All's Well in London-town!

It is important to remember that this was my very first trip to London without being insanely hungover, and it was brillant!

We arrived in early afternoon and promptly went to meet up with one of my dear friends Z. We met in Paris and haven't seen each other since a super crazy highly memorable pamplona experience in 2005. I'm sure none of you will be surprised to hear we didn't miss a beat! She has a charming town house in Notting Hill with a very pleasant (illegal) rooftop terrace where the three of us passed a fantastic afternoon drinking screwdrivers. One of my favorite things about English summer, is that is stays light until about 10pm so afternoon generally lasts until 7.

About that time, we hopped a bus to Mike's mate's place, in Chiswick. To be fair chiswick is a bit out of town....but it is right on the water and the train station is very close....so it worked out quite well. J and H made us feel right at home and even welcomed us with a BBQ....Z came along too since she was off to birmingham the next evening and we wanted lots of catch up time! Dinner, drinks and convo were all spectacular and fun was had by all.

The next day we went back to Z's where I made yummy brunch accompained by my signature bloody mary. We had a nice slow morning and we were off! After saying goodbyes-Mike and I commenced to wandering! We had very firm plans with a strict itinary, however as often happens we got caught up in the wander and much was missed! We did in our ramblings end up at Churchills war rooms, which were very cool as they have remained virtually untouched since the end of the war.

London was a lovely mish-mash of sightseeing and catching up, as Mike spent a number of years there. His oldest friend, is a fabulous artist, and you should check him out his stuff is awesome AND he took us to a fantastic viet resto in brick lane...which is traditionally where you'd get curry...but apparently living there you get sick of it quite quickly which is understandable! He also had a fantastic rood terrace, this one legal, where we all enjoyed drinks and sunsets =)

One of my favorite London experiences was absolutely the Tate Modern...I've been a bit intrigued by modern art for awhile ( it grew from disinterest) but the Tate was fantastic! It's in an old factory so the space is spectacular, but the exhibits were really stunning....there are some pictures, look for them on picasa soon. But the highlights were defintiely the VW sculpture art and the Andy Warhols. The Warhol room begin as a total mind fuck-there is color and light everywhere-classic warhol screenprinting as wallpaper with warhol screen printing portraits behind....but once you warm up to it-it is really stunning.

Our last night in London we watched the US play Ghana and a classic english pub-I had fish and chips for dinner and then we went to a late night comedy show. The comedians were hillarious, even when they were taking the piss outta things I didn't understand, I suppose that was mostly because they hada funny accents! Late night comedy is not entirely conducive to an early start which is exactly what we had the next day boarding the euro-star to paris!

xxx