My 24-hour London Tourist Extravaganza

Today was the one day that I wasn't filming, so I tried to cram in all the London exploration I could handle. I didn't get very far, but it was lovely what I managed.

I dragged myself out of bed to meet up with Amanda at 9:45 am, and ran into Masha on my way out of the tube. Brilliant! We went to the First Out cafe - a very cute queer cafe that was, in fact, the first of its kind. We wandered about SoHo and got lunch at an all-veggie restaurant. Amanda and I proceeded to the metro and due to schedules, I was on my own until 4:30. During that time I managed to go *back* to the Tower of London, and take one of the guided-tour thingies. I jumped on a bus over to the Dungeon, but didn’t have enough time before I reconvened with Masha/Amanda for dinner. Thus concludes the super-typical portion of my touristing.

Dinner was an amazing Turkish restaurant, where Masha and I surveyed our options for going out. Not much on a Wednesday, I’m afraid. Amanda, Maria, Masha and I all headed to the queer film festival to hang out at the packed cafe for a bit. There was lovely eye candy, but Masha and I set out to wander around by the Thames. We ended up coming across the London Eye, The Tate Modern, the Old Globe, London Bridge — all closed, but it made for nice views. We continued on to a bar but they wouldn’t let Masha in - “gentlemen only”. Masha encouraged me to go back and so I walked her to the metro and headed back for a bit but the tube closes early and I have an early morning tomorrow — and the dance floor was totally empty. I uneventfully stood at a bar, drank a ginger ale, and left early.

The exciting bits were catching up with Amanda after seven years, hearing about her regular travels to Greece to learn Greek and bar-tend in a town on Lesbos (also called Mytilene). Yowza! And Masha is here doing research for her book, courtesy of Cornell (where she’s a professor) — and until recently, not finding decent food here. Amanda set her right about places to eat, though.

OK, just ran out of commentary - I’m off to bed now. Here’s pictures of the
trip!