Just a quick post to say that I made it safely, for those intrepid few Spackleites who still follow me. I'm staying at the flat of some old friends from the Cambridge Footlights, Ace and Bash. They live in the Chalk Farms neighborhood, which is a very nice, modest area about a 15 minute Tube ride north of the center of the city. Their flat is stunning, and pretty much perfect in my opinion (I wouldn't hesitate to live in it) - small by American standards, but not by New York standards, really comfortable and sophisticated yet still casual and homey.
After a 6 hour flight during which a rather unhappy baby screamed for the entire duration, and thus your hero got very little sleep, I landed in London around 9:00am local time, 4:00am Pittsburgh (and thus body) time. Made my way straight to Ace and Bash's place, and I'm happy to report that my Tube navigation skills came back pretty quickly. I blame the 5 minutes I spent staring at the map trying to work out a route on the fact that my brain wasn't firing on all cylinders.
Had a spot of tea with Bash and spent the morning catching up (we haven't seen each other or really even spoken in nearly 3 years), and then he walked me to Primrose Hill, one of the high points of London with a really spectacular view (as payback for the trip I arranged to Mt. Washington when they were in Pittsburgh). Ace returned from Bath with his girlfriend shortly after, and we all spent some time chatting before I made my way to the TKTS booth at Leicester Square to purchase a ticket for tonight's performance of Merrily We Roll Along by Stephen Sondheim. This production is the best reviewed musical in London history, so I'm incredibly excited to see it - and Debbie is a Co-Producer!
After getting my ticket, I wandered around my old haunts from my LSE days, including a quick walk to Northumberland House, the Sherlock Holmes pub, and a trip down The Mall to Buckingham Palace. A quick lunch from Pret a Manger made me feel like a student again.
I'm resting now, and trying to fight the urge to sleep because I'd like to adjust to this time zone as quickly as possible. I have a full day of meetings tomorrow and want to be sharp, which will not be helped if I'm wide awake at midnight tonight because it feels like 7:00pm and I've napped for a few hours.
Ok, now that you know more than you probably cared to about my sleep theory for today, I'll leave you to it. Until later!
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