London: The first full day

Yanna and Yevginey’s apartment was quite awesome. The building was very modern and very secure. It was located in the Greenwich district which is where some of the Olympic events will take place in 2012 so currently they are doing some major upgrades to the area to accommodate that. Nearby is the Millennium Dome where they will host some events for the Olympics. The dome was originally built to celebrate the new millennium but is now used for all large events, for instance Michael Jackson will have a concert there in the coming months. Inside the dome there is a circular indoor city complete with building facades and windows looking out onto the walkway, reminiscent of The Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, if you have ever been. The walkway circles around the interior concert hall and consists almost entirely of Café’s, Nightclubs, Bars, and Restaurants of all varieties. It’s basically a one-stop party spot. The nearby train station has trains that will take you into Central London every 5-15 minutes. Then you can get pretty much anywhere within Central London using the tube.

On May 22nd, Alex and I took the train into Central London to check out the touristy stuff. We got off at the Waterloo station and grabbed a cappuccino at Caffé Nero, a great inexpensive café. Cafés are quite popular in London and there are several large chains to choose from (including Starbucks) with locations everywhere. We hung out there for a little while and decided to go to see the Tower of London which we had seen from afar the day before but were too exhausted to investigate. However, as we crossed the Tower Bridge we got a phone call from Yevginey inviting us to have lunch with him near his office building. We were eager to see his office building because he works at UBS Bank which is a huge company so we expected it to be a very cool building. We made our way on foot through the London Financial District to Yevginey’s building. We took pictures along the way of buildings we thought were cool. We met with Yevginey and sure enough his office complex (building doesn’t do it justice) was quite neat. We walked through these large urban parks where thousands of business people in suits were eating outdoors. Everywhere we went was bustling. Café and restaurant patios were full of people eating lunch and drinking coffee and wine. All of the Café’s advertise organic food with free range meat and healthy ingredients. Even KFC attempts to appeal to the classy Londoner. It seems junk food just doesn’t exist here, at least not in that part of town. We stopped at some mostly-Asian ‘take away’ restaurant that served primarily Thai, Chinese and Indian dishes. It seems in London the foods are extremely integrated, for instance: you can order Tikka Masala in a pub. They simply don’t draw very much distinction as to where the food came from. They just eat what tastes good and is healthy. The portions are also much smaller, which was fine because I was still stuffed from my delicious brown rice and curry. After lunch we toured around for a bit with Yevginey who showed us through the maze of inter-connected open air office parks. We made one last stop at a Starbucks so we could get a pick-me-up before Yevginey went back to work. I concluded that Starbucks really does taste the same every where you go and I liked Caffe Nero more. After dropping off Yevginey at work, Alex and I headed to the tube to get back to Central London for some sight seeing.

We again got off at the waterloo station and at this point I desperately had to pee but toilets in London are hard to find during the day (at night is a different story, at least for guys). We went to Costa Coffee (another coffe shop) but it didn’t have a bathroom, they informed me that the neighboring Starbucks did though. I headed over but there were several people in line. I waited as person after person went in and came out until finally the girl ahead of me went in. 15 minutes passed and she still had not left, I began to have my doubts about whether or not I would make it. I joked with someone else who was waiting to try and take my mind off my bladder’s contractions. She was Portuguese but was staying in London for 2 months on a hospital internship. As cute as she was, it didn’t help enough and after another 5-10 minutes I said fuck it and left with Alex to find another option. We crossed the river Thames on a very bizarrely constructed footbridge and went into a museum to use their facilities. This isn’t relevant to this occasion but I would like to point out that in England they do one thing which I don’t know why they don’t do in the US. They actually put full walls and doors around the stalls! Not like most places in the US where they have those tiny 3 foot doors with cracks all around the door so you can see everything that is going on inside and you can see your neighbors’ feet when you’re sitting down. After being in London I don’t know if I will ever use a public bathroom in the US again, at least not for that purpose.

After finally relieving my bladder we walked down the Thames past the London Eye which is an extremely massive ferris wheel where each Gondola is a large egg shaped glass viewing room which holds 10-20 people. We wanted to go up but the queue was really long and it cost 18 quid per person which we thought was unreasonable (quid = pound = 1.6 US dollars). So instead, we strolled past and headed back across the river to see Big Ben. We wanted to get a picture with both of us and Big Ben in the background so we asked a passing tourist to take our picture. The guy was a total idiot though; at first he took a picture where his finger was covering the lens, and unlike camera’s with a viewing hole, this camera only had an LCD display, so he must have KNOWN that he wasn’t taking a picture of anything. We politely asked him to take another because his finger had blocked the shot so he took another, this time his finger wasn’t blocking the lens but he still took a terrible picture where nothing was straight or centered. Maybe he had never seen a camera before… We thanked him and found someone else to take the picture instead this time with great success. By this time it was already getting a bit late in the afternoon and we wanted to visit Sitecore UK before they closed and everyone headed home, since it was Friday we wouldn’t have another chance.

We hopped on the tube and headed to meet with Sitecore UK. After introducing ourselves and talking about work for a bit we decided it was time to hit the pub so a few of the Sitecore UK people and Alex, myself, and Yevginey headed to their favorite local pub appropriately named The Monument after The Monument to the Great Fire of London which is located directly outside the pub’s door. Laust, the CEO of Sitecore UK, bought us all pint after pint and as time went on more Brits began to get off work and head to the pub. Our Sitecore UK colleagues have quite the network of pubgoers so our table began to gather a crowd. One of the guys from Sitecore UK was banging one of the barmaids and was best friends with another guy who was banging another barmaid which meant our pints were now deeply discounted or free; I couldn’t tell which because Laust grabbed the tab. Around 9pm we finally realized that Yanna was waiting at home for us so we said our good byes and took the train home.
After we met up with Yanna we all headed over to the Millenium Dome where there are many nicer restaurants and bars. We ate at a Chinese restaurant which was quite fancy and modern. After dinner we were pretty full and tired so we headed back to the house to get a good nights sleep.