014 - sun 14/05/2006 - london

sarah cooked the four of us breakfast - eggs, bacon, sausage, wonderful. sarah and tim actually had a sunday planned for us, a gentle walking tour of nearby greenwich which took in a restored tea-clipper (its a type of boat - i didn't know either), a bustling sunday market, a former naval college with marvellous rolling lawns and old buildings, and of course, the greenwich observatory. you know, where they have greenwich mean time or whatever. it was great to see long, rolling grass lawns off into the distance after the comparably claustrophobic (although not truly so) new york. friends kicking footballs, people walking their dogs. even new york's giant park, central park, had a strange quality to it with so many hills, twists and turns, trees bending down and arching over. it was a large park but designed to feel like a small space, perhaps. mmm long, green english fields.

the market was great, like all the best markets, so much great food. we went to a local pie shop and bought some pies, then took them down to the cutty sark, the aforementioned toe-clipper (i mean tea clipper) and ate them. i had a sausage roll though. we headed back to the flat.

i got my first look at real actual london when we caught the train 15 minutes into town towards our dinner reservation. getting off the train at london bridge station (!) we walked along the thames (!) towards shakespeare's globe theatre, or at least a rebuilt restoration of it, apparently close to or on the original site of the globe. attached to the new globe is a restaurant, and thats where we ate. talking to the waiter, the place was actually only open because of an accidental reservation that was made (not ours) so the ambience was kind of lacking even though the food was great. it was just us and that other accidental reservation actually, and they left early. so we had the place to ourselves.

we left the globe after dark and hit a couple of english pubs (obviously) on the way home.

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