Didn’t get much sleep on the flight. 9pm-9am schedule, and the 5 hours of time zone removed were the hours between 2am and 7am. So, at what felt like 2:30am, they served breakfast. My watch said I got ~1hr 3/4 sleep.
Got off the plane quickly and took Elizabeth line into Paddington (main line). Met Richard at the coffee place in the shopping center.
Our approximate plan was to walk along the Regents Canal to Towpath, a restaurant on the canal near Shoreditch for lunch, and then to go ride Mail Rail, the tiny underground railway that used to transfer mail between the central London post offices.
About an hour into walking we decided it would take far too long to walk all the way, so we decided to rent the Bikes formally known as Boris. Took a bit of faffing to get accounts set up, but we eventually got ourselves a hybrid-electric for Rich and a normal one for me.
This rapidly accelerated progress toward restaurant.
Occasionally the towpath was blocked for residential moorings and we were diverted onto streets that a) had great bike paths and b) were full of wonderful old houses. I guess the neighborhoods were high-end mid-Victorian suburbs.
We popped up in Camden which looked like itself in places, but otherwise was a bit more gentrified. I took a picture of a bit that looked almost the same. Looking down toward tube station.
The Regents Canal has de-scuzzified itself quite impressively. Little Venice has always been nice, and it’s somehow gotten nicer, and not particularly nice bits, eg around Kings Cross have gotten unbelievably swanky. Luxury apartments built on a gasworks site, and an almost impossibly high end set of boutique-y shops in an old LMS goods yard.
We arrived at Towpath, to find … mostly Americans. An American waitress, silver haired, sort of like your grandma’s younger sister who was hip, wore colorful overalls, with just a hint of space cadet about her. & we were seated next to a couple of generic early-30s American women who probably worked in tech and moved here from SF.
Food was good (I had the haddock, I think the menu is readable in the photo below), and I had a glass of “approachable” orange wine that tasted almost exactly like farm cider.
After lunch, more bikes, this time to the Mail Rail museum. The only preserved railway in London. Good for younger kids and dorky adults who appreciate fine engineering.
After that, train to Richard’s house to see his family. Quick preface that I had had a fun video chat conversation with Richard’s daughter Alma a few weeks before, when we were planning the trip. And we had pulled faces at each other. I think she started it, and that I showed her how to cross her eyes by looking at the end of her nose. Anyway, I had the rare privilege of being the “fun adult” at dinner. We had take-away curry.
Went to pub with Richard after kids in bed, put the world to rights.
Quick note here to THANK ANNA FOR THE MELATONIN. I took some post-pub, slept deeply and well, and was able to be up in the morning to say goodbye to Alma and Leon for school. Also, I took enough for 4 other nights.