hawkwing_lb: (Default)
Yesterday I flew to London for a Secret Meeting of Utter Secretness (okay, not that secret). I left the house at 0405, and arrived at King's Cross at 1130.

It was A Morning, let's put it like that.

The meeting took most of the afternoon. When it was over, I met some friends at Waterstones Piccadilly - a friend I used to go climbing with in Dublin, and a friend from my undergraduate course - and we went out for food in a wander around Soho on a Saturday evening around 1830. We fetched up eventually in a really good Greek meze place called "The Real Greek" - Greek food, Greek staff (I may have startled the guy who was serving us by showing off my rusty Greek - turns out he was from Thessaloniki). I haven't eaten proper Greek food since I was last in Greece, because you can't really get it in Dublin. But this was fantastic, absolutely great.

(I may have spent about fifty pounds sterling on food yesterday, if not more: I was a bit of a bottomless pit between the early start and the late stop.)

I've had a nice sleep since then, on my friend's air mattress, and in about an hour I should start heading back towards the airport. It's a lovely bright day in London, and if I didn't have to catch a plane, I'd be heading out to poke in the museums. But unfortunately I'm the kind of person who can get really distracted in museums, so I had better not risk it.

I will risk stopping in Waterstones Piccadilly again, though. Niiiiiiiiiiiice bookshop.
hawkwing_lb: (Default)
I have slept for a week.

You may or may not recall that I was traveling to foreign English lands in order to attend Nine Worlds 2014, and LonCon3: the 2014 World Science Fiction Convention. Many were the adventures of your intrepid correspondent! Much did she travel! Far did she wander on untrodden paths...


...Well, maybe not so much with the untrodden.


Nine Worlds 2014


I arrived at Heathrow early on Sunday morning, after about 30-45 minutes' sleep. In between the neighbours' dog shutting up, and my alarm going off, there was not all that much time - so I don't actually recall all that much from Sunday. I had a panel to participate in. I arm-wrestled Geoff Ryman (and won): he is a very clever tall skinny geek. I met the very smart Zen Cho, and blurrily encountered Jared Shurin and Anne C. Perry, and Jenni Hill, a lovely editor from Orbit UK. I recall having lunch with Elizabeth Bear and Alex Dally MacFarlane, and meeting Scott Lynch in passing, but I was seriously out of it.


Cambridge


Towards the evening, the amazing writer and historian and all-around lovely person Kari Sperring and her man Phil bore me off to Cambridge, where I got to meet their cats, among them a very affectionate half-grown catling who wanted All The Attention.


The inimitable Telzey.

I am immensely grateful to Kari and Phil for their impeccable and delightful hospitality - and for introducing me to young Michelle Yeoh in Hong Kong action movies. They are truly wonderful people.


Cambridge has pretty architecture.

Some tourism (and bookshop tourism) happened on Monday, when I received a whirlwind tour of Cambridge and environs, including the famous Soup Pub (whose real name I cannot now remember). On Tuesday D. of Intellectus Speculativus and their partner Zoe trained down to Cambridge and I spent the day with them, doing tourist stuff like looking at buildings:


Pretty buildings

And inside museums:


Cambridge has many museums

...where we agreed that it was sometimes nice to be able to look at stuff that had nothing to do with any of our subject areas (all Classicists/ancient historians, us) and just admire it as a collection of pretty objects. (The museum did try to educate us about the objects in the collection, but we were having none of it. Bad historians were bad on Tuesday.)


And repaired to a pub called the Maypole, where many beers were on offer and I sampled only one.


Wednesday contained a lot of wibbling on my part and attempts to convince myself that LonCon3 would not actually be terrifying.


Read more... )
hawkwing_lb: (Default)
stuff 308
stuff 308,
originally uploaded by hawkwing_lb.


Yeah, I'm still playing with pictures.

I found this. Isn't it cool?
hawkwing_lb: (Default)
stuff 308
stuff 308,
originally uploaded by hawkwing_lb.


Yeah, I'm still playing with pictures.

I found this. Isn't it cool?

London

Jun. 27th, 2009 09:44 am
hawkwing_lb: (Criminal Minds JJ what you had to do)
Hot. Sweltering.

It's very interesting, though. And internets here are expensive, so I'll just say I've been to Europe's biggest bookshop, wandered around Covent Garden, seen the British Museum, St Paul's Cathedral - the Whispering Gallery is fabulous - the tiny remains of the Mithraeum, walked down the Thames to the Tower and walked all around the outside, walked up to Horse Guards and seen the poor soldiers sweltering in the heat, walked around to Trafalgar Square and ate at a place calling itself "The Texas Embassy Cantina". Lot of walking. Now I'm off to do some more.

Good thing the underground is everywhere, though.

London

Jun. 27th, 2009 09:44 am
hawkwing_lb: (Criminal Minds JJ what you had to do)
Hot. Sweltering.

It's very interesting, though. And internets here are expensive, so I'll just say I've been to Europe's biggest bookshop, wandered around Covent Garden, seen the British Museum, St Paul's Cathedral - the Whispering Gallery is fabulous - the tiny remains of the Mithraeum, walked down the Thames to the Tower and walked all around the outside, walked up to Horse Guards and seen the poor soldiers sweltering in the heat, walked around to Trafalgar Square and ate at a place calling itself "The Texas Embassy Cantina". Lot of walking. Now I'm off to do some more.

Good thing the underground is everywhere, though.
hawkwing_lb: (No dumping dead bodies!)
Things I am going to do in (my three days in) London:

- Visit the British Museum. Look at all the ancient stuffs.
- Visit the London Mithraeum, Queen Victoria Street, and nearby -
- St Paul's Cathedral
- Visit the Imperial War Museum (maybe: I might just go back to the BM)
- Look at the outside of the Tower (because entry is Expensive)
- Visit the Globe
- Stare at the Parliament buildings and think nationalistic thoughts. (What? I'm Irish. The history of the British government brings out the worst in me.)

That might be enough, I think.
hawkwing_lb: (No dumping dead bodies!)
Things I am going to do in (my three days in) London:

- Visit the British Museum. Look at all the ancient stuffs.
- Visit the London Mithraeum, Queen Victoria Street, and nearby -
- St Paul's Cathedral
- Visit the Imperial War Museum (maybe: I might just go back to the BM)
- Look at the outside of the Tower (because entry is Expensive)
- Visit the Globe
- Stare at the Parliament buildings and think nationalistic thoughts. (What? I'm Irish. The history of the British government brings out the worst in me.)

That might be enough, I think.

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