I worked from Canonical's home office at the top of the Millbank office building, and I stayed with one of oldest, best friends, Kyle, who's been living in Greenwich for almost a year.
Millbank is easily the tallest building on the Parliament side of the Thames.
And as such, it offers fantastic views of the city. This was my view from the temporary cube I used for the week.
After coffee with the crew...
...I spent my mornings commuting like a million other Londoners, taking a train from Greenwich, transferring onto the tube, and then walking past Parliament...
...Big Ben...
And then up 27 stories, back to the nice view. I spent Monday - Wednesday working on a little project that benefited from some face time with a few of my colleagues in London, and then I took Thursday and Friday off for some sightseeing around the city.
I visited St. Paul's Cathedral.
And then spent pretty much all of Thursday by myself, moving very, very slowly through the British Museum for a good 7 hours.
This is a piece of the Sphinx' beard.
And, of course, the Rosetta Stone.
About half of the reliefs of the Parthenon from Athens is actually here at the British Museum. There's plenty of politics about whether or not the artifacts should be here in London, or returned to Athens. In any case, I enjoyed seeing them, as I was in fact in London and not Athens at the moment. I will probably feel differently when I visit Athens some day :-)
This is one of the Easter Island statues.
And a Buddha from Korea, several thousand years old.
I do of course enjoy my Byobu.
The mummy exhibition is pretty incredible. Hundreds of mummies are on display. Again, not quite sure how I felt about this. Part of me kind of wanted them back where they were originally put, at rest in their tombs. Anyway, I took these pictures for Kim, of mummified cats.
Kyle took Friday off and we spent the day sightseeing together. We started our morning off by catching a boat, rather than a train, from Greenwich to downtown London. This clipper can really move!
We had unusually nice weather, and really enjoyed it. The views of London from the Thames are particularly striking.
I've still not yet ridden on the London Eye, but it's always there, and inviting.
Near the London Eye, we visited the London Film Museum, which has a history of movie making in London, and lots of props on display, such as this one from Alien.
The highlight of the entire museum is the real set of the Tantive IV, from the very first scene of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.
Always a Simpsons fan, this was a fun picture. I have to figure Homer is about 7' tall, as Kyle, here, is 6'4"!
Fortunately, I was able to rescue Han from the carbonite, and he joined us for the rest of the tour. A little picture shy, I couldn't get him to pose for one with Kyle and I both. (Should have left him in the carbonite).
This is the shirt used by Robert Patrick in Terminator 2, as Arnold unloads a volley of shotgun slugs at him, and he just absorbs them.
And this is Kaylee's jacket from Serenity (which was on sale for 700 GBP).
Here's the animatronic Medusa from the original Clash of the Titans. There was a great exhibit along with it, explaining how that scene was filmed in painstaking detail, manipulating the snakes on her head frame by frame.
After the film museum and a meal and a few beers at Kyle's favorite Belgian restaurant, we met the rest of the family at the British Maritime Museum back in Greenwich.
This museum is just awesome, housed in the old Royal Navy College.
I had talked earlier that day about the guy who ran the London Marathon in full SCUBA gear, so I was quite surprised to see his outfit on display at the museum.
After the Maritime Museum, we hiked up the hill to tour the Royal Observatory, which is the official keeper of Greenwich Mean Time.
Here I am straddling the GMT parallel.
From the top of the observatory, a creepy green laser shoots miles and miles through the London Fog, noting the GMT line across the sky.
After a long day of touring, we sat down and threw back a couple of pints at Greenwich's Mean Time pub.
And later that night, we took in a bit of culture, seeing the two-person, psychological thriller, In a Forest, Dark and Deep, which starred exclusively Matthew Fox and Olivia Williams. I didn't know anything about the play going into it, but I certainly knew Matthew Fox from Lost, and Olivia Williams from Dollhouse, so the opportunity to see them both on stage, in a 2-person play seemed like a good idea. Tickets were very expensive, but our seats were great. The playhouse was excellent -- certainly becoming of London. And the play definitely did not let us down. We really enjoyed the deep, dark story. There was an interesting interplay of building and releasing tension, but consistently stepping up the drama of the situation. I'd say a bit of the story was a little predictable, but still, it was well worth our time and money. I enjoyed it a great deal!
And to finish the night (and my trip off), we of course overpaid for beer and burgers at London's Hard Rock cafe. At my dad's urging, we toured the Hard Rock vault under the office next door, where we saw the Hard Rock's greatest treasures. Considering how much fun Kyle and I have had listening and playing hard rock music over the years, it was a great way to conclude the journey.
I left London the next morning, arriving in Dallas by way of Houston. Kim picked me up at DFW, and we spent the night in Dallas after attending the wedding of our friends Vanessa and Rip (we made it to the ceremony just in time!).
This was, perhaps the most complicated itinerary I've ever traveled. To recap:
- I left Austin on Thursday February 24, flying through San Francisco, and arriving in Santa Barbara, CA, where I worked for one day
- Later that night, I drove from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles, where I spent two nights, and spoke at the SCALE 9x conference
- I left Los Angels on Saturday afternoon, arriving in London on Sunday morning, and spent all of Sunday in a Heathrow lounge
- I left Heathrow on Sunday night, arriving in Cape Town, South Africa on Monday morning, and worked from Cape Town that Monday through Friday
- I left Cape Town on Sunday night, arriving in London on Monday morning, and worked from London Monday through Wednesday, taking Thursday and Friday off for a little touring
- I left London on Saturday morning, arriving in Dallas on Saturday afternoon, attended a wedding
- And finally, Kim and I drove from Dallas to Austin on Sunday morning
Cheers,
:-Dustin
0 comments:
Post a Comment