Last Three Days in New York

Damn, I'm so staggeringly behind in my blogging, I'm going to have to get my butt into gear! I've been in the UK now for nearly two weeks, and tomorrow I'm off to Paris!!! And I still haven't finished blogging about my last few days in the US.

So, here's what I got up to Saturday and Sunday whilst I was there... In no particular order.

Saturday night, I took myself out to a comedy club in the East Village, a place called the Eastville in fact. I picked it more or less at random after doing a google search for comedy clubs in NY. Oh, prior to that I'd utterly failed to visit a gym called Golds - I made it there, but it turned out the opening times listed on there website were wrong. Whilst I was there, I blundered into the threatre where The Late Show with Dave Letterman is recorded - the Ed Sullivan theatre in fact. The show was on hiatus for a couple of weeks, but I was amused by a tshirt in their gift shop which said "Pants" across the front.

Back to the comedy gig! I had to queue out the front for an age, so it seemed. There was a queue stretching about half a block. I wanted to go to the 10PM show, but the 8PM show was running late. There was also a midnight show - they certainly utilise their venues well in the East Village!
Eventually they let us in. The comedy place was a medium sized basement, with a tiny stage big enough for maybe one person and a microphone stand. The night was hosted by Justin Silver, who apparently has a day job on Law and Order. He was a funny fellow. There were five other comedians on that evening, and I'm sorry to say I can only recall the name of one of them - Esther Ku, although one of them might have been Sherrod Small, his face certainly looks familiar.

One interesting thing about the bar. First they slugged me twenty bucks to get in, then told me they had something called a "two drink minimum". Thankfully it turned out the two drinks could be cranberry juice, so that was what I had two of. Not to mention the buffalo wings - which sure looked like they came from a chicken.

The stand ups were pretty damn funny, for the most part. Some of the jokes really made sense only because of things I'd seen in New York whilst I was there. But some of the comedy was a bit... I don't know. They talked about race and racial stereo types a fair bit, and tried to work some humour out of that. The kind of thing you just wouldn't do on an Australian stage (I'm guessing). But I had an interesting evening, and I did laugh heartily.

I must have got up to more stuff that Saturday, but I can't remember what it was and I can't be bothered to wade through my own Twitter stream to work out what it was!

Sunday I finally made it to Golds Gym. Excellent gym after all that. Spread over three levels, lots of interesting equipment, On the way out, I picked up a demented smoothy from the cafe in the foyer - it was called the Velvet Elvis, and featured amoungst other things, peanut butter! A very odd drink indeed, with a peanuty taste all the way through.

Sunday evening, I met up again with my friend Andy Shaw, who is from Oz (well, in fact the UK originally) in Times Square. I was delayed a little, because I encountered a moon walking dwarf street performer in Times Square Station. We took photos of each other with Elmo - although in retrospect I should have had my picture taken with the Hello Kitty who was wandering around there. Then we had an overpriced sandwich at some chain restaurant there. And saw a forgettable play which was a murder mystery. I've been trying to decipher the plot since I saw it and it still seemed to complicated to relate.

So we decided it was time to head to a bar. I'd heard good things about the Lower East Side, so we decided to head down there and see what we could find. We hopped on the F train, which was supposed to take us to one of a number of stations in the LES, but then started heading off on it's own merry way on a different track entirely. They driver made some announcements about changing trains further along if we wanted specific stations, so we hug on, as did about six confused locals who also had no idea what the subway train was doing. Eventually they told us to change trains, at what turned out to be a station in Brooklyn! So we had to catch a train back into Manhattan!
Finally in the LES, we wandered a bit and picked a nice little bar more or less at random. Fleet Week was on - basically half the US navy turns up in NY and disgorges sailors into the city - so there were at least three sailors in the bar. I decided it was high time I had an actually drink - the last beer I'd had was in October of 2008! So on Andy's recommendation, I had a Brooklyn Lager. Which was indeed far nicer than I had been led to expect from an American beer. We got talking to a middle aged American bloke, whose sole interest seemed to be strip clubs and the like - wanted to know if I could recommend any in Melbourne! Not my area of expertise, not by a long shot.

Then I was persuaded to have another brew, a strawberry beer, which was rather tasty. Eventually we staggered out of the bar, and got mildly lost looking for a subway train. We found one - not the one we'd been looking for - and watched a rat playing on the platform whilst we waited for a train.

I had to say goodbye to Andy when I jumped off the train to change lines - the next time I'll see him will be in Australia.

So, the day before I had to fly to the UK, I got to bed at a about 2AM.....

The Trip to the UK - A Continuing Saga

(I'm offline again whilst I write this, in fact I'm heading east through the English countryside on a train to Paris. So this entry will be devoid of links.)

Following my previous entry about getting to the plane which took me from New York to London, let me tell you about the rest of my trip to the place I was staying!

I did manage to sleep on the flight to the UK, in fact I almost missed breakfast. I have a new favourite plane, the Boeing 777. Maybe it was the pilot, but the landing was so smooth I didn't even realise we'd touched down until we started slowing down. Of course what a given airline chooses to fit its planes with by way of seats might also help.

On the flight over I sat next to a guy from the US airforce, who fixed trucks for them. Really liked his trucks I have to say! Anyway, he was on his way to a US airforce base in the UK, and hence was travelling without a passport! I wasn't convinced they'd let him into the country, but I say him later wandering the terminal.

Passport control was relatively easy, compared to the US. The guy at the counter wanted me to prove that I had a flight out of the UK, so I fumbled around with my battered itinerary, and I think he got sick of my going "Um, I'm actually leaving Europe out of Switzerland..." I guess he was convinced I had further travel plans, and he sent me on my way.

I thought I was such an organised traveller - in the terminal I bought an A-Z Guide to the streets of London, a map of the Tube, and a SIM card for my phone. Then... I got on the wrong train!

I made one basic mistake - I assumed there was only one train station at the airport. No, experienced traveller, there were two. I had detailed instructions from my host Zoya about how to get to her place - Piccadilly line to Green Park, Jubilee Line to London Bridge, Dartford or Gravesend line to Blackheath. So I found a train station - not realising that an airport can have two, I mean, come on, the airport in Melbourne has zero train stations - and was then totally confused because the train I was looking at when straight to somewhere called Paddington, and not any of the stations mentioned by Zoya. Oh, and I also couldn't find Blackheath on the tube map, turns out its an above ground line so it wasn't on there!

So I hopped on the train to Paddington, paying a pretty penny for it to I might add. Then my plan was to catch a tube to Baker Street, then catch the Jubilee line to London Bridge. So I lugged my 20 kilo suitcase up and down several flights of stairs (dear London undeground, please get some more fucking lifts!) and found the train to Baker Street. Hopped of there, more stairs and I found the Jubilee line.... Which was broken, and took me only one station in the direction I needed to go. The Jubilee was broken after Green Park. So at the last possible moment I wrestled my suitcase off the train at Bond Street. Caught the central line over to Tottenham Court Road, then the northern line south towards London Bridge. Did I mention the lack of lifts? I must have lugged my suitcase up and down I don't know how many flights of stairs! My feet were killing me. I did find one station with a lift - it was way the fuck down the end of its own tunnel, and barely fitted me and the lady with the pusher.

Eventually I found my way to London Bridge... and took the wrong escalator, and ended up at the wrong end of the station... A nice bloke working there pointed me in the right direction. Eventually I found the platform the Dartford trains were leaving from, only to discover that only every second one goes to Blackheath...! Eventually I got on the right train, and was delighted to discover that Blackheath was only two stations from London Bridge.

So I jumped off the train in Blackheath, some six trains from Heathrow later. Then I looked up Zoya's place on google maps on my phone, and it suggested a route of about 1.4 kilometres and 14 minutes. By this stage I was very very tired, my feet were killing me - I think I mildly strained one ankle lugging my suitcase up so many stairs - I'd had about four hours sleep and not a whole lot of food... So I regarded the leafy semi-suburban street with some trepidation, like it was some kind of walk of pain. I dragged my suitcase up a hill, along a street, and down a court (or a "Vale" in this case). The footpath on Zoya's street is odd to non-existent, so I weaved all over it then the road. Eventually I reached a spot where the road forked two ways, and indeed wrapped around on itself. I took my left branch, and way way down the far end, at the end of a row of identical houses I found the address! I pressed the door bell and to my enormous relief Zoya answered it!

My plane landed at about 9.40AM. By the time I ended up at Zoya's, it was after 2 in the afternoon... It had taken me something like three hours after I left the airport to make it to her place! I was so relieved to get there - I dumped my suitcase and had a shower. For the next day or two my legs didn't work very well at all.

Easing into the UK

I took it pretty easy my first few days in London. My jet lag wasn't bad - it's only seven hours difference between the US where I had been and the UK, somewhat less than the difference crossing the Pacific!

The day I arrived, we went for a bit of a wander over the to local Tesco - one of the major supermarket chains in the UK - so clearly I'd gotten into the exciting stuff already!

I was amazed at the bright sunny day - numerous sources had told me it was never ever sunny in the UK. But there was not only sun, there was blue sky! At least one of the things I'd been told about the country had already proved to be wrong. To be fair, a number of folks commented that the weather was unusually good.

On Wednesday Zoya, Katherine (Zoya's two year old) and I went to meet our mutual friend Julia for lunch. Clive, Zoya's husband also came along. I was very pleased to see Julia, and kept on bouncing up and down saying "Look! I'm in London!"

That afternoon, we went on a quick visit to the Museum of London, which was small but actually really good. It traced the whole history of the area, so it started with bone and flint tools at one end of scale, and ended with the great fire o' London - the rest of the museum was being renovated, so I have no idea what happened after that time :-)

There were some impressive bits and pieces in the museum. Viking axes which had been found in the Thames. The viking's used to raid the place quite regularly apparently, since it was handy to reach by ship. They also had various Roman artefacts and chunks of buildings. In fact, right next to the museum is a section of the Roman Wall, which used to surround London. And attached to said wall was a later Medieval tower in a similar state of disrepair.

My legs were still buggered by my 18 hour trip across two continents, so I actually found a handy portable chair and sat on it whilst looking at various exhibits.

And that was about all I got up to my first day and a half or so in the UK.