Day 3 – Cold Weather and Crusade Destination

Before I left, everyone impressed upon me that the UK is cold. COLD. Dad pushed this point by buying me gloves – very warm, very good against frostbite. Mum worried that I didn't really understand what cold was all about. J told me it was like a Melbourne winter, and as he was at ground zero his opinion was holding a lot of weight.

Yesterday was amusing. It was a little chill (about 10 degrees), so I wore my light jacket and felt fine. Unless the wind picked up, things were a-okay. Jayson had bitched and moaned about the cold, which J and D found very amusing as the Melbourne boy had no problem, yet the lifer was having a rough time. So this built a sense of foolish bravado. Today seemed a little colder, so I decided to break out the heavy jacket (I've got light, heavy, and long coats.) And I'm glad I did. The wind was not push-you-down-the-street wind, but it was carrying an icy edge that sliced right through you, leaving you pining for the warmth of a blizzard. In a characteristic move, I decided this was a good day to put my Tube-knowledge to the test and in quite a maverick-style, take on London.

First stop was Tower Bridge. This location is remarkable for the following: The Tower Of London, and Tower Bridge. If you ever hear people talking about “London Bridge”, they are most likely incorrectly referring to Tower Bridge, or a rocky formation in Australia. London Bridge itself is quite boring, and I don't think anyone would be too fussed if it fell down, my fair lady. I wandered around the Tower, and took some photos. Having been there last time, I decided to give it a miss. I then foolishly decided I'd walk to the next Tube station, so as to see a bit of the real world. This wallk was re-planned 30mins into it, when I realised I had no idea where I was going. So I back-tracked along the Thames, had a nice time enjoying the bleak warmth from the sun, and finally ending up back at Tower Bridge. This time, I walked over Tower Bridge (a much smarter move) To my left, ferries and assorted warehouses. To my right, the HMS Belfast, moored in the river and all guns pointing at The Tower – interesting!

I wandered many streets, and stumbled across the London Dungeon. This place is a theatrical, gory-display oriented museum that show-cases the nastiness of british history (London in particular). Amongst the mannequin corpses, we were treated to interactive displays of the Black Plague, the Great Fire, Jack The Ripper and Sweeney Todd. To cap it all off, we were sentenced to hanging, via a theme-park styled ride. Fun! I learnt a lot about presentation theatrics, and how easy it is to scare people in darkly lit areas. Oh and London's history.

From here I found that I had arrived at a Tube station, and so got back on to see what else I could see. Covent Garden was my other place of interest today and I got there quite quickly. Covent Garden Market is the real crux of this area, and the easiest way to describe it is a re-purposed open-air market. It's quite a trendy place now, some boutique clothing outlets, hand-made jewellers and a Games Workshop store. The last one made me laugh. After seeing all there was to see here, I casually walked back through the streets, having been assured by someone that Oxford St was only a few blocks away. The definition of city blocks seems to be one of those context-dependent values, especially as London isn't built on a grid like fair-old Melbourne. I soon found myself in Chinatown, not far from Oxford, so the directions were not so bad. Wandering down the main street, I was dopely looking in windows and admiring paper lanterns, when I saw three words marked out in gold, that brought me to a halt:

LEE HO FOOK

To some of you, this makes perfect sense and you're already rolling your eyes. To others, this will be as useful as recanting “Klaatu Verata Niktu”. So allow me to quickly fill you in:

“I saw a werewolf with a chinese menu in his hand, walking through the streets of Soho in the rain/ He was looking for a place called Lee Ho Fook's – gonna get a big dish of beef chow-mein”

AWOOO. They have a poster of Warren in the window! They also have a brightly lit Mickey Mouse motif for the Year of The Rat/Mouse/Rodent in the window. I mentally mark this place on the map of London in my mind, take a snap of the front, and walk off grinning like an idiot. If only I'd found it a day earlier! J, D and I have already made dinner plans, but I make sure that I can take them past the place, so we can go there in future. We dine at Wong Kei, a chinese place that provides more than enough food for the three of us. We do what we can to it, and then head over to a nearby Dutch bar for a drink. This bar is famous in J's circle, as a friend who visited once managed to completely up-turn a plate of sausage and mash on to the floor before taking a bite – the others now know it as “That Mash Place” hence I don't know it's name. After a drink here, we decide we want another one – and so leave for another pub. This type of bar-hopping is not something I usually associate with pubs, but I think it has something to do with what's on tap. (or too much sugar) After the second drink, we call it a night and head for the Tube. D now confirms the existence of Tube Mice – J now confirms that he doesn't believe either of us, even though we can see the brown-furred ones below. We arrve home late, and I crash.

New Thing Learnt Today – Whilst the invention of chopsticks clearly explains why the chinese never developed custard, it doesn't explain why they chose rice as their staple food.