Day 1 - Thursday Oct 13th. London w/ Richard

2022-10-13 - London


Didn’t get much sleep on the flight. 9pm-9am schedule, and
the 5 hours of time zone removed were the hours between 2am and
7am. So, at what felt like 2:30am, they served breakfast. My
watch said I got ~1hr 3/4 sleep.


Got off the plane quickly and took Elizabeth line into Paddington
(main line). Met Richard at the coffee place in the shopping
center.


Our approximate plan was to walk along the Regents Canal to
Towpath, a restaurant on the canal near Shoreditch for lunch,
and then to go ride Mail Rail, the tiny underground railway that
used to transfer mail between the central London post offices.


About an hour into walking we decided it would take far too long
to walk all the way, so we decided to rent the Bikes formally
known as Boris. Took a bit of faffing to get accounts set up,
but we eventually got ourselves a hybrid-electric for Rich and
a normal one for me.

This rapidly accelerated progress toward restaurant.


Occasionally the towpath was blocked for residential moorings and
we were diverted onto streets that a) had great bike paths and
b) were full of wonderful old houses. I guess the neighborhoods
were high-end mid-Victorian suburbs.

We popped up in Camden which looked like itself in places, but
otherwise was a bit more gentrified. I took a picture of a bit
that looked almost the same. Looking down toward tube station.

The Regents Canal has de-scuzzified itself quite
impressively. Little Venice has always been nice, and it’s
somehow gotten nicer, and not particularly nice bits, eg around
Kings Cross have gotten unbelievably swanky. Luxury apartments
built on a gasworks site, and an almost impossibly high end set
of boutique-y shops in an old LMS goods yard.

We arrived at Towpath, to find … mostly Americans. An American
waitress, silver haired, sort of like your grandma’s younger
sister who was hip, wore colorful overalls, with just a hint
of space cadet about her. & we were seated next to a couple of
generic early-30s American women who probably worked in tech
and moved here from SF.


Food was good (I had the haddock, I think the menu is readable
in the photo below), and I had a glass of “approachable”
orange wine that tasted almost exactly like farm cider.

After lunch, more bikes, this time to the Mail Rail museum. The
only preserved railway in London. Good for younger kids and
dorky adults who appreciate fine engineering.

After that, train to Richard’s house to see his family. Quick
preface that I had had a fun video chat conversation with
Richard’s daughter Alma a few weeks before, when we were
planning the trip. And we had pulled faces at each other. I think
she started it, and that I showed her how to cross her eyes by
looking at the end of her nose. Anyway, I had the rare privilege
of being the “fun adult” at dinner. We had take-away curry.

Went to pub with Richard after kids in bed, put the world
to rights.


Quick note here to THANK ANNA FOR THE MELATONIN. I took some
post-pub, slept deeply and well, and was able to be up in the
morning to say goodbye to Alma and Leon for school. Also, I took
enough for 4 other nights.




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