London!

Last weekend i went to London - Jeremy was gracious enough to let me crash on his couch for the weekend.
London is definitely awesome. Definitely cosmopolitan - I think more than San Francisco, and possibly even more than New York.
I had a whirlwind tour - I arrived friday night, met up with Jeremy and an old friend Anchal who used to work in San Francisco. After dinner Jeremy took me on a walking tour of all the major attractions: Piccadilly Circus, Chinatown, (real) Soho, etc.

The next day was more of the same - Camden Market which reminded me a lot of the Haight Street in San Francisco, but with much better shopping . In fact, if i had an infinite amount of money, that's exactly where i'd shop for Burnign Man outfits - the Cyberdog store rocks.

I saw a lot, but i feel that i spent more time riding the tube than seeing the city. We would jump in the tube, surface somewhere, look around, jump back in, go somewhere else, look around, repeat. So my knowledge of London is fairly spotty - i have no idea wher ethings are in relationship to each other, but i know how to get there by tube!

Saturday night, of course, we had the ultimate "london experience": go eat (very) expensive (and bad) food at Meza (never eat there. their paella is basically rice-a-roni with meat thrown on top. i cook better than that), with an evening capped off at a "members-only" club.
Ironically, all the bars in UK used to close at 11pm, and it's only recently that they relaxed the liquor laws to allow places to serve alcohol later. So London has a ton of "private" clubs where you pay a huge annual fee, and can sit at the bar and drink expensive drinks later than usual. Naturally, Jeremy is well-connected so we went to one - it was entertaining.
Truthfully, the menu itself was a work of art - every drink had a little back story to it, with a history of a drink and who created it - very cool. And of course, the dance club downstairs was entertaining - we kept playing the "guess which girl is an escort" game. Which really is only a slight variation on the game i played at a Leeds bar the night before, where I chatted with some girls that ended up beign strippers. And who says that Leeds is a boring town?

anyway, london rocks. very pretty architecture, nice people, and beautfiul parks. if you visit in the winter, bring a warm coat and a hat. it's damn cold.

Naturally, both Jeremy and I took pictures.