This past week, at the tender age of 33, I left the confines of my home country for the first time and ventured across an ocean for an adventure in London. This is a recap of my time abroad, the pictures I took along the way, and some assorted additional thoughts.
An American Monkey In London – Prelude
I set out from my home in Chicago for a whirlwind six days in London on my first international trip. This is the story of my adventure.
Thanks to my elite status with my airline of choice, I was able to get in the United club at O’Hare, which had eluded me up to that point.
To be honest, I was expecting more. Oh well.
Being of a shorter stature, leg room is never an issue.
So long Chicago, and see you soon, London!
An American Monkey In London – Day 1
I have successfully navigated Heathrow, UK customs, and made it to my hotel!
Heathrow has to be the most inefficient airport I’ve ever been in. It was literally a fifteen minute walk from the gate to the border, followed by ninety minutes of standing in a queue (how British!) for a thirty second conversation with the Border Agent.
This was followed by a nearly two hour Uber ride from Heathrow to the hotel, because driving through London is a nightmare, and apparently driving around London isn’t much better.
I ventured out in search of food and found a burger joint. The meat tasted funny and there was no salt on the fries. However, after spending an entire day with only the contents of the airplane breakfast rattling around in my stomach, I will literally take anything.
So, now I have to find somewhere for dinner and try not to fall asleep.
UPDATE: We had pub food. Salmon, potatoes, and zucchini. Has the UK not discovered salt, pepper, or any other assorted spices? Also, I had spotted dick! It was pretty good.
An American Monkey In London – Day 2
Seriously, what is up with ice in this country? Is there a nationwide ice shortage? I went looking for an iced coffee this morning and had the barista ask “Is that anything like an iced latte?”, and got three cubes of ice in the resulting drink.
Other than that, London has been lovely. We had Thai for dinner which was excellent (and had a surprising number of duck-based options). Started an ex-pat table at the conference reception for us US-based folk, which was fun. Other than that, my day was spent valiantly trying (and occasionally failing) to stay awake.
So, time for bed, and hopefully a more productive tomorrow.
UPDATE: In all the reading I did about the UK, ice was not mentioned once.
An American Monkey in London – Day 3
So today consisted of more conferencing, and a lunch of Bangers and Mash! Apparently it’s just breakfast sausage and mashed potatoes. I don’t know exactly what I was expecting there, but yeah, that’s what it is.
Dinner was at an excellent Indian restaurant in Whitechapel.
A little more about the conference – it’s about FinTech, so stuff like blockchain and cryptocurrency and stuff like that. I spent an hour listening to the CEO of a blockchain company talk about distributed companies and finally got to use my “This is libertarian porn, and about as realistic.” joke.
On the upside, I did get to hear an Irish Venture Capitalist explain that the UK and EU couldn’t agree on even the basics of Brexit if they had twenty years to do it, so the fact that they’re going to try and do it in two is ridiculous.
However, I am so tired. I’ve been getting eight hours a night but I just cannot get through the day without nodding off. I wake up tired, I’m tired all day, and always feel like I need a nap. THE JET LAG IS REAL.
I just want to get to Friday so I can do touristy stuff. Big Ben, Westminster, Science Museum, Forbidden Planet, and British Museum.
An American Monkey in London – Day 4
Well, I finally got a reprieve from the conference to do some exploring of the city.
For starters, after wandering the city in search of a drug store with antacids, I wandered into a Boots and picked up some Tums. Given the prevalence of spicy food in this city, I am thinking of starting up a black market antacid importing business, considering the ones I take at home are the size of two quarters stacked on top of each other and the only ones I could find here are the size of a dime.
After that, I got coffee. I asked for extra ice. They obliged me. It was wonderful.
So, after the morning session, we did lunch – a lovely little restaurant by the Tower Bridge, where I finally had fish and chips. They were pretty good.
After more conferencing, we escaped around 3PM and went for a full Afternoon Tea. Champagne, Darjeeling, finger sandwiches, scones, clotted cream, the works. OMG, it was a second lunch. How does anyone eat that and then go have dinner? Consequently, to work off lunch and tea, we started wandering around.
Starting at Covent Gardens, we checked out St. Paul’s, did a little shopping, made our way up to Forbidden Planet, checked out Angel’s Fancy Dress (one of my co-workers wanted to dress as a pretty pretty princess), then made our way down Shaftesbury to Piccadilly Circus.
From Piccadilly we wandered around St. James’ Park, then made our way over to Buckingham Palace! We got lucky, as the Queen was in residence and was hosting a state dinner for the King of Spain, so the gates were open and we got to see people going in and out of the castle.
From there, we went back across the city for a lovely dinner of lamb chops, monkfish, and steak. and retired to the hotel for the evening.
Considering today’s calorie intake, tomorrow’s Full English Breakfast has been postponed until Friday.
Also, I grabbed a copy of the London Evening Standard, solely for this headline: “TRUMP JR: MY DAD KNOWS NOTHING… but I may have met some more Russians”. The British Press is A-OK in my book.
And for anyone that wants pictures, there will be plenty in a full post after I get back.
An American Monkey in London – Day 5
Today was the last official day of the conference (tomorrow is workshops) and it went out not with a whimper, but with a bang. Big topics: how will automation affect the people whose jobs are being automated, the future of AI, and blockchain takes over the universe.
Some highlights:
– Blonde Australian dude with a manbun and shorts stands up and asks a panel “We’re investing billions in all of this technology that has netted zero profit and will require billions more before it ever does. By that point, you’re already billions in the whole, so how does cryptocurrency ever make money?” The panel had a collective guffaw and basically acknowledged that he’s right.
– Listening to white collar white dudes from all over the world talk about how all the jobs like truck drivers that are about to be automated out of existence will “free” all of those truck drivers to get more education and pursue more creative and useful pursuits, and how this has happened over and over throughout history.
– The best thing for all these jobs that are about to be automated would be for us to set up Lunar and Martian colonies, because you need blue collar workers to build stuff there and don’t need as many of them here.
UPDATE: Apparently we’re going to ship all the blue collar jobs to the Moon and Mars to strip mine them and staff the inevitable tourist attractions.
Long story short: libertarian science-fiction circle jerk.
Anyway, after the conference was done we made our way down to Waterloo and walked along the Thames, where I got some good panoramic shots of the shoreline, including Big Ben.
Dinner was at the top of the OXO Tower with an incredible view of the skyline, unbelievable food, and a truly absurd pricetag.
Tomorrow is my last full day in the city, and my one full tourist day, so if you have any suggestions for where I should go post them here.
THE EPIC FINALE
Well, it all came down to this. One day in London to pack in as much touristy stuff as humanly possible.
This morning started with a full English breakfast. Unlike Afternoon Tea, I don’t see the appeal. Also, tomatoes and beans for breakfast are just really unappealing.
However, I did resolve to travel the entire day using the Tube system, and my God, it is magnificent. I went all over the city and nothing was further than a ten minute walk from a Tube station. I haven’t seen anything in the States that even remotely compares to how good it is. The best part is that they clearly turned the door autoclose settings up to “Doooooooon’t Caaaaaaaare” because I saw at least a half dozen people get whacked as they closed.
So, to start off, I took the train from my hotel into the city. First stop: Westminster. Saw Big Ben. Saw Parliament. Walked over to 10 Downing Street. Attempted to negotiate the return of the United States to the UK. They weren’t interested.
Did the Churchill War Rooms – very cool. Fascinating man.
Went from there to the Science Museum. Pretty neat, but a little underwhelming. The line for the Natural History Museum was too long, so I skipped it.
Next stop: Saville Row. Thanks to MissAnitaManbadly’s suggestion, I stopped by and did in fact find the Kingsmen store.
After that, I hit the British Museum, aka The Museum of Historical Grand Larceny. There’s literally nothing British about it – it’s just stuff the Brits stole from other countries. However, I did get to see the Rosetta Stone and Crystal Skull, which are both pretty neat.
I took the train up to King’s Cross and did Platform 9 and 3/4. Got a picture. I look super gross in it because it’s hot in London and I had been wandering around all day, but there it is.
After that, I went to Trafalgar Square for some souvenir shopping. Stuff for my dad, my mom and sister, a few friends, etc., along with everything I picked up throughout the day.
For the grand finale, I had dinner in a little Italian cafe that is apparently the British equivalent to Fazolis. Not bad though.
Tomorrow I’m up at 6am for my flight, and I’m back in Chicago at 1:30pm. I’ll post some final thoughts from the plane.
In the meantime, this is MonkeyBiz, signing off from London.
