Commute

You walk to Starbucks and take whichever comes first



or walk past the cute church and scary projects and get on



then you get off and switch buses



'til you get to



From there it's a short walk.

To go home, cross the Vale and get on



get off and switch buses



'til you get to



Walk up Princedale to the intersection of Pottery and Penzance and take a right, or up Portland 'til it turns into Penzance at the end.

Odds & ends

Additions to the "crisp" flavoUr haiku: Mexican Chilli; Asparagus & Crushed Black Pepper; Cheddar With Mango Chutney.

Also thought I'd do a "mobile" haiku. These are all places you can buy cell phones and service (phones aren't "locked" over here, so you can pretty much use any phone with any service. I'm thinking of "unlocking" my Sprint phone -- scary!): The Link, Phones4u, 3 (check out the "milkmaid ad"), Orange, O2, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Virgin Mobile, Carphone Warehouse, Chatterbox. My service is 3, BTW, and I got my phone at The Link.

Back in the U.S.A., we seem to only have the dark blue color
Lobelia

Not too many gussied up cars compared to SF
Grrrrr!

Coming home from the (Steven's) office
Sky over Portland Rd.

Sunday stroll

Through Kensington Palace Gardens:

The Orangery
Where's Waldo (Steven)?
Chicks & their mamas

Then through Hyde Park to Piccadilly and the Wolseley, where Suzette, Sophia and Jeff took us to lunch for Steven's birthday (remember it's a season):

Cookie plate

30º

Sounds cute & quaint, doesn't it? But let me tell ya -- these folks over here aren't used to thirty degree weather. Pottery Lane is behind (and next to -- this is London) our block of Penzance Place, and last night tempers were flaring. Seemed to have a different effect on us, though...

This morning we went to Negozio Classica for the most fabulous cappuccino (or macchiatto or whatever) in London, but the machine was broken. So we walked up to Tea's Me near the Ladbroke Grove tube station, where we hopped on the Hammersmith & City (pink) line to Moorgate.

View from the train

We were heading to White Cube, and while Old Street is actually a closer station, it's more of a pain to transfer than to walk a few extra blocks. Realizing that it was probably too early for the gallery to be open, we wandered around. Wandered into the Geffrye Museum. Wandered past this place:

See the face?

Then somehow it was 2:00 so we had lunch.

White Cube from our table

The show was Tracey Emin and Steven thought it was going to be annoying, but it was actually very beautiful. Beautiful art about challenging subject matter is so NOW!

Then we decided to go to the Barbican CentRE to see the ColoUr after Klein show. On the way we passed through Bunhill Fields cemetery (where William Blake is buried) and saw these two squirrels:

Two squirrels
No, really!

The Barbican itself is like the love child of Lincoln Center, Embarcadero Center, Logan's Run, Boston City Call, and I don't know what else...

From Barbican tube platform
Three 45-floor towers
Maze of "skywalks"
Black cat in stairwell
Inside the fortress
Bird-feeding grannie...
... in THERE!
Skywalk sight (London Wall!)

Anyhow, on my way home I had to record this:

Homage to Keira

And for those of you who haven't seen it, home is the top two floors of this blue house:

Our "flat"

Back in Londre

You may have noticed a gap in the Paris posts. That's 'cuz my phone battery went inexplicably dead, and since I couldn't think of anything to SAY, no pics meant no posts... For all you folk back in SF, rest easy: Bay Area food is better. And the citizens are nicer (if only superficially so). But Paris sure does have that certain je ne c'est quois. I think it's mostly about pretty vistas and incredible shopping. And honeyed slow-roasted apricots in olive oil with rosemary and vanilla ice cream. I swear to god. Try it! Apparently you've also been checking the weather reports. It's like THIRTY DEGREES!!! (I have to get used to that sounding hot, since for all their inches and ounces and pints, the Brits are totally metric when it comes to weather).

Paris II

Coquille St. Jacques
Ceramic Vase (LB?)
Steven & Craig
Tiles
More street art
View from our loft
Back at Waterloo

Paris I

Taxi from Gare du Nord
Where we had breakfast
Street art?
Katherine & Steven
Pompidou Center
Merchandising
Louvre
Eiffel Tower
Palais de Tokyo
Palais de Tokyo restaurant
Palais de Tokyo gift shop
Palais de Tokyo book store

Bunnies

This morning Suzette & Sophia came over. We had lunch on Westbourne Grove and then walked down to Holland Park. Situated in the middle of a city of 7.5 million people, Holland Park is not only home to the usual pigeons, squirrels and the odd carp, ducks, etc., but also to some kind of coots (or maybe dusky moorhens), peacocks, and more black bunnies than you can shake a stick at. It was raining, so the rabbits weren't really out en masse, but we did see (and Sophia stalked) quite a few:

Intrepid stalker
Elusive prey

Tomorrow evening we meet Craig & Katherine at Waterloo International for the 6:42 Eurostar to Paris! Bonjour Europe!