The Reason For The Trip

   As noted here, I recently took a trip over to London, along with Sarah. The trip was a mixture of business and pleasure, with the impetus for the whole thing being the MacUser Awards. We got to London Wednesday night (after flying "all day"), and attended the MacExpo Thursday morning. It was no Macworld San Francisco, but it was probably as popular as Macworld Boston this year. Anyhow, Thursday night I attended the MacUser ceremony. As seen above I got dressed up and accepted our award for us and had a good time.

   The rest of the time was devoted to tourism. Before you ask, we didn't see the Tower Of London, nor inside anywhere famous except Westminster Abbey. But we'll come to that. On Friday, the first thing we did was take the Tube way the hell out to Zone 6 (the 'burbs) to visit John, who does some of the artwork for Rogue Amoeba and just moved to England from the states. The absurdity of our first meeting taking place across the ocean was not lost on us.

   Following lunch with John and Helen, we headed back into the city and over to the London Eye. For those that don't know, the Eye is a 135-meter tall observation wheel. It's a recent addition to the London skyline, the sixth largest structure there, and it provides views of up to 25 miles. It rotates slowly, you hop on and are gradually treated to higher views, before coming back down from your "flight" (as they call it). It really does provide some fantastic views, and it's a lot of fun. Sarah wasn't able to get a ticket when she was in London a few years back, as it had just been built. However, we showed up at about 3 and got on within half an hour.

   Above are several more pictures from the Eye. I took a couple dozen, and most of them (as per usual) were crap. However, I like the sunset image a great deal. We were fortunate to be on the Eye as the sunset was starting, so it was especially gorgeous. I highly recommend taking a spin (ooo, puns) on the Eye if you're ever there, especially in the afternoon when the sun is setting.

   From the Eye, we walked along the river. I snapped the first picture from relatively far away, and I really like it. It's perhaps overly busy, but something about the trees, the distant Eye, and the lights right overhead is cool. You can also see Big Ben and the Houses of Parliment across the river. The second picture is of some great graffiti we saw on a lamp post. The final image is from a poster made during World War 2, on display in the Tate Modern. They had some very interesting pieces, but perhaps most impressive is the space the musuem is in. The Tate sits in what was once the Bankside Power Station, and from the outside, it still looks very similar, and it's an interesting juxtaposition. And most likely, a fantastically pricey one.

   That's about the end of Friday night, which we ended by eating at Red Veg, a Communist-themed vegetarian fast food joint. Fan-tastic. The food was pretty good, and it was pretty cheap (relatively), but I was most impressed with the presence of communist leaders on the menu. We wanted to go see a comedy show, but the bastard comedian had rescheduled his shows for a week later. Some lame excuse about "Appendicitis" and "emergency surgery". Anyhow, I've don't have any picture besides the scan of the menu, so I put up a collection a Big Ben photos. What's a trip to London without many photos of Big Ben?

   Saturday was a tour of the city and a futile hunt for a restaurant for lunch. We saw Westminster Abbey in the morning, which wasn't terribly exciting, but I saw the resting place of James Watt. After that, we failed to meet up the infamous Susie Schutt, but we did wander the city with Maxine, taking photos. This collection can be seen on Rogue Amoeba's blog here. That's Maxine in the brand-new Apple store, the first in Europe. It had been open for 12 hours when we got there, but we still had to wait in line for a few minutes. On the plus side, I've now attended Apple Store grand openings on two separate continents. After shopping for several hours, we took in a show, The Reduced Shakespeare Company's Complete Works Of Shakespeare - Abridged. It's excellent, hilarious, and largely unrelated to Shakespeare at all. Anyone with a passing knowledge of Shakespeare will find plenty to laugh about here.

   After the show, we headed home to our hotel. We checked out Sunday morning, checked our bags, and headed over to Hyde Park for a nice walk. It was foggy and rainy - who'd have guessed? After some more meandering and some Persian food, we finally headed back to the hotel, grabbed our bags and took the slow train out to the airport. The weather sucked, the internet was outrageously priced (60 cents a minute, or $36 an hour), but the vegetarian food was plentiful and the company was lovely. Best of all, they all spoke English, albeit with odd accents and spellings. All in all, it was a fun trip, and I'm glad I went.