London I

I arrived in London December 1, 10:30 AM, (2017) or so.  It was grey - usual for me for London, but there were some nice sunny days, too.

Customers sitting down, lunch only

Over the next few weeks, dined at several places that make me happy: twice at Sweetings, just Southeast of St. Paul's Cathedral, a simple, ancient lunch fish place where they serve about a dozen kinds of very fresh fish, two kinds of oysters, smoked eel or trout, fat scallops roasted in bacon, and a thing called a Black Velvet, which, at Sweetings, is a dented, worn and loved silver tankard of Guinness and champagne: first made by a bartender at Brooks's Club in London in 1861, to mourn the death of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's Prince Consort. My server told me she has a customer that comes in and drinks ten of them, which I was not able to do, even a little bit.

Begonia, at Sweetings, London

You enter for (only) lunch, you sit with your server-for-life, (mine, Begonia, from the Canary Islands, has been there 9 years,) you order an appetizer, some of the simple, unfussy cooking here - fried grilled or baked dover sole, hake, cod, salmon... perhaps some lobster mash.  You eat in the peaceful sunlight, get to know your neighbors a bit, and have a better time than you would have at the Grand Central Oyster Bar in New York. http://www.sweetingsrestaurant.co.uk/menu/

Another fine place to eat simple, unfussy food a few times was St. Johns Bread and Wine, the eastern outpost of Fergus Henderson's 'Nose-to-tail' empire of five places. Cauliflower, Leeks and White Beans; Beetroot, Red Cabbage and Creme Fraiche; Snails and Oakleaf; Dried Salted Pig's Liver; Radishes and Egg; Ham and Gubbeen; Fennel and Berkswell Cheese; Smoked Haddock; Mussels and Leek; Beef Mince on Duck Fat Toast; Pork Pies; Roasted Marrow with toasted bread and parsley salad; A Cheese course, Madelines, Eccles Cake and Lancashire - very simple old school British cooking at its finest, in a dining room that is painted white, unadorned except for coat hooks and a counter of bread for sale.  No music, no rugs, no art, just the wild, unusual food, and company. https://stjohnrestaurant.com/a/menus/6

If you like your food fussy and complicated, this is not your place: I took my friend and a young chef there: she ordered a single dish (cod's roe on toast, kind of like a taramasalata mayo) and knowing nothing of the chef or it's history, or, apparently, the history and current state chefs sharing her profession, pronounced it 'rubbish!', and pledged her devotion to multi-course tasting menus of clever combinations of half-a-dozen ingredients. All based on one dish. I wasn't impressed with her opinion.

Under her suggestion, later we went to a pace called the Frog and had the tasting menu for dinner and I was confirmed and had a disappointing evening. http://www.thefrogrestaurant.com/menus/  I also went to the Jugged Hare and had a decent meal. It is possible to pick delicious bargains at these places and not spend an enormous amount, but you have to pass on the drinks, and choose wisely. 

Some British drink an enormous, disabling amount. Out on the street in front of the pubs in the cold. I didn't try to keep up: young people lying on the curb dresses up, no coats, showing their undies and laughing, young men throwing up or arguing or staggering around. 

I did, however, have many good (full) pints of English bitter (NYC pints are no longer a pint, they are a sham.) 

I have mastered saying "sorry," at every possible opportunity, have come to recognize, without taking my glasses off the coins for a penny, two pence, five pence, ten pence, 20 pence, 50 pence, a pound, and two pounds.

I visited the Tate Modern, the National Portrait Gallery, the Churchill WWII Museum under Parliament, and the British Museum.  The British Museum is/can be endless, especially if you go quarterly - I went in September and there was all new stuff now in December! You can spend several days there and not go over the same thing twice.  The Tate was a bit like a larger MOMA, but without Tilda Swinton in a glass box being weird.

The other museums are all startling, sometimes a bit worn (Churchill's needs a refresh,) and I hope to hit some other places before I leave on Jan 2.

I went to Mattins at St Paul's Cathedral, on a couple of early Sundays, the home of the Episcopalian Church I was raised under.  Though an atheist, I do enjoy Mattins - a purely sung service with its choral work, majesty and beauty, and the chance to tell Oprah Winfrey in my head that my sense of wonder is doing just fine without her cruel, capricious, childish 'god' and give her a virtual finger-up, as they sometimes call it here.

I rode three kinds of buses, buses everywhere: I was staying in the NE, in Walthamstow and Upper Clapton/Hackney, so the bus was cheaper, and I got to see a lot more of the villages/townships as I went about my touring, and it was a lot less expensive and more photogenic, especially up top up front on one of the two kinds of double-decker bus. One has one entrance and one set of stairs up front - the other, three entrances, and front and back stairs. The other is a regular bus but still has lots of handholds and easily reached buttons for getting off, better than NYC.

I went to book stores, camera stores, walked until my feet hurt, went to a photography exhibit including shots of Prince, at Proud near Trafalgar Square and the National Portrait Gallery: https://www.proudonline.co.uk/ ...  I also went to The Photographer's Gallery and saw some amazing works: https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/ including Orkney and Shetland Islands in early winter.

Time to move on, almost. But I do love London, and I'll not likely get a chance to do that again.