New (Guest) Entry!!

Hello dear reader. This is Victor, JJ’s boyfriend, and I’ll be doing a
little guest blogging to lighten her load as far as keeping this page
updated. (Soon to be accompanied by photos.)

I just got back to Ann Arbor from Cambridge, and will try to pick up
roughly where JJ last left off. I arrived in London on Friday morning
(October 13th) and met up with JJ at our hotel on the Strand. It’s a
bustling strip that serves as London’s Broadway as far as musicals and
overpriced tourist traps go, but it’s also just south of Covent Garden,
familiar to all you “My Fair Lady” fans as Eliza’s flower-hawking
grounds. That day we wandered about and eventually had a proper date
down in Piccadilly Circus, grabbing a delicious bite at an Indian
restaurant called Chowki, which shifts their culinary focus onto a new
part of India every month. [Photos 725-2 and 727]
Then we checked out a new stage version of Hitchcock’s classic spy
thriller “The 39 Steps” at the Criterion Theatre. It was a four man
show and added a great deal of comedic bits that worked perfectly to
satirize the genre and keep us engaged. [possibly photo 730 of the
theater] We both agreed that it was a proper date.

The next day, after stuffing English breakfasts down (I vowed that it
was my last), we hoofed it far and wide – to the always wonderful
British Museum, where a volunteer was kind enough to hand us used mummy
cloth among other artifacts, and then off to my old neighborhood
(Clerkenwell/Farringdon for those in the know) from studying abroad in
London in college.

Photos 743-2

We got back to the hotel and relaxed for the evening, preparing for our
big night out at…

Fabric, one of London’s mega-super-hyper-clubs. We arrived fashionably
late (a little after 2am) and queued for a half-hour before being
admitted to what resembles a subterranean brewhouse or possibly a
factory. It must have been 40 feet down into a cavernous space,
flanked by three major rooms, each with a renowned (if you’re European)
DJ spinning techno, house and other types of music that our American
ears can’t differentiate and categorize. The music and lightshows were
amazing, the drinks were expensive and the patrons were rowdy. It all
amounted to an “as-advertised” megaclub experience and we checked out
at the modest hour of 5am, 3 and a half hours before the club closed.
Sorry, no pictures, but there are some on the website:
http://www.fabriclondon.com/club/gallery.php

Sunday, we got a not unsurprising late start up to Camden Market, a
bustling series of stalls, stores, eateries and throngs and throngs of
people. Highlight: the rave supply store Cyberdog, and its LCD digital
animation t-shirts. We made our way through the morass and onto the
canal walk. There’s a nice pathway from Camden to Little Venice, just
west of Paddington Station, and it’s a relatively pastoral passage
through a very urban city. We then took a spin on the Eye, which was
overpriced and super-touristy, but fun nonetheless. I have a sneaking
suspicion that the architect definitely built it to be there
permanently, even though the original plan was for it to be up for just
a year as part of the Millennium projects. I don’t think the purists
would have okayed it as a permanent structure from the start, but once
you’ve got a 400-ft moneymaking ferris wheel that the postcard industry
embraces, it seems like a lot of trouble to take it down.

Photos 766, 895

So by Monday we finally made it to Cambridge – which is nice, as JJ has
attested to already. Over the week, we hung out with some wicked smart
international law scholars, successfully challenging the locals at a
pub quiz and enjoying some vino back at the Bahrain House next to the
Lauderpacht center.

A highlight of the week was punting down the Cam. Punting is one of
those weird activities where you pay to perform manual labor that
generally other people get paid to do, like apple picking. This one
involves pushing yourself up and down a canal in a narrow boat by
shoving off the gravel riverbed with a nine foot aluminum pole. Like
the Venetian watercrafts, but with more ping-ponging from bank to bank.
I got the hang of it in the last 10 minutes (hit me up for pointers
if you ever find yourself about to travel by punt), but it was amazing
all the way through, mostly because JJ was there and, oh right,
Cambridge is absolutely gorgeous from the water.

Photos 1090, 1105, 1114-2, 1120-2, 1178-2

Other highlights include the Wren Library in Trinity College (sorry no
pictures allowed that day), a trip to Grantchester, Evensong in King’s
College Chapel, where pre-pubescent boy singers harmonize with their
deeper-voiced collegiate crooners in perhaps the most beautiful church
we’ve ever seen, and generally ambling around these medieval streets
and courts.

Aside from strange operating hours (don’t count on food being available
at times other than the most traditional hours), this is a near idyllic
town, easy to relax in but also inspiring if you care to hit the books.

Photos 985, 971, 961, 968, 929-2