Okay.
3/30/13
Woke after five hours of sleep to take a flight landing us in Heathrow Airport at around nine or so in the evening.
Proceeded to figure out the Underground* then took a cab from the station to a location about 100 yards away from our "flat"**, which instantly shattered my certainty that all London cabbies always know where everything is always forever because this son of a whore TOLD US WE WERE THERE AND WE WERE NOT. After ten minutes standing in the fucking freezing cold, the guy we were supposed to meet came down and found us, literally, 100 yards away (as the crow flies). Now, before you open your mouth and feel like a smug fuck, the only sign anywhere was one for the Basil Hume memorial hedge.
Which is not recognized by Google.
Eventually, we got upstairs and took in our place (which you can see here), then realized we were starving and it was almost midnight on Easter weekend.
After some screaming, we got a Chinese food place to deliver to us; the food cost $60 but was worth $12. It was also, not counting food in and around airports, the worst meal of our trip.
Then.
Sleep.
3/31/13
The Oxford-Cambridge Goat Race.
The Oxford-Cambridge Goat Race.
At which Christina and I took second and third runners up for Best Dressed.
Then Wuwo Magazine took our picture.
After this odd and wonderful romp, we met up with our old Fordham chum, Ginny, who is as magical and awesome as ever. We had dinner at a Mexican place called Barrio East where I had a drink which was basically de lime in da coconut.
Boat of 'em which I drank up.
Ginny was sweet enough to patiently answered all of our British questions.
Apparently, "keep left" is just a suggestion.
Hm.
4/1/13
For April Fools' Day***, Chris and I had tea at the Langham Hotel, where, less than a minute after sitting down, I knocked a very old and expensive teapot full of roses to the floor, shattering it. Christina insists it was a total punk rock move in the style of Johnny Rotten , while I maintain that I was just too big for their tiny, tiny tea room table.
This was yet another gastronomic triumph.
Sluggish and blinking, we were then picked up in the lobby of the Langham by Akin, our private, chauffeured James Bond Tour guide. He introduced us to Malcolm, our Welsh driver and we were off.
I have to stop for a moment and give massive props to my punk, who is not nearly as into Bond as I am, but who found the tour a great way to see London.
While the tour itself was a bit sparse ("Check out the exterior of this building which was used for five seconds as an establishing shot!" and "Hey! Does that doorway look familiar to you...?!") and less nerdy than I had hoped, it really was great.
We did get to see MI6, which was awesome.
We were let out across the street from Hyde Park, so we walked around a bit before Chris went to some shops, me in tow, grumbling and whining all the way. After this, we had an astoundingly delicious roast mutton meal at the Jugged Hare, complete with sumptuous veggies and cauliflower cheese. I think it was at this point when I realized that people who say British food is bad are uninformed assholes who have never had British food.
Then, we went to our local pub (thirty feet from our front door), The Artillery Arms, and had a pint.****
Of cider.
BUT I had a pint in a pub.
And, hey, all you shitty, dark-because-it's-cool-for-a-bar-to-be-dark, so-loud-it's-pointless-to-talk-so-you-just-keep-drinking-until-you're-depressed-or-horny-enough-to-leave-and-make-a-horrible-mistake, cluttered-with-fuckheads-who-totally-dig-the-bar-scene-because-they're-too-unoriginal-to-think-of-something-better-to-do bars in New York City: if you took a lesson from the British pub scene...you might see me out a little more often.
Though probably not.
4/2/13
Woke up bright and early and took a train***** to Wales (Cardiff Bay to be exact) to check out the Doctor Who Experience, where I accidentally dressed like the 9th Doctor.
First, Wales (specifically Cardiff): this place and its crazy, fucking language was completely inspiration for every horror H.P. Lovecraft ever conjured up. Welsh is a handful of scattered vowels away from Cthuvian. Plus, down by the water, there were unassuming-and-therefore-terrifying churches and carvings in stone of chimeras and other such tentacular, water-dwelling things...shit...just...okay, don't be anywhere near R'lyeh, I mean...Cardiff when the end comes, because when Cthulhu wakes up, he is going to be hungry.
Second, I have never been more aware of the fact that Doctor Who is a children's show that at this place. Yes, well-written at times and fifty years old, but, still, a kid's show. A show designed for children.
But the actual exhibit was pretty cool.
After spending too much time and money in the Doctor Who Experience shop, we found a place that looked non-touristy but, apparently, was actually pretty touristy, and ate lunch there.
I had my first fish and chips and, as I am half-British, enjoyed them in the proper fashion by drowning them in malt vinegar. Excellent, excellent stuff.
This happened there as well.
At this point, Chris and I were kind of done with Cardiff, but still had about three hours before our train. Could we have just, you know, gotten on a earlier train? Well, sure...by tripling the price of our tickets.
So, we decided to check out the heart of Cardiff...which stops beating at about 5:30.
Shops, restaurants, pubs, malls, practically everything was locked up by six o'clock on a Tuesday evening.
We managed to slip into Spillers Records and discovered that the oldest record store in the UK only has about 100 albums, fifty on CD and fifty on vinyls, in the whole place.
I asked for the new Bowie and was told they had none, but Chris was able to pick up the new Nick Cave.
Then they were closed.
Here is where I shall introduce the Search for Coil into the mix.
In the months leading up to the honeymoon, I have been listening to and reviewing one Coil album per week and posting them here. I called it the Coil Review Project. As they were a British band, I had this totally crazy idea that I would be able to actually purchase some fucking Coil while I was in Britain. Yes, I could go online right now and spend thousands (seriously) on most of their discography, but, fuck that. What's the fun in that? The United States is, sadly, not a place where we give a shit about music anymore; not physically at least. It's all downloads and oh shut up you old fuck.
Never mind.
I wanted the excitement of walking into a cool record shop in the UK, flipping like a madman thought hundreds of records that only have the letter "C" in common, and finding a plethora of forgotten Coil gems.
This did not happen at Spillers.
Anyway, somehow, we found a pub which was open and I tried my very first sticky toffee pudding...which was too sweet for me.
And, yes, a part of me died at the realization that something could actually be too sweet for me.
But, while dejected at Spillers, I asked the woman behind the counter if there were any other music stores in Cardiff. She said there was an HMV.
Another aside: if anyone remembers HMVs from when they had locations in New York City, then you'll understand my hope and excitement. Next to Tower Records and the sub-basement of the Virgin Megastore, HMV was the place to find shit you would never find anywhere else in New York.
And this one was OPEN.
But, they had no fucking clue what Coil was or how to get it, so I just bought the new Bowie album and sulked all the way back to the train station...where we still had another hour to wait for our train.
We got home and decided that today had been way too expensive for what we had gotten in return.
4/3/13
While the first three days of our trip had been lousy with plans, the next few were left open.
No fucking trains to places.
On the docket for today was lunch at one of the two gluten and dairy free fish and chip shops in all of London, a place called Oliver's Fish & Chips. Aside from the mushy peas (which they did with mint) and the deep fried Mars bar (my first; a disappointment and something I'll not bother with again), it was another amazing meal.
Then, Chris and I did some more Coil Hunting...which is to say I dragged her along while I spent time on our honeymoon looking for music that I have already heard and only have a desire to own out of some strange feeling that I cannot define.
Yeah, that's what I meant.
Then this happened:
We hit a place called Flash Back where I found what turned out to be the one and only Coil album in both Britain and France: a first pressing of the band second album, Horse Rotorvator.
But I didn't know that at the time. Rather than being sated by this victory, I was made ravenous, asking for more record stores MORE!
After Flash Back, we walked a bit further down Essex Road and hit Haggle which had no Coil.
We returned to our flat and waddled around for a bit before setting out to meet the wonderful Jeannie and Rich at the Comedy Store to see some of the best improv any of us had ever seen. Even though the players were just following the typical improv formulas we've seen dozens of times, the quality of the comedians and their rapport with one another was utterly unmatched by anything I have ever seen.
Afterwards, Jeannie and Rich took us to Byron, a really awesome burger chain that had both style and great food.
Holy fuck.
What a burger.
4/4/13
On Thursday, we had nothing planned until dinner with Ginny, Jeannie and Rich at the Jugged Hare******, so Chris and I wandered around Shoreditch ("the Williamsburgh of London"), me looking for Coil, Christina looking for cool kicks and graffiti. We discovered that two of the three records stores she had found mentioned in an article from two years earlier were closed, the third, Rough Trade, was not.
And, while they didn't have any Coil "at the moment", they did have four fucking copies of This Immortal Coil's The Dark Age of Love, which, fucking get this, is a selection of Coil covers by some completely random artists (the most well-known among the group is Bonnie "Prince" Billy...which should tell you something).
Four copies.
Dejected and angry at this cosmic cock slap, I spent another forty five minutes in the store buying things I had either already heard and had never bothered to purchase (Bowie's Buddha of Suburbia) or straight up shit that I have already heard and owned and fuck you for not having any Coil, Rough Trade, now take my money as punishment (Nine Inch Nails' With Teeth !!!with 2 UK bonus tracks!!! and the limited edition, 12-fold, foil packaged Atoms For Peace album...neither of which has been opened or will be).
Then, as Chris and I were feeling peckish and had yet to have any Indian food (another must given to us by both Jeannie AND Ginny) and were on Brick Lane, we had some Indian food. I had only eaten Indian food once, at a place that was supposed to be good but ended up tasting like almost nothing at all. This place (Sheba) nailed it, although Chris said there is much better to be had.
Challenge accepted.
An hour or so later, we met with Jeannie and Rich for dinner where I ate Scottish salmon.
Yes, it was wearing a kilt.
And under the kilt?
Yur mutter's lepstack.
After dinner, Richard took us to our first Tesco.
Which was fucking awesome.
This is what I was looking forward to, seeing all the weird little differences between our shitty connivance stores and Britians' shitty little connivance stores.
Some quick notes:
- Their candy bar names are just as pointless and silly as ours (Wispa, Yorkie, Twirl)
- Prawn Cocktail crisps are fucking awesome, with Pringles winning it all for me.
- Hobnobs are the shit.
- Jaffa Cake are shit...I determined this after eating about three dozen.
Since this was a school night for them, Jeannie and Richard left shortly after.
4/5/13
Our last day in London was another light one, with only tea at Brown's Hotel on the docket. Sadly, it did not live up to the standard set by the Langham; partly because the tea and food was not as intriguing and delicious, and partly because our "tea sommelier"******* was an asshole.
After our let down of a tea service, we went to Fortnum & Mason where I got two huge tins of PURE Earl Gray and Chris got some fruits that had been drained of their juice and then filled with liquid sugar...a startling reversal, is it not?
Next, we made a horrible decision and visited Cool Britannia, which is as if all the touristy shit in all of New York City were under one roof...but, god damn it we wanted those cool Underground shirts.
While I like the subterranean mass transit system in New York more than both Paris and London, the graphic design of London's wins, hands down.
Once we had settled on Underground shirts (we both really wanted Mind The Gap shirts but couldn't find them in the size/style we wanted), I made my own horrible decision to drag Chris too even more record stores, none of which had shit.
Christina was beginning to get annoyed...
We had an early morning coming tomorrow, so we decided to get home and get things all packed up. On the way there, I picked up a steak and stilton pie (my first pie of the trip...idiot that I am) from a pie shop which was astonishingly delicious and which I pooped out in a hurry about two hours later, no fuss, no muss, no bother.
We then had a meal cobbled together from the food we'd accrued over the week (a little soup, some Jaffa Cakes, a hobnob or four...) and then, sleep.
4/6/13
Early, early, early morning goodbye to our London flat and then off to Paddington Station to catch our train to Dartmoor.
Once again: fuck trains.
We arrived at some point in the afternoon and Chris picked up our rental car while I played with an excellent, if slightly underfed dog that lived (and worked?) at the rental place.
She instructed me to say "left hand lane" at every turn and intersection. I asked if screaming "left hand lane" was an acceptable substitute and she said that it was not.
Marriage, am I right?
Eventually, we found our way to Haberton and our remarkable little cottage.
CHECK IT OUT.
Each of the rooms had adorable names like the Little Broderick (Chris' room), the Perky Adelade (my room) and the Poop Chute (neither of us went in that room). We met the caretaker who was just delightful and who had set out a wonderful little tea for us which we gobbled up.
We then took a wander around Haberton which was just absolutely beautiful in that old-abandoned-English-countryside-village-dominated-by-a-fucking-huge-ancient-church-and-accompanying-graveyard way.
We went to the one restaurant in town (where we had reservations for dinner) and asked two gentlemen who might have been fucking with us because we were a.) "not frum 'round 'ere'" and/or b.) Americans where the local post office was where one could get farm fresh eggs. They said it was "a nice, twenty minute walk".
So we set out on our "nice, twenty minute walk" and, after thirty minutes (twenty or so of which were spent on bucolic, single-lane roads bordered by pastures teeming with sheep and cows), found ourselves on the side of the English countryside equivalent of a super highway, unable to go any further without dying. The post office (and its farm fresh eggs) was not in sight.
So, hungry and sweating and whining (me, not her. How the fuck does she put up with me? It is drugs?), we returned home and went to dinner.
The restaurant was pitch fucking black and crowded with the band, who were tuning up, loudly and, for all you that know how much I love coming from silent daylight into dark, small, loud spaces...well, anyway.
Long story short: the place was packed after a few hours (as it was the only place to eat within what seemed like fifty miles) and we both had really excellent meals.
We returned home and Christina then became afraid of monsters outside, so, I was happy to remind her that as long as she didn't wander off the path while singing Santa Lucia, that she wouldn't get mauled by a werewolf. This...seemed not to help.
Thus ended the first week of our honeymoon.
Our prognosis: so far, so good.
Next up: the second week of our honeymoon; which started off with the lowest point one could imagine...
Stay tuned!!!!!!!
* Read: I sullenly followed and watched as Christina miraculously figured out the cum-soaked mirkin which is the London Underground on the night before Easter fucking Sunday.
** Because "apartment" just sounds so silly, am I right?!
*** Which, in the UK, is called First of April St. Jolly Wank Jubs Day
**** To be frank, there was a cemetery directly across the street from our pub but...anyone seen "Shaun of the Dead"...? Winchester...
***** Fuck trains. I don't care how easy and plentiful and affordable they are in Europe. There are just another excuse to get me in a tiny, tiny place where I am punished for being tall and have to be quiet and happy about the fact that I'm horribly uncomfortable for a long period of time. Fuck them. In the caboose.
****** The fact that we were only in the country for a week yet went to the same place twice should give you an idea of just how good the food was.
******* Which is, apparently, a real thing...no matter how much I giggled at him.
**** To be frank, there was a cemetery directly across the street from our pub but...anyone seen "Shaun of the Dead"...? Winchester...
***** Fuck trains. I don't care how easy and plentiful and affordable they are in Europe. There are just another excuse to get me in a tiny, tiny place where I am punished for being tall and have to be quiet and happy about the fact that I'm horribly uncomfortable for a long period of time. Fuck them. In the caboose.
****** The fact that we were only in the country for a week yet went to the same place twice should give you an idea of just how good the food was.
******* Which is, apparently, a real thing...no matter how much I giggled at him.
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