live and direct from london. got in friday and managed to mess up my visa a bit. seems there's no passport control between ireland and the UK so they may or may not think i left the country last week. at least my passport stamp is good until march. the customs guy's solution: "oh, just fly somewhere and then come back". works for me.
it was nice being back in dublin, and nice to see renee. her new place is way the hell on the north side, not conveniently close to trinity like her last flat, but oh well, you know what they say about beggars. she has new roomies, all of whom i knew except dani and rina and no one else knew dani because he was new. rina is mad foxy, and pleasant addition to the people in ireland who i know list. i got to see the old roomies save one.
i spent a lot of time wandering around, again, and made it all the way to the papal cross in phoenix park this time around. that's a thirteen km round trip to the uninitiated. also finally went on the jameson distillary tour and got picked for the whiskey sampling at the end. i drank a lot, and was quite drunk by 4:30 in the afternoon. a new low!
today was me first full day in london, and i damn sure made good use of it. i attempted to apply for an oyster card but that was a bit of a snafu. i found possibly the cheapest restaurant for miles. sun and i had an impromptu "sun and phill" day, which we've not had in quite some time.
we started by taking the tube to sloane square after staring blankly at the map for aeons. our goal? the one and only battersea power station, which i was surprised to find abandoned. but it's really big and cool, and there's nothing i like to look at more than big giant industrial complexes, except maybe abandoned big giant industrial complexes. on the way back across the chelsea bridge we got to see the whale being ferried downriver (it's the first to be sighted in the thames for several centuries, apparently). went right below us, too. seems like an ill-omen, to the paranoic part of myself.
we then headed over to westminster, so as to go to the saatchi gallery and stare at YBA hubris. and right across the street from the station? big ben. which was surprising for some reason and rather neat, if touristy (but unintentionally). i also correctly identified and named a statue by rodin at a distance because i recognized it from a miniature study we had at the snite museum. cuz i am the man like that.
unfortunately the saatchi place is closed until the end of the year (figures) so we just went to the Dali experience in its stead. that show was all prints, and fairly decent if hideously installed in places. apparently, the british have not discovered matboard tags and god forbid bevelled edges on things. they also seem to think that comic sans is a good font for an art show.
we did not go on the eye, but we were next to it. sun had a large pancake, which is just as good in many ways.
then it was on to tralfagar square and a large, puzzling statue of a pregnant armless woman. at first i thought parliment used to be into kinky shit but it turns out she's some recent artist, who also lacks arms.
we rode over to picadilly, and stared at a spill cup of soda running down the steps of the eros fountain. in many ways, it was as engrossing as the stuff we'd been doing all day, but maybe we were just tired. we also flew into rages if people appeared to be about to step in it. methinks i smell a pretentious art project in the near future.
we then got lost in a hideous place called funland in the trocadero. it's this massive arcade that dominates most of the fucking building, and contains the sketchiest bar ever. in the words of tim hogarth, funland "sounds like the kind of place where a clown molests you in the bathroom while smoking a cigar". can't say i disagree, but they may have cheap drinks there and that's at a premium in this city.
then we had dinner and the waiter acted like a dick so i won't be going back to there. gee, now where am i gonna find indian food in london?!
and now i'm here. looking at tits. yayyyyy suicide girls!
(my entries will not all be this long, either, fyi. thanks for reading this far)
it was nice being back in dublin, and nice to see renee. her new place is way the hell on the north side, not conveniently close to trinity like her last flat, but oh well, you know what they say about beggars. she has new roomies, all of whom i knew except dani and rina and no one else knew dani because he was new. rina is mad foxy, and pleasant addition to the people in ireland who i know list. i got to see the old roomies save one.
i spent a lot of time wandering around, again, and made it all the way to the papal cross in phoenix park this time around. that's a thirteen km round trip to the uninitiated. also finally went on the jameson distillary tour and got picked for the whiskey sampling at the end. i drank a lot, and was quite drunk by 4:30 in the afternoon. a new low!
today was me first full day in london, and i damn sure made good use of it. i attempted to apply for an oyster card but that was a bit of a snafu. i found possibly the cheapest restaurant for miles. sun and i had an impromptu "sun and phill" day, which we've not had in quite some time.
we started by taking the tube to sloane square after staring blankly at the map for aeons. our goal? the one and only battersea power station, which i was surprised to find abandoned. but it's really big and cool, and there's nothing i like to look at more than big giant industrial complexes, except maybe abandoned big giant industrial complexes. on the way back across the chelsea bridge we got to see the whale being ferried downriver (it's the first to be sighted in the thames for several centuries, apparently). went right below us, too. seems like an ill-omen, to the paranoic part of myself.
we then headed over to westminster, so as to go to the saatchi gallery and stare at YBA hubris. and right across the street from the station? big ben. which was surprising for some reason and rather neat, if touristy (but unintentionally). i also correctly identified and named a statue by rodin at a distance because i recognized it from a miniature study we had at the snite museum. cuz i am the man like that.
unfortunately the saatchi place is closed until the end of the year (figures) so we just went to the Dali experience in its stead. that show was all prints, and fairly decent if hideously installed in places. apparently, the british have not discovered matboard tags and god forbid bevelled edges on things. they also seem to think that comic sans is a good font for an art show.
we did not go on the eye, but we were next to it. sun had a large pancake, which is just as good in many ways.
then it was on to tralfagar square and a large, puzzling statue of a pregnant armless woman. at first i thought parliment used to be into kinky shit but it turns out she's some recent artist, who also lacks arms.
we rode over to picadilly, and stared at a spill cup of soda running down the steps of the eros fountain. in many ways, it was as engrossing as the stuff we'd been doing all day, but maybe we were just tired. we also flew into rages if people appeared to be about to step in it. methinks i smell a pretentious art project in the near future.
we then got lost in a hideous place called funland in the trocadero. it's this massive arcade that dominates most of the fucking building, and contains the sketchiest bar ever. in the words of tim hogarth, funland "sounds like the kind of place where a clown molests you in the bathroom while smoking a cigar". can't say i disagree, but they may have cheap drinks there and that's at a premium in this city.
then we had dinner and the waiter acted like a dick so i won't be going back to there. gee, now where am i gonna find indian food in london?!
and now i'm here. looking at tits. yayyyyy suicide girls!
(my entries will not all be this long, either, fyi. thanks for reading this far)