Bostonians in London

The last couple of weeks have been a little crazy, it’s getting down to the wire to get majo work done on my dissertation, and nearly time to start studying for finals. Despite the stress I’ve managed to have some really great days in London.

Last week my friend Laura and I spent Friday together wandering the city. Laura is my friend from Northeastern who is studying outside of London. We spent most of the afternoon at the National Portrait Gallery gawking at paintings and photos of famous Brits, past and present. My favorites were a huge painting of Paul McCartney, Andy Warhol’s prints of the Queen, and the new portrait of Princes William and Harry. It’s a really great museum.

We headed to a Mexican restaurant called Café Pacifico in Covent Garden for a late lunch, and found ourselves full of amazing chips, salsa, fajitas, burritos and lunchtime margaritas by the end of the meal. It was wonderful, and far more delicious than any of us were expecting. We made a stop at Scoop, the great gelato place nearby before wandering around with Laura’s friend Sam (also from Northeastern) in search of a good deal for a play that night. After lots of stops, we got reasonable tickets to Waiting for Godot and then killed some time before the show in a French Café in SoHo.

The show was funny and sweet and sad. Sir Ian McKellan (Gandalf!) played one of the leads, which was really incredible to see. I loved it.

After the show Sam and I met up with Kelsey and Bhumi at The Rocket, one of our favorite bars then made it over to Brick Lane, the London street known for late night Indian food. Brick Lane is crazy because Brits "go for a curry" after a night at a pub instead of getting pizza or Chinese like Americans do. Brick Lane is full of these white-tableclothed late-night restaurants, it was really awesome.

This Friday Laura and I embarked on another adventure, this time having a far less intellectual day. We went to Abbey Road to see the studios and the zebra crossing (Brit-speak for crosswalk) and take in the magic of the Beatles. The whole area in front of the studios is graffitied by visitors, it’s really, really cool. People from all over the world leave messages there, the next time I go back I’m bringing my Sharpie. We spent some time on a bench watching foreign tourists take the famous picture crossing the street. Abbey Road is just a busy residential street, so a lot of the tourists had problems and frequently got honked at by annoyed British motorists. It was hilarious, and I loved just being there. The Beatles music is so universal, there were people of all ages and tons of nationalities just hanging out at Abbey Road. So cool.

We decided to walk from Abbey Road to Camden Market, which looked like a nice and quick walk on my map. The walk was certainly nice, but it took about twice as long as I’d estimated. Oh well, it was a beautiful sunny day, so we didn’t mind. We walked around Camden Market for awhile (actually a long street with tons of markets along it). I wanted tons of jewelry, clothes and posters, but was able to resist and save my money. I did splurge on vegan ice cream (delicious!) and some cheap Chinese food for linner. It was a really nice afternoon.