Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety-Jig

[It does feel like we were gone a lot longer than eight nights. Upon arrival yesterday afternoon, a mere three hours after we took off thanks to time zone disorientation, we burned off the last hour of travel-granted energy with a walk up sunny Polk Street to meet Lindsay for a beer at the Bell Tower, and I marveled at how happy I was to be home. I got a bit frustrated a few times with London's eccentricities (street "pattern," weather, other little things) the last couple of days, and as I admired the orderly grid swooping up and down San Francisco's warm and disorderly hills, I felt a profound sense of well-being.]

[If you don't have the means for the Dorchester or the Ritz, may I recommend the very new, very swank-for-the-chain Park Lane Marriott? While the tube's Central Line remains closed, it doesn't offer the best location for getting around, its luxurious fixtures (especially the pool, mmmmm...) made us feel like we were traveling above our station.]

[Also recommended: a pedicab ride all the way up Oxford Street in the cold, arms wrapped around a sweater-clad boyfriend while you're both slowly coming down from halves of a hit of ecstasy generously donated by this Australian friend of Maria Gomez's met earlier in the evening. She "wanted us to have fun our last night in London," and so we would have done, with or without chemical enhancement.]

[Also experienced during the last couple of days of trip and in today's aftermath:]
[Sausage and mash and Strongbow cider at a real pub near Bond and Oxford streets.]
[Tapas and flamenco at a restaurant in Hanway Street (the same alley curving between Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street hiding that underground club Maria Gomez took us to that first night). Some of the food was scrumptious, some made me yearn for another trip to Cha Cha Cha as soon as practicable.]
[Utter exasperation at the fauxhawk, the ubiquitous hairstyle of all the pretty young things, gay and straight.]
[The recorded announcer's call at a certain tube station, which I've decided is London to me: "This...is Russell Squaeh."]
[The Emperor's New Clothes with Ian Holm and Iben Hjelje, on the flight home yesterday, yet another great film of 2002 almost totally ignored this awards season]
[A good article by Kelly Zito in (surprise!) today's San Francisco Chronicle magazine about Americans' fixation over home ownership.]

Previously Next