{"id":175,"date":"2007-09-17T04:49:28","date_gmt":"2007-09-16T16:49:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/2007\/09\/17\/london\/"},"modified":"2007-09-17T05:02:22","modified_gmt":"2007-09-16T17:02:22","slug":"london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/2007\/09\/17\/london\/","title":{"rendered":"London"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was promised free wireless internet on the bus to London<\/a>, but it was rather fleeting; gave up on it after a while and settled down with the iPod. Thankfully Ben<\/a>, a friend from Hamilton who is now a lawyer in London, rang during this trip, and I arranged to meet him on his way home from work.<\/p>\n

\"Canals<\/a>Ben lives in Rotherhithe, right on the Thames; this is an area of docklands that Maggie Thatcher renovated (with her bare hands, I hear) in the 80s, and is now a really nice area. There's a Hilton down the road, but there's snotty nosed kids down the road in the other direction. The Thames wiggles around a lot in central London, so it's close to everywhere, but you can't really get to it because the bridges and tunnels aren't where you need them to be.<\/p>\n

\"View<\/a>I stayed with Ben, his girlfriend Tania<\/a>, and his flatmates Mike and Graham<\/a>. Their apartment was in an old shipping warehouse that had been beautifully converted.<\/p>\n

Ben's friend Jeremy was celebrating his birthday the day I arrived, so we went down to Canary Wharf and played some football on a caged court down there. To say I was totally outclassed is an understatement; not only was almost everyone else a social or club player (one of the guys has just moved from NZ to the UK to go professional!) I only had casual shoes.<\/p>\n

\"Canary<\/a>The rest of the evening went fine, but after an hour or so asleep I woke up with pulsating pains in my foot, which needed a day of ice and elevation before I contemplated doing anything more with it.<\/p>\n

We went out in Soho the next night; a lively entertainment district, but with a hint of Amsterdam about it. I managed to find a Kwai Teow for dinner! I then promptly got asked to leave the vegetarian kebab store Ben and Tania were waiting in because my dish had meat in it.<\/p>\n

As a newcomer I was dared to walk down a particular street<\/a>, and I was disappointed that I only got asked if I wanted to \"go upstairs and see some ladies\" once. We went to a huge multi-level club called Tiger Tiger<\/a> and, around 3am, I decided against going out for the all-night poker at Gutshot<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We had some great meals out in Rotherhithe - the Old Salt Quay<\/a> was a nice pub on the waterfront; we also had dinner at a beautiful little restaurant called Simplicity<\/a>, with a small menu consisting entirely of excellent food made from local ingredients, and three staff, alternating between chef, waiter and counter clerk.<\/p>\n

<\/a>A trip around the South Bank is a must if in London, and we went to the Tate Modern, where they had an exhibition about cities, recreating London in biscuits<\/a>, and a Dali exhibition we decided against paying \u00a3<\/font>11 each to see. There are a bunch of strange statues of men on top of buildings<\/a>, which seem to be more art<\/a>, and we found one closer to the ground<\/a> also.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Monday was a public holiday, and the day of the Notting Hill Carnival. I headed out, along with 2 million of my closest friends, but I can't say I was that impressed. There was a street carnival feeling, with lots of capoeira<\/a>, tents selling Carribean food and lots of DJ platforms with huge speaker stacks, but other than one troupe of drummers, the part of the parade I saw was \"groups of people wearing big feathery things\" and \"truck with DJ<\/a> playing 'Trini To The Bone<\/a>' (sweet sweet T and T)\". However, I did also see a guy in an Exponents t-shirt<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tuesday, I caught up with Sammy again, bode farewell to friends old and new, and departed from Heathrow to Boston.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was promised free wireless internet on the bus to London, but it was rather fleeting; gave up on it after a while and settled down with the iPod. Thankfully Ben, a friend from Hamilton who is now a lawyer in London, rang during this trip, and I arranged to meet him on his way […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[67],"tags":[58],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/craig.dubculture.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}