London (again)

This weekend it was back to London. I met a number of old friends, a couple new ones, and had a great weekend overall. This time I ended up staying down the street from where the Dutch government in exile set up shop during WWII.

I am obviously getting something right, because two people stopped me to ask me for directions. Encouraging, even if it is very obvious to me that I don’t look like a Brit.

On Saturday I hit Borough Market in the morning with two others. It’s a big farmers market with high-quality stuff and, most importantly, lots of samples. Somehow our request for a sample of a guy’s sangria was taken as a request for full glasses, so we accidentally ended up with (and paying for) plastic cups of so-so sangria at 11am.

That evening was Last Night of BBC Proms. Proms is a summer concert series with a concert almost every night for several months. You can buy seated tickets, but the real draw is the 5 pound standing tickets that you can get at the door. “Promming” is a proper part of the London vocabulary – and you can ask multiple people to go with you to the Prom without creating a scandal. Last Night is a big event that culminates in the playing of “Rule, Britannia” and the crowds waving flags. It is shown in satellite locations around the country. It’s close to the equivalent of the Washington, D.C. July 4th concert. Tickets for Last Night are first given out to people who have been to at least 5 other concerts, so getting a ticket would have required getting in line 8 hrs or so before the doors opened. I opted instead to picnic in the park just outside the venue where we could hear but not see what was going on, and it was just about perfect.

I find it a bit difficult to “read” a London neighborhood quickly or figure out when I am leaving one and entering another. I think this is because in most other places the architecture/street feel will change as the neighborhood shifts, but in inner London most everything has a similar stone façade.

I also noticed that you don’t see people walking around with Bluetooth headsets like you see a lot in the U.S. For a business town like London this sort of surprises me.