one of their last boards but they wouldn't budge on the price, claiming tons of people had been interested. When I mentioned that didn't matter because no one had thought 230 was the right price I still didn't get my way. The next hour we wandered through the Camden Stables Market, an area I had never been to before. Because it used to be a stables there are horse statues everywhere!
We took the Tube back to Shoreditch for the movie, but at this point we were so expert at finding street art that we saw it everywhere!
The movie was at the Aubin, which I know I've mentioned before is the most comfortable movie theatre in existence.
We split a bottle of wine while we watched Bel Ami
and then hunted down dinner at a nearby pub/restaurant.
The next day I attended my last M&A class and then met Deborah for lunch with my friend Camila in Covent Garden. I had one more class then Deborah came home with me one last time so she could pick up her suitcase from my res hall. The cherry on top of a pretty good day was receiving my third stripe at BJJ that evening, bringing me one step closer to the rather elusive goal of one day having a blue belt.
I had one day and two nights to myself and then Juliana came on Thursday. Her flight from Scotland was delayed but she still made it reasonably early with enough time for me to pick her up at Paddington and then take her back to my flat to chill out while I went to my last class. The weather was so gorgeous that we went to sit outside near Borough market for some tapas near London Bridge.
It was end of term so parties in its honor were held all over. We got ready for the night and started at the Sidney Webb party in the Atlas common room and then made our way over to the LLM party in NW London. The only surviving picture proves we had a good time after we took it I "lost" my camera in Juliana's purse.
For Juliana's first full day in London we really made the most of it. We walked across the Tower bridge
to the Tower of London.
We took a Yeoman tour, saw the crown jewels, then visited the Beauchamp Tower, covered in carvings by prisoners (my first time!) and then the armory in the Norman/White Tower. We walked and took the Tube into the main part of town and hunted down tickets. There were only obstructed views available for One Man Two Guvnors but we found reasonable tickets for Sweeny Todd instead. With our mission accomplished we recovered with a posh high tea at the Lanesborough hotel in Hyde Park Corner
Once we were replenished we had enough time and energy for a quick trip to Harrods to view the Egyptian escalators and the puppies (3200 pounds, 5000 if you want a female breeder). We finished up a wonderful day with a wonderful play, Sweeny Todd was played by some incredible talents with out-of-this-world voices. We ended with a nightcap and some live music at the PorterHouse.
The next day we were slightly less ambitious. I slept in and then we had a late breakfast/early lunch on Portobello Road. We wandered the antique market and played with fascinators
My tingling street-art sense spotted a Banksy while we were there.
And I couldn't resist this chicken sign (street art though it may not be)
The afternoon was spent at the British Museum with the usual accompanying outrage that people can use flash and touch all the artifacts without any action on the behalf of the British Museum against it. We tried to meet up with Valerie and the USC spring-breakers for a pub crawl. However the Ireland/England rugby game meant that all pubs in the great London area with a TV were full up to the gills. The lines were insane!
After a bit of wandering we had time for exactly one pint before we had to go to Islington for dinner hosted by Juliana's friend Lex. Actually it was her boyfriend Dan that did all the cooking and left her and their mutual friend Kibby to catch up with Juliana. We ate a scrumptious dinner and then went out to a hipster bar in the area
Our next stop was the Kings in Angel to meet up with the south American LLMs (Andrea me and Camila) to celebrate St. Patrick's day.
We closed down the pub and then went back to an apartment until we made it home at 5am. We had to be up to meet Kibby, Lex and Dan for breakfast at the Diner in Soho. The aftermath of four hours of sleep was not pretty.
Breakfast was enough to bring me back to life briefly, at least long enough to say goodbye to Juliana and send her off on her way home. The rest of the day was just recovery, sleeping, finally finishing Breaking Bad and then skyping with Christa.
To be honest, it took me more than that one afternoon to recover. Monday I slept most of the afternoon and the only pauses I took were to hunt down food and do my taxes, crawling out of bed long enough to watch a Clockwork Orange in the common room with Valerie. Tuesday was much the same. Valerie and I took a bus down to Greenwich to enjoy the nice weather, to see the deer park (apparently that's a thing they have there) and to lie down for a bit in the park. We took the river boat back and then it was back to bed. I slept from 6 to 10:30 the next morning.
Wednesday I was a bit more back to normal, did the bulk of my Pesach shopping, the majority of the Pesach cleaning and even made it to the gym! Which brings me back to NOW. What's happening now? I'm about to start some traveling! It's the Easter break and I'm taking advantage of all the time I have before. From this afternoon I will be heading to Warsaw. The plan from there is Warsaw -> Konskawola (my Grandfather's town) -> Krakow (Aushwitz) -> Bratislava -> Vienna (maybe) -> Budapest -> Zagreb -> Split -> Dubrovnik.
I will do my best to post short updates on my travels, then expect longer ones with pictures on my return and after Pesach is underway.
Love/Miss
We started with the Eine letters on Middlesex street, ending up at his HAPPY.
We took a slight detour into the "pop-up" mall, called Box Park that is made out of study wooden boards and shipping containers then started down the second half of the tour on Redchurch street. We had a brief struggle there trying to comprehend Eine's ANTI and PRO walls. Our conversation went something like "Propro....Prop, ro....Prop...Pro! Pro!ohhhhh ANTI ANTI ANTI PRO PRO PRO!" Then we laughed hysterically at ourselves for a few minutes.
We stopped in the Cargo beer garden to admire some plastic-protected Banksy works
The next day I attended my last M&A class and then met Deborah for lunch with my friend Camila in Covent Garden. I had one more class then Deborah came home with me one last time so she could pick up her suitcase from my res hall. The cherry on top of a pretty good day was receiving my third stripe at BJJ that evening, bringing me one step closer to the rather elusive goal of one day having a blue belt.
I had one day and two nights to myself and then Juliana came on Thursday. Her flight from Scotland was delayed but she still made it reasonably early with enough time for me to pick her up at Paddington and then take her back to my flat to chill out while I went to my last class. The weather was so gorgeous that we went to sit outside near Borough market for some tapas near London Bridge.
It was end of term so parties in its honor were held all over. We got ready for the night and started at the Sidney Webb party in the Atlas common room and then made our way over to the LLM party in NW London. The only surviving picture proves we had a good time after we took it I "lost" my camera in Juliana's purse.
For Juliana's first full day in London we really made the most of it. We walked across the Tower bridge
The next day we were slightly less ambitious. I slept in and then we had a late breakfast/early lunch on Portobello Road. We wandered the antique market and played with fascinators
The afternoon was spent at the British Museum with the usual accompanying outrage that people can use flash and touch all the artifacts without any action on the behalf of the British Museum against it. We tried to meet up with Valerie and the USC spring-breakers for a pub crawl. However the Ireland/England rugby game meant that all pubs in the great London area with a TV were full up to the gills. The lines were insane!
After a bit of wandering we had time for exactly one pint before we had to go to Islington for dinner hosted by Juliana's friend Lex. Actually it was her boyfriend Dan that did all the cooking and left her and their mutual friend Kibby to catch up with Juliana. We ate a scrumptious dinner and then went out to a hipster bar in the area
Breakfast was enough to bring me back to life briefly, at least long enough to say goodbye to Juliana and send her off on her way home. The rest of the day was just recovery, sleeping, finally finishing Breaking Bad and then skyping with Christa.
To be honest, it took me more than that one afternoon to recover. Monday I slept most of the afternoon and the only pauses I took were to hunt down food and do my taxes, crawling out of bed long enough to watch a Clockwork Orange in the common room with Valerie. Tuesday was much the same. Valerie and I took a bus down to Greenwich to enjoy the nice weather, to see the deer park (apparently that's a thing they have there) and to lie down for a bit in the park. We took the river boat back and then it was back to bed. I slept from 6 to 10:30 the next morning.
Wednesday I was a bit more back to normal, did the bulk of my Pesach shopping, the majority of the Pesach cleaning and even made it to the gym! Which brings me back to NOW. What's happening now? I'm about to start some traveling! It's the Easter break and I'm taking advantage of all the time I have before. From this afternoon I will be heading to Warsaw. The plan from there is Warsaw -> Konskawola (my Grandfather's town) -> Krakow (Aushwitz) -> Bratislava -> Vienna (maybe) -> Budapest -> Zagreb -> Split -> Dubrovnik.
I will do my best to post short updates on my travels, then expect longer ones with pictures on my return and after Pesach is underway.
Love/Miss
