Streets of Soho

I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand
walkin through the streets of Soho in the rain.
He was lookin for the place called Lee Ho Fooks,
gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein.

On Thursday I posted a picture of me in front of Lee Ho Fooks, the Soho Chinese restaurant made famous by Warren Zevon. The slip of paper in my hand was not a menu, but a coupon that a street barker was handing out. In our group that was touring together, there was an age divide right around 35 that recognized the cultural significance of the place while the younger generation was perplexed with our fascination.

Since we were with a group tour, we had most of our meals covered which meant eating a lot of mediocre food in places that cater to tourists. We had fish and chips one night and curry another. We did have Chinese one day at a different Chinatown place, but no beef chow mein.


On our free night, we found ourselves back in the Soho/Charing Cross area looking for a place and stumbled onto Norman’s Coach and Horses that was a traditional British pub catering to the locals rather than the tourists. And even though we picked it at random out of severe hunger, it seems that the place has a colorful history. The upstairs dining room was closed for a private party but they let us eat down in the pub portion. I had a bangers sandwich that had a cutesy name and my wife had the meat pie. Both were delicious.


We kept getting jostled by the drinking patrons who were very wrapped up in watching some international rugby tournament. For dessert, two doors down was an authentic French pastry shop with outdoor dining. That was a great way to satisfy our sweet tooths in Soho. So we had lots of great dining in London, but never did run into any werewolves with perfect hair walking with the queen.

My Hair Was NOT Perfect

What am I going to get?

Tale Of Two Cameras

Just before I went to England I bought a new camera body. The Canon Kiss Digital N (the equivalent of the Rebel XT in the US) that I had bought in Japan three years ago had been in the shop three times for various things and parts were as slow as molasses coming in. So I sucked it up and bought a Rebel XTi which is essentially the same camera but with 10 megapixels instead of 8. The advantage here was that I could continue to use the lenses and accessories I already owned.

My wife had a very old Sony digital point and shoot that just went south on her. For a replacement, we wanted something not dependent on proprietary Sony MemoryStickDuoProPlus whatevers, so we went with the Panasonic DMC-TZ1 which is 6 megapixels and has a 10x optical zoom and uses standard SD cards.

We both took tons of pictures, me more than her, and we had over a thousand shots between us when we returned. As I was very slowly sorting them and uploading them to Flickr, I noticed something odd. For the most part when we took pictures of the same thing we usually had a different composition or emphasis. But these two pictures of the National Gallery were nearly identical.




The top one is mine and the lower one is hers. Click on either picture to be taken to the Flickr page or see the full image (warning: very large files) by clicking on either this link for mine or this one for hers. The Canon seems to have a slightly brighter exposure and a very different white balance, not that I understand what that terms mean. So I cropped a very small portion of each to see what I’m getting with my camera with nearly twice the megapixels and easily ten times the weight.



As you can tell, not much. I love my digital SLR because of its power and potential, but I’m still learning all the features of it. It seems that when you just need to capture some quick memories those little pocket cameras do just fine.

You can see more of my rather cloudy London pictures here. And be forewarned that I will be trickling out more in the weeks to come.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: What do you take pictures with?

London Diary Wrap Up - The Flight Home

One of the problems of group tours is that you don't control the schedule. Our flight back to DC was scheduled for 11:30 am, but since we were a small group, the tour company combined us on a bus with another group with a much earlier flight, so we had to be packed and out of the hotel by 6 am. Even after check-in and VAT rebate, that gave us over two hours to kill at Heathrow.

The Queen just dedicated Terminal 5 which is supposed to be grander and posher than Terminal 3 which we were flying out of. It must be grand indeed. Just past security at Terminal 3 is an enormous duty free shop equal to an upscale mall. It also has a full food court and the last chance to buy luxury Harrods and Burberry souvenirs.

We played a game called Spend The Pence. The goal was to leave the terminal with as little British money as possible. We were down to 57 pence so I bought two tabloids, The Sun at 20p and The Daily Sun for 35p. Both of these papers are known as redtops for the color of their title banner. They also both feature topless Page 3 Girls on, duh, page 3. The Page 3 girls make it tough to read page 2 in public, but fortunately that is just the national and international headlines. The real stories are inside. Both had highly detailed and unflattering breakdowns of the Paul McCartney/Heather Mills divorce (or as they call it, Macca vs Mucca, which I think is more than a little vulgar). The people must have something good to read.

Just before take-off, the pilot pointed out a new A380, the biggest passenger jet in the world taking off. It is the standard for first class luxury, but it is bone ugly. But I guess if it means having a full private room for a flight to Singapore, a little ungainliness can be tolerated.

An apocryphal tourist story so good that we heard it three times from three different guides is that some ignorant American once asked "Why did they build Windsor Castle so close to the airport?" Sure enough, out the right window I had a fantastic final glimpse of the Queen's weekend cottage and all its grounds. While we weren't very high, I couldn't quite see into her bedroom window to see if she was waving good-bye to me.

Upon landing eight hours later at 4 pm local time, the students traveling with us burst into applause. It's fun to travel, but it's also good to be home.

London Diary Day Six - Dons and Bards

It was another day of bus trips, which meant happy napping. Lots of snoring going on between the stops. The first stop was Cambridge, home of musty colleges that make American Ivy League schools look like communes. If it weren't for a student going back to her dorm in her bright red spiked hair and fur boots, I'd think I'd set onto the set of a Harry Potter movie, and I may have.

The second stop was Stratford-Upon-Avon where we saw Anne Hathaway's cottage. Anne was Shakespeare's wife who inherited his "second best bed." I went ahead and asked. His best bed went with the house to his daughter and son-in-law. In the town itself, we toured his boyhood home which is only a little more than five hundred years old.

Back in London, we finished off our must-do checklist with a nighttime ride on the world's biggest Tacky Tourist Attraction, the London Eye. The only thing I didn't get to do on this trip that I wanted to do was to have that pina colada at Trader Vic's. Gives me an excuse to go back and look for Lon Cheney Jr walking with the queen. AAAAH-OOOOOOOH!

London Diary Day Five - The Blitz

With time running short on our visit and with just one day left of unscheduled touring, we had to hit our list of must-do sites hard. The morning covered St. Paul's Cathedral, the Globe Theater, and Tate Modern.

In the afternoon we headed over to the British Museum and Harrods. While it may seem sacrilegious to mention both in the same sentence, they are similar in many ways. Both are over-the-top unimaginably vast archetypes of their respective niches. The British Museum proudly displays the fruits of centuries of imperial exploration and conquest. Harrods, on the other hand, is the pinnacle of conspicuous consumption marketing run amuck. My wife chided me for gasping in horror at a purse that was 985 pounds (price not weight).

The evening took us to The 39 Steps, a very British comedy. It had to be British because it included one guy playing multiple female roles. They've loved that cross-dressing thing since at least Shakespeare.

Since it was Saint Patrick's Day, I celebrated with a double shot of Bumiller and then a pint of cider. I did hear the bartender jokingly warn one of the female customers that no snogging was allowed at the bar. Good advice for life as well.

London Diary Day Four - Ancient History

The tour director kept telling us to take our minds back in time five thousand years as we approached Stonehenge. The gusty cold rain helped us get in that mood as we walked around the circular out cropping of rocks that had been standing there since the pyramids were built. While the Egyptians were putting those up, Bronze Age Celts were making giant pi signs aimed at the winter solstice. Modern day hippies and New Age nuts take over the site on Summer Solstice because the weather is better then. I don't blame them.

Then it was onto the Roman Baths at, duh, Bath. At the edge of the Roman Empire they had built a luxurious spa resort that fell into ruins when the Visigoths and Vandals drew all the legions back to Rome about 400 AD. The area lay in ruins for over a millennia (which is a long time to go without a bath) until the 1700s brought the area back into fashion.

And it's not a trip to Bath without walking the steps of the Jane Austen costume dramas set there. We had afternoon tea at the Jame Austen Center before napping on the bus ride back to London.

To bring ourselves back into the present, we went to the pub behind the hotel and one of us had a whiskey drink, my wife had a lager drink, and I had a cider drink. We all fell down but got up again.

London Diary Day Three - Rocking The Tower

So far the weather has lived down to all expectations. It has rained sometime every day. It stayed clear for our self-guided tour of Westminster Abbey, but after the afternoon romp through the Tower of London (most commonly heard phrase: "If I had known it was a full castle, I would have been more eager to see it.")

We walked across Tower Bridge without it falling down. The tale of London Bridge is too nerdy to go into.

There are two ways to get discount theater tickets in London. The have a half price TKTS booth just like New York and if the show doesn't have tickets there, there is a plethora of brokers surrounding the area. That is how we got tickets to We Will Rock You which is to Queen what Mamma Mia is to Abba and all that implies.

Looks like more rain for today. Ta-ta for now.

London Diary Day Two - The Queen And I

Day Two was the archetypal motor coach tour. We wheeled around London for the windscreen tour (Look Big Ben! Look Tower Bridge!) We did stretch our feet long enough for the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. Horses and a band and lots of guys in silly uniforms marching down public streets.

Then it was off to Windsor Castle. Our Blue Badge (some sort of certification) tour guide gave us the 45 minute history of British royalty. Lots of guys named William and Charles and Henry. And many met a rather unpleasant end.

Windsor Castle exceeded expectations. It was both very castle-y and very royal. According to the flag pole, the queen was in residence. The paper says she spent the morning at nearby Heathrow dedicating a new terminal. I guess that' what queens do to earn their keep. If that keep includes astounding artwork, furnishings, and of course, real estate.

Back in London, after a long forced march with the kid portion of the tour group we saw Lord of the Rings: The Musical Comedy. The effects and costumes were fantastic, but even I'm getting jaded with the endless retelling of some sill guy with hairy toes that has a hard time getting rid of his jewelry. He should just give it to the queen, she has plenty and wouldn't mind a little more.

London Diary - Day One

We flew overnight int Heathrow Airport, leaving Dulles at 11 pm and arriving in London about 10 am. Which meant I got about five hours of sleep on the plane. England starts Daylight Savings Time (or British Summer Time as I'm told its called) for a few more weeks, so its a four hour difference right now.

We checked into our clean but tiny hotel room in the quaint neighborhood of Lambeth on the south bank of the Thames. Our tour guide is a big burly but friendly woman with a Phd in Medieval Studies. She sheparded us a on orientation ride through The Tube. From the Embankment Station we took a walking tour of Trafalger Square, Charing Cross, Chinatown and Covent Gardens.

In Chinatown I HAD to stop for a photo of at Lee Ho Fooks complete with Chinese menu in my hand. Those of us over 40 had to explain to the ones under 30 the mythological musical significance of this landmark. What are they teaching kids these days.

The evening meal was fish and chips and since we were all exhausted and turned in early. I watched several hours of really bad BBC. Just like I might have at home.

Time for breakfast. More updates to come.