Bye London. It’s been a great two weeks, two workshops and lots of fun but i can’t wait to get home and see MC and the kids!
UK Bank Holiday, aka Cinco De Mayo
For Cinco De Mayo I meet up with my friend Tom from work. He took me over to Hamstead Heath for a nice walk and to show me the London skyline. After that we hit a local pub for lunch and some afternoon bank holiday drinking. It was good to talk and hang out. We talk all the time at work but always on the phone. It is always good to get some good old fashioned bonding done when you are in the same city with someone you only speak to on the phone.
After leaving the pub with Tom I headed back to the hotel. It was early so I really didn’t know what else to do. I headed out to forage for dinner. Maybe it was the alcohol or the fact that there was no line but I ended up eating at the Shake Shack in Covent Gardens. When I told her about it MC made some fun of me for doing that but I maintain if i was on the moon and there was a Shake Shack with no line i would eat there. Seriously that place always has a line. I was just utilizing an opportunity. It was the perfect after drinks meal for someone who wasn’t keeping track of what they eat while they travel.
After the meal it was back to the hotel and a FaceTime with MC and the kids and now off to bed since it was back to work tomorrow.
Day Two Alone in London
It is day two of me by myself in London. Technically day 7 of my trip. It is Sunday of a bank holiday here in the UK and the weather was fantastic.
After realizing Covent Gardens was a 5 minute walk from my hotel and that area had tons of stuff to do I went there for breakfast. I went to Bill’s. it was good but only after i went did i realize it was a chain. I was aiming for somewhere unique but apparently didn’t find it. The food was still good.
After breakfast I walked around Covent Gardens some more. It is a great area and everyone who recommended to stay at the hotel i am in was spot on.
After a little walking I headed back over to the Sherlock Holmes Museum. I wanted to see it and since i had less planned today i was ok to wait on line. It turned out to be about an hour wait. The museum was fun but not really worth the hour wait or the 10 pounds it cost to get in. As a Sherlock Holmes fan however I probably would have done it again if i had more information so no regrets.
After the Museum and gift shop (I didn’t buy anything honest) I headed over to Regent street for some shopping. I was looking for a replacement jacket for my North Face Jacket. I like the jacket but it is just a bit big on me. I got it when i was loosing weight and had no clue i would move into a size small. Now a Medium is really big on me. I ended up not finding anything I liked but got a pull over base layer to wear under a jacket like the North Face with a tea shirt.
After shopping I was back at Covent Gardens for the Transit Museum. It was interesting but not worth the 15 pounds. Unlike the Sherlock Holmes Museum I wouldn’t do this Museum again without kids.
After the transit museum I got some Gelato since i skipped lunch. It was good. I ate it on my walk back to my hotel.
At the hotel I unwound from the day of walking around and texted with my friend Tony trying to get dinner ideas. I selected Burger & Lobster as my dinner destination. It is in Soho and a 5 minute tube ride from my hotel. There was an hour and a half wait for a table but since i was alone i was able to get a seat at the bar with only little effort. I got the Lobster Roll. It was one of only 3 options on the menu. I could have had the Lobster Roll, a Burger, or Lobster. The Lobster Roll was fantastic and the food came pretty quick. Tony is now two for two on resteraunt picks.
After dinner I walked back from SoHo to my hotel. I didn’t find anywhere that looked good for desert so I ended up at the same chain cafe (not Starbucks) were i had desert and coffee yesterday. After that I turned into the hotel early. Since I was in the UK I did some light reading and then watched a Doctor Who episode on my computer!
Familiar Places
There is a Five Guys burgers in Covent Gardens London. Not sure if it makes me feel better that there are Pret a Manger’s everywhere you go in both New York and London?
My First Free Day By Myself In London
Since having kids it has been rare that I have not had to get up to do anything. With that in mind and the fact that I was up really early most days this past week I slept till almost 10 today. To pack light I didn’t bring my small messenger bag to carry my iPad. I didn’t want to carry my big laptop bag with me for just my iPad so I was happy to find out that my iPad Mini fits perfectly in the pocket of my North Face Jacket. With my book/research tool/all around time waster in hand I headed out for the day. I had breakfast at an Italian coffee house near the hotel while I planned my day. I had lots of ideas but generally I was going to wing it.
I started off by hopped the tube for Westminster to do a walk from the Rick Steve guide book. I saw Big Ben, London eye, Westminster, Downing Street and then off to Trafalgar Square. It was interesting and a great day for a walk.
After that I headed over to Baker Street to see Sherlock Holmes’ place but didn’t go into the museum since the line was huge. I may try again tomorrow but I am not sure. I was a bit disappointed by not getting in but i really didn’t want to waste what looked like at least an hour or more waiting on line. While on line I got a FaceTime call from MC and Teagan. I was happy to talk to them, and impressed that the video call worked pretty well over 3G.
Instead I headed over to Fortnum and Mason. I wanted to do afternoon Tea. MC and several others suggested it as the best place to go for Tea. I didn’t have a reservation and they couldn’t seat me. My backup location Brown’s Hotel was only a 5 minute walk so I headed over to there. They were able to seat me after a short wait. I like the fact that they brought seconds of the sandwiches. Otherwise I had a good time but was generally underwealmed by the pastry and the service. I don’t regret going but would try to find a new location or get reservations at Fortnum & Mason’s if I ever did Tea in London again.
After tea I walked around all the shops near Piccadilly Circus. I got the girls cuddly gifts at at Hamley’s Toy Store. Was able to do another FaceTime with MC to confer about what to get. I am pretty pleased with what I got!
After walking and shopping I headed back to the hotel to relax a bit before heading out for dinner. At my friend Tony’s suggestion I went to a burger place called Meat Liquor. It was very loud, but I got a seat right away. The drinks were good and the food was also good. I was in the mood for a greasy burger and this place delivered. After dinner I headed back to the hotel hoping to find a desert place nearby. The desk clerk had some ideas so I walked over to Covent Garden. It is about a train station away or 5 minute walk. I checked out the square there. There were tons of shops and restaurants and live entertainment. It was fun, but all the live events just made me a bit home sick since i thought how cool it would have been to have MC and Teagan there. Amelia is of course too young to appreciate it. I didn’t find anywhere i wanted to stop at so i walked back to around my hotel and ended up at the same cafe I started the day off in to have a piece of cake and a cappuccino. Now i am unwinding at the hotel writing and thinking about plans for tomorrow. It was a very active day for me. My Jawbone UP is saying I did 252% of my activity target or 20,161 steps. Not a record. That goes to the day my friend Jenn and I walked around Manhattan. This takes 2nd place for most active day since I started tracking my activity!
A bit weird that I just found a Shake Shack in Coventry Gardens London. Still trying to find a desert place
Finally a reason to use FaceTime
Loving the ability to send and receive FaceTime calls over the mobile network anywhere since I am in London and missing MC and the girls. MC just rung me up twice and I rang them once to check on a gift I wanted to get. That it works so easily is fantastic. This is why I love apple products they just work.
Deleting Facebook and Starting From Scratch
If you are a Facebook friend of mine and are wondering why suddenly you got a invite to be my friend again and can’t find all my old content here’s why.
I have been pondering my use of Facebook for over a year. It started last year when I took the entire month of July off from using social media. I read in an article somewhere and thought it was a good idea. It turns out I did not miss it as much as I thought I would. Once that month was over I started using it again but on a more limited basis. Over the past year I keep reading about the things Facebook can do with my content or is doing with my content. I wasn’t pleased. The new search functionality just spooked me. It’s not like I posted anything questionable but I just don’t like some of the business practices they’re doing with the information I put in the system. When I first started using Facebook it was treated as a personal area to post things to my friends only. Over time they keep doing things in semi-sneaky ways to make your data more public. It just makes me uneasy. I tried to remove old content but after much searching online it became apparent that there is no easy way to bulk delete anything. Most forum posts suggest just deleting your entire account and starting over. I didn’t want to do that but in the end I felt there was no other feasible choice if I wanted old content removed.
Everything finally came to a head today when I deleted my old account. First I exported all the data from my old account and verified that I wasn’t using Facebook authentication on any sites that were critical to me. Then I just remove the account. Apparently it takes 14 days for account to actually be deleted and then another month or so for all the data to be removed from their systems. After deleting the original account I went on and created a new one. I spent time inviting friends from the old account to the new one. I will be honest in saying that I did not invite 100% of the frames on the old one to the new account. I took this change as an opportunity to remove people I really don’t talk to anymore. I seriously thought about not signing up for an account again but in the end I did for two reasons. First, a lot of family loves getting photos of Teagan via Facebook. The second reason is more practical. I like having Facebook because it does enable me to stay in contact with people I don’t always get to see but I had issues about security and what they do with my data so I will continue to use it or treat anything I put there like I do with twitter. When I first started posting I didn’t do that and that was what bothered me.
Longer term MC and I are talking about how and if we continue posting photos to Facebook. We have read some articles about what people (or Facebook themselves for that matter) can do with the photos and Face recognition and EXIF data. I would like to find a way to use my Flickr account to link to my Facebook wall with no data remaining on Facebook systems.
The bottom line is if you’re a friend of mine please don’t be offended if I don’t “like” post of yours or do lots of commenting on things you post to your wall or mine. I am just not doing that at all or very often going forward.
About a month or two ago I signed up for Twitter. I thought it was a cool idea, but as usual most of my friends aren’t using the system so I didn’t do anything with it. About two weeks ago I had second thoughts about the system and started Tweeting anyway. I plugged in Twitter to Facebook so now whenever I Tweet my Facebook status is updated. I thought that was a cool idea. Last week I added a Twitter plugin to Typepad so my latest Tweets are now in one of the colums on my blog.
I find it cool that I can blast out a quick Twitter message from my iPhone when I am bored somewhere!