London Calling

We were originally scheduled to meet up with some of my sister's Yale SOM classmates at some bar but after lugging my giant suitcase up two flights of subway stairs and considering Cathy's general state of exhaustion, we cancelled.


The Hoxton is a chic, modern hotel just north of London's financial district.  Having travelled to London about four times in the last five years, I've seen the major tourist destinations and didn't feel at a loss to take it easy this time around.  Cathy obviously agreed and when we began our trip by canceling the first of our engagements, it was a no-brainer as to what came next: room service.



I have a very specific routine when it comes to hotels.  For short stays like this one, I check out the bathroom, open up the hand soap, check for the kinds of complementary toiletries and q-tips we get, and then it's straight to the room service menu.  The menu at The Hoxton featured an array of the typical bar foods only fancied up a bit so I went classic and got a cheeseburger.  I'd been craving mustard since Paris and it was about time I fixed that.  Five days since I had last been in Barcelona also had me craving mayo mixed with ketchup.  I'm a condiments kinda girl.

Classic cheeseburger with "chips"

We met up with Rebecca the next day, a church friend of my sisters'.  She's doing her residency out in a London hospital so we grabbed lunch, a Korean feast I was too eager to devour to be bothered taking a photo.  Next stop then was a walking tour of Camden Market and the surrounding area.  I hoped I would get my lunch digested but there were so many food vendors I ended up abandoning my willpower for veggie samosas.

Cathy and Rebecca by the canal in Camden

Our snack was naturally followed by dinner.  We headed to a restaurant/pub in Shoreditch just a twenty or so minute walk from the hotel.  What I thought was going to be a greasy meal of fish and chips was actually one of the fanciest little suppers we had during our trip.

Arugula salad with beef

Grilled calamari salad with chorizo

Vegetable spring rolls

We spent another hour or so after dinner exploring Shoreditch, taking note of the giant crowds forming outside bars for what we assumed was happy hour, reinforcing the stereotype (i.e. half-truth) that the British love their alcohol.  We ended up crashing early old-lady style once we were back at the hotel, bidding bittersweet farewells to Rebecca.


Our last full day in London we planned to meet one of Cathy's fellow SOM classmates.  I've already forgotten his name but he was nice enough to take us all around the financial district and out to London Bridge.  Our first stop was a street fair that resembled a New York street fair in its setup but in no way it's size or style.  This setup was smaller and featured generally higher quality food, not the usual cheese-filled arepas and gyros.  Cathy got a fresh Mediterranean salad while I snacked on both her food and my own giant spinach and mozzarella arancino.  Cathy's friend got Thai which he offered us a taste of but I felt too weird digging into a stranger's lunch to accept and reluctantly declined.

Somewhere cool in the financial district

Repping our ties to Wesley outside St. Paul's Cathedral

On London Bridge with Tower Bridge behind us

This was my first trip to London that didn't feature tourism as our primary motive for visiting.  It was nice, the relaxed pace and the surprising little nooks of London that were way more interesting than staring at Big Ben (no offense).  We even discovered Brick Lane, the famed street packed with Indian restaurants that got a NYC-based Indian restaurant named after it.  We were supposed to meet Cathy's friend and his brother for dinner at a popular Pakistani restaurant but without a working phone to contact them when they didnt' show at 7 PM, we skipped out and went to dinner at another joint off Brick Lane. We later discovered that he thought we were meeting at 7:30.  Whoops.  At least we can confidently say it was no one's fault.

Chicken tikka

Shrimp biryani, daal, and saag paneer

 Our last supper was good but a little greasy.  I wanted two things before I left London (1) Indian food (2) fish and chips and while I couldn't get the latter, at least I had a 50% success rate.  By the time I was in bed, dreading our 6 AM departure from the hotel to catch our morning flight, I was ready to go home. And now that I'm back home, I've been soaking in the luxury of my own bedroom, the endless food, Wii Fit, all the things that bring joy to my life.  I've clearly gotten lazy but in my last week of summer vacation, I'm trying to pick up the pace again to get ready for classes in just 7 days.


Now to conclude, forgive me for the less than stellar quality of my last few posts.  Like every good streak of journal-keeping in my 20 years of life, it always ends not with a bang but with a weak little fart.


Till the next time I feel a burst of creative energy and a strong enough urge to post again...