Category London
A palace and a play
King Henry VIII was quite the king. All those wives and the drama with the Catholic Church and the fantastic Holbein portraits. Yesterday I went to see where he used to live. Hampton Court Palace is about 15 miles up the Thames from London and claims to be the largest medieval palace in Europe (certainly […]
Bun cha, kingfishers, and puppets who become real
Today I decided to explore the East London neighborhoods of Hackney and Shoreditch. I work in Shoreditch, so I’m there every day, but I’ve never really taken the time to take a closer look outside of work. The exterior is gritty, not pretty, but it’s arguably the hippest part of town and, on closer look, […]
A pottery Saturday
I didn’t make it to a museum or to any sight-seeing today (and I’m not sure I’m going to this weekend). Instead I had fun with pottery. You see, I’ve been making bircher muesli lately, and I have tiny cupboards, and . . . well, long story short, I needed a small dish with a […]
Portraits and pizza
One of my New Year’s resolutions is to do something interesting every weekend, even if I have to spend the rest of the weekend working or preparing my US tax return or otherwise stuck in front of a computer. This weekend I picked the National Portrait Gallery. I had never visited before because, well, I […]
It’s 2018 in London!
Fireworks on the Thames! It was an exercise in wading through massive crowds and standing for hours until the clock struck twelve. A dazzling display of fireworks glimpsed through a forest of phone-waving hands. Then another hour and a half wading through crowds and a long walk back to the flat. Fortunately it was not […]
We’ve gone to Scotland!
Left London’s sleety weather at Kings Cross station and traveled to Edinburgh where it’s sunny and FREEZING! The journey took most of the day (certainly all of the daylight hours in this northern clime) but we had a cozy dinner, a chilly walk around town (spying the castle and the street that inspired Harry Potter’s […]
Christmas Day
Oh, Christmas! Always a lovely, low-key day, and even more so in London where the city really shuts down and I don’t have relatives or friends to visit outside my own home. We let ourselves sleep in until we woke up naturally, and then began opening presents after a quick first-breakfast of English muffins (or, […]
Christmas Eve
First Christmas Eve in London. Same trio as in recent years but without the familiar setting and trappings of home. We didn’t try to reinvent our traditions (raclette!). Instead we did what made sense in London: take-away Indian food! After dinner we sat around the table talking far longer than it made sense to sit […]
Christmas Eve Day
What a fun day! Justin and I started the day with an early brunch** at The Elk in the Woods, which is just a few doors down from my flat. (**Justin claims that anything before 10am doesn’t qualify as brunch and must be called breakfast; I’m just going to call it early brunch.) The […]
Holidaying
One thing I’m loving about December in London is how I can sleep in until 8am and still have that slightly-type-A satisfaction of having gotten up before dawn to “get stuff done”. Today specifically, the cozy grey pre-dawn hours were devoted to wrapping all the presents while Justin slept (thank heavens for jet lag!). He […]
A More Gentlemanlike Manner 