After a particularly onerous weekend at work and several long weeks of competitions, we decided we needed to get the scheiße out of Stuttgart. By a rather fortuitous coincidence, Stuttgart is located very close to vastly more interesting and exciting cities. Like London.
We caught a 9am flight out of Stuttgart to Frankfurt, and thence on to London. It's awkward. The flight time to Frankfurt is a scant 25 minutes: it took us double that to run the labyrinth between terminals and immigration and security checkpoints to board the flight to Heathrow. The UK's awkward part-of-the-EU, not-part-of-the-EU makes it awkward for tourists coming from the continent.
Flight to London was about an hour. The cloudy skies over the continent stopped at the edge, and we had an amazing view to look out over the English channel. In one view, the long shoreline and beaches of France and the white cliffs of Dover and England, with tiny cargo ships plying the channel. From above, the sediment laden water from the Thames is easy to spot as it flows into the sea. Our route took us up the Thames, and we landed in London a little after 11AM.
Breezed through customs, and picked up an oyster card at the tube station. The harried ticket sellers explained that we pay £5 for the card, refundable on return, and load up the card to tap our way through turnstile's on tubes or busses.
Piccadilly line runs to the center of London, but it's a long haul. 50 minutes from station to station. It was so exciting to be back in London, although tinged with the sadness that we wouldn't be returning to the hospitality and countryside of The Pines in Milford.
London was bright and chilly. We had pricelined a hotel near Euston station in Camden, and dropped off the luggage before hunting down some food. We were able to grab bar seats at a trendy ramen restaurant, Ippudo. When we walked in the staff shouted greetings at us. We toasted not being at work with pints of cold Asahi and tucked into our delicious steaming bowls of ramen with fried pork.
The rest of the day saw us make a stroll along Oxford st where I stocked up on (what else?) Oxford shirts at Japanese Gap meets American Apparel store UNIQLO. For dinner we headed over to Kensington, to the Natural History Museum.
It was one of their late nights, where they are open until 10pm and serve food and beer. It was surprisingly popular. Tons of people, mostly hip late 20s to late 30s Londoners kicking off the night. I've always loved this museums architecture much more than the exhibitions, which are kooky and surreal at the best of times and simply dated and disgustingly decomposed at worst. It is, I must say, a fantastic place to have a drink. The beer was served from a makeshift bar in front of a massive glass case housing a giant bird, presumably extinct, stuffed with a quizzical expression.
They was also something about the sight of dozens of empty bottles (many of which were obviously brought from outside) sitting on a table in front of a directional sign MAMMALS. One could almost read it like an exasperated exclamation of dismay over the effect of the bottles' contents on mammalian brains.
We lingered through the venerable halls with our beers until everyone was asked to leave by the harried staff anxious to close before ten. We went back to the hotel directly, since we were also really tired from the early day and travel.
We caught a 9am flight out of Stuttgart to Frankfurt, and thence on to London. It's awkward. The flight time to Frankfurt is a scant 25 minutes: it took us double that to run the labyrinth between terminals and immigration and security checkpoints to board the flight to Heathrow. The UK's awkward part-of-the-EU, not-part-of-the-EU makes it awkward for tourists coming from the continent.
Flight to London was about an hour. The cloudy skies over the continent stopped at the edge, and we had an amazing view to look out over the English channel. In one view, the long shoreline and beaches of France and the white cliffs of Dover and England, with tiny cargo ships plying the channel. From above, the sediment laden water from the Thames is easy to spot as it flows into the sea. Our route took us up the Thames, and we landed in London a little after 11AM.
Breezed through customs, and picked up an oyster card at the tube station. The harried ticket sellers explained that we pay £5 for the card, refundable on return, and load up the card to tap our way through turnstile's on tubes or busses.
Piccadilly line runs to the center of London, but it's a long haul. 50 minutes from station to station. It was so exciting to be back in London, although tinged with the sadness that we wouldn't be returning to the hospitality and countryside of The Pines in Milford.
London was bright and chilly. We had pricelined a hotel near Euston station in Camden, and dropped off the luggage before hunting down some food. We were able to grab bar seats at a trendy ramen restaurant, Ippudo. When we walked in the staff shouted greetings at us. We toasted not being at work with pints of cold Asahi and tucked into our delicious steaming bowls of ramen with fried pork.
The rest of the day saw us make a stroll along Oxford st where I stocked up on (what else?) Oxford shirts at Japanese Gap meets American Apparel store UNIQLO. For dinner we headed over to Kensington, to the Natural History Museum.
It was one of their late nights, where they are open until 10pm and serve food and beer. It was surprisingly popular. Tons of people, mostly hip late 20s to late 30s Londoners kicking off the night. I've always loved this museums architecture much more than the exhibitions, which are kooky and surreal at the best of times and simply dated and disgustingly decomposed at worst. It is, I must say, a fantastic place to have a drink. The beer was served from a makeshift bar in front of a massive glass case housing a giant bird, presumably extinct, stuffed with a quizzical expression.
They was also something about the sight of dozens of empty bottles (many of which were obviously brought from outside) sitting on a table in front of a directional sign MAMMALS. One could almost read it like an exasperated exclamation of dismay over the effect of the bottles' contents on mammalian brains.
We lingered through the venerable halls with our beers until everyone was asked to leave by the harried staff anxious to close before ten. We went back to the hotel directly, since we were also really tired from the early day and travel.
No comments:
Post a Comment