Once again, I woke up extremely early (6:00 a.m. or so) and decided upon two goals: finding an internet cafe and start updating this blog and get breakfast. After walking all over the Portobello road area, I was completely unsuccessful in the former, but did succeed in finding a place to have a chocolate croissant, a tea and a bottle of sparkling water near Holland Park. Once again, after giving up on the internet cafe, I went back home and slept late.
At around 11:00 a.m., Natalia and I headed out to the UCL area, where she is at school now, and where I was at school 10 years ago. Got off at Euston station (I probably haven't seen the interior since I was there in 2000), and walked to the British Library, where I dropped her off to study. I walked back towards UCL, and although I made a number of false starts, I was able to stop all of the few locations I could still remember: the Jeremy Bentham statue, the cafe where I often had breakfast before class, the courtyard behind the cruciform building near the Slate School of Art, the entrance to the library, the Waterstones, and some of the squares I used to walk through. I've commented on this many times, but it shocks me how vague my memories of study abroad are, much more so than college or even high school.
When I was done with this, I met up again with Natalia to get her house key (so I could leave it later for Joe), and took the train to the Rail Europe office in Picadilly Circus where I would purchase my train ticket to Zurich (I have omitted a description of waiting in line at St. Pancras station before being told I could not do so there). Of course, I should have known to go to the Picadilly Circus office, because I had done just that in 2005. Again, waited in line for about 45 minutes, reading The Magicians (my review: a much, much, much better version of Harry Potter (which I did not like) but still some cringeworthy dialogue here and there -- there is always a danger in trying to write the way people "actually" speak). The ticket I purchased was at a reasonable price (57 pounds for the euro star train from London to Brussels) but on a much more painful timetable than I had planned. 6:20 a.m. train from St. Pancras (with "check in" half an hour earlier!) and not arriving in Zurich until 9:30 p.m.!
Rushed back to the flat, took a shower, went out again, this time to meet Eve (from high school) and Jesse (her husband) near Old Street for drinks at the Hawksmoor. A bit of a fiasco attempting to leave the flat key under the garbage bin in front of the door, since there were 4 guys sitting on the curb looking straight at me as I attempted to do so -- ended up leaving the key at a local cafe. Hawksmoor was fantastic -- terrific cocktails, reminiscence over the last 5-12 years, conversation with the bartender about the month he spent on an island in Thailand, catching up on the fates of our mutual friends. We opted against the super expensive (but supposedly very good) steak there and walked to a Vietnamese place in the neighborhood that was also excellent. We ordered summer rolls, which ended up requiring a stove to cook them on the table, as well as hand assembly. And a bowl full of chopped pork belly. I walked back to the tube station very satisfied.
When I got back home, Natalia was still out, but Joe was up and invited me to watch a 3 hour documentary by a Los Angeles based film professor about the way Los Angeles has been depicted in film. That too, ended up being quite good, although it required some fortitude to stay awake so much past midnight.
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