London + back again

Ahhh, London was so wonderful! I had never been there before and just adored it. Yes, yes, I know vacation and visiting with friends and all of this is makes it a different experience from actually living there. But it was a good experience! What didn't we do!?

I arrived Friday, picked up my friend's keys from the restaurant below his flat. After shower and "topping up" the Skype phone I borrowed from Diana, I walked around West London for the afternoon. My friend got off work and we went to a gastropub in Angel for dinner. Delicious food: notably, the "chips" (fries). Walked past a hip bar and decided to go in for a shi-shi drink. The bar was warm refuge, bustling, small, crowded, dark, looked nondescript from the outside. Good fun. Reminded me of a bigger/older Boston.

Saturday we headed to Portabello Market to browse the food, antiques, and people watch. From there, we hoped on the tube to get to Embanquement (spelling?) where we walked along the Thames, crossed bridges, heard a classical music afternoon concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, saw the Tate Modern and the Gauguin Exhibit going on right now. What next? We went toward Central London to see the sights, walk through Chinatown, Regents Park, Hyde Park, etc. We stopped when we got hungry as we were passing Iraqi food. YUM. After that we picked up ice cream on the way home.

Sunday we went to Brick Lane. So cool! Hipster market type. Young crowd, awesome stands of independent artists with graphic tees, jewelry, scarves, clothes, trinkets, cards, bags, food, etc. I loved the bustling crowd, diversity of look, style, language. From there we went to afternoon tea and hustled to a fringe theater show that was hilarious. I looooved it. Walked home, past this beautiful, empty street with all the embassies. Watched part of Woody Allen movie and crashed hard.

Monday morning I got to meet Diana's musician friends for breakfast at Le Pain Quotidien. Yay! So nice to meet them and talk about our little Diana. I caught a flight at about 4 p.m. and watched the sunset for about 8 hours as we raced the sun toward the West. I was exceedingly proud of myself for doing homework and not sleeping during the flight. Picked up my car, exhausted, drove back to Denver and got to bed at 11 p.m. Denver time/6 a.m. London time.

I am very lucky to have such good friends all around the world. Couldn't have asked for a more perfect weekend!

Since then, back to the ol' routine. Gym in the morning, work and meetings and class all day. I wrote and handed in a 3,000 word midterm yesterday (due at 7 p.m.). Glad that's over with! On to the next paper, er. um. I mean updating the neglected little bloggie. Sorry bloggie and kind readers!

Also of note, I have now gone running 2 days in a row! YAaaay! The first day I did:

walk 5 min
run 10 min
walk 5 min
run 10 min

Then yesterday I did:

walk 5 min
Run 10 min
walk 5 min
run 10 min
walk 5 min
run 17 min
walk 10 min

And when I say "run," let's be honest, I was barely jogging. But, hey, it's fall. It's beautiful and leaves are falling. I felt great and felt pretty lucky and happy about it all! Who cares about all that law school work waiting for me. :)