Tuesday, May 6, 2008

London for 72 hours.

London was great, what can I say. I get there and the sun comes out
and pretty much stays out the whole time except at night when we
had a sprinkle or two.

I still find it amazing that I can go from our house in DC to our flat at
Old Compton Street in twelve hours door to door. I also find it
amazing that being in London no longer feels like I’m in a different
/foreign land. I get off the plane, go through immigration with my roll
aboard, go to the tube and an hour later I’m at Lester Square and five
minutes I’m at the flat. Not a big deal anymore.

All for about 72hours in London on my part, I left for an overnight
flight on Thursday night and leave on Monday on a daytime flight.

Everyone at work thinks I’m insane, and I think I might have to
agree to that assessment.

I get there around 12ish on Friday and we already have one friend
visiting. I take a quick shower and off to the box for lunch we go. We
sit there for a bit and watch the people come by when another friend
of ours comes by to say hello. We sit there until after five drinking
beer and coffee at which point we need to go to the flat to change so
we can go back and meet more friends at around 6:30.

We go to this other bar across the street from the box at seven dials
to meet yet another friend before going back to the box to get our
friend who we are taking to dinner. These guys are getting married
and we can’t make it so we decided to take them to a nice meal this
trip. This ended up being good because we went back to the flat and
stayed up until 4am talking and talking. We feel like we know them so
much better now.

The next day we really had no plans but to get up and eat. By the
end of the evening we had a drinks party with 13 people showing up
at our flat. We got whittled down to around four of and then went to
a newish club where one of the earlier people at the drinks party had
a friend that was DJing there. We went, we were not impressed. It
was kind of late, around two and the place really wasn’t that full. It
wastiny and the flyers they gave out to get people there in the
afternoonwere not being honored so we had to pay 5 pounds each.
We stayed for a bit and then Dave and I went home.

Now for Sunday, the whole reason we went (or I went for the
weekend) was to go see the Dame Edna Experience at the Royal
Voxhaw Tavern on a bank holiday weekend. We get there at two
in the afternoon only to have to wait an hour and ten minutes just
to get our wrist bands so we can get in later when the show starts.
We’re glad we got there when we did because we had other friends
who showed up at four and were turned away. Crazy, right?

We went and got something to eat at that point and then walked
back to have a pint or two until the show started. We ran into a
friend we hadn’t seen since Rio two years ago. He was looking really
good and we had a good long chat. Then later we meet up with more
friends that we knew from our last trip to Cape Town. Makes for a
very small gay world when that happens. We had a great time there
until about 9 that evening. At which point I told Dave I want to go
back and then go to Balan’s for something to eat. That was fun and
we got to watch the world go by from our perch in the window. We
stayed up a little bit late and then went to bed.

The next day I didn’t feel so good. I think I might be getting a little
bit of a sore throat. But we got up and packed and then went to Balan’s
for lunch. We had four bottles of Champaign left from the drinks party
and didn’t wantto leave it for the owner of the flat we rented so we
were not quite sure what to do with it. But as luck turns out on the
way back from lunch we spotted one of our friends from the first night
having coffee at costa coffee and asked him if he wanted it, and the
good thing was he did. So when weleft the flat we made a little care
package and dropped it off for him then got on the tube to go back to
Heathrow.

Twelve hours later we’re back in the good ole US of A.

Twelve hours after that I’m back at work. A little tired but none the
worse for wear.

We had fun, that’s what counts.

2 comments:

Tony said...

Glad you had a great time, sorry I didn't get to see you :-(

beatpunk said...

I can't wait to go with you soon, boys. XOXO