millennial

Last day of my trip: we began with a Sunday roast at the Marksman, a well-regarded gastropub in Shoreditch.

We loved the lamb's tongue with green beans, fresh goat's cheese with peas, white fish, and an exemplary Hereford roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, brown butter and honey tart.

Is it heresy that the best thing was the potatoes? (not my photo)

Friendly service, excellent food, reasonable prices (3 courses for 30 pounds). Oh, and unexpectedly a bargain babka we'll return to later.

We hopped on a bus to St Paul's so I could walk over the no-longer swaying Millennium Bridge. The sun came out.

Great views in every direction.

From the other side, by the ever expanding Tate Modern museum.

The financial district skyscrapers, including the walkie-talking building to the right, where we went to the Sky Garden yesterday.

I went to Flat Iron Square to watch the women's world cup. (We won!)

Like a lot of these popup container developments, Flat Iron Square is under the train tracks and next to this gorgeous building, a former chocolate factory.

So many gorgeous buildings close to Borough Market.

Still not hungry after a huge roast, we stopped in at Bao. I loved the food, though it was a little pricey for what it is. And they don't win any awards for Instagrammabiliy.

 This is smoked eggplant served with panko battered bread.

Marinated maitake mushrooms were a hit. Taiwanese fried chicken was tasty.

So many gorgeous buildings on Bermondsey Road. It's hard to believe this is the same city I came to years ago.

The last meal was babka, procured from The Marksman this morning for only 5 pounds. In San Francisco, it would cost at least twice that. I packed some, for the journey home.

All good things must come to an end. And that includes this trip. I'm excited to sleep in my own bed, and know where I am when I wake up in the middle of the night. I don't know where I'm headed next. The fun is in figuring that out. Come along for the ride.

postcard from London

I started the day at Maltsby Market with food and drink purveyors in the shadow of London Bridge rail link. Every now and then I thought there was thunder, until I realized it was just the train overhead.

First dessert: a delectable cannele. Next stop: a Scotch egg with exemplary fries.

I

The alley was packed with locals.

I stopped in at Jenson distillery for a boutique gin and tonic with cucumber soda. We need more g&t at markets.

 I succumbed to pricey but fresh oysters.

 Then it was time to see more of town.

 So many great buildings.

Today was London's Pride parade in Mayfair, and rainbows were everywhere.

 I headed to Bond Street and enjoyed the after gay glow.

Lots of happy people including many seemingly straight couples with young children. Great to see.

Then it was to visit the master: Tim at Postcard teas. I tasted so many exceptional teas: oolongs, black tea from Korea, Madagascar-scented vanilla tea.

A copy of a book Tim and his colleague wrote.

 The tea room is serene and soothing. We naturally got to know the other people who came to sample.

Then we raced across town to timed admission to the Sky Garden on the 35th floor of the walkie-talkie tower.

Inside you can see in every direction. That's St Paul's to the right.

 The cheese grater and the gerkin

 Looking east toward Tower bridge.

Last stop: a classic. We headed to St John's where the madeleines hark back to childhood nostalgia but make the recipes taste better.

I tried drinking sherry from the marrow bones, as we did in Vancouver.

Is the last dish of warm madeleines the culmination of everything so far? Downed with glasses of sherry, as a golden retriever blissfully chomped on bones on the floor. 

timeless tea rooms

I'm staying near Kelvingrove Park along the River Kelvin at the Amadeus guesthouse (wifi network: RockMeAmadeus). Today I went for a long wander.

First stop: Kelvingrove Art and Natural History Museum. What a magnificent building and random collection!

Glasgow's favorite son was Charles Rennie Mackintosh, one of Scotland's most famous Art Nouveau practitioners in the Glasgow Style movement. The museum has his triptych and recreated tea room.

The rest of the museum is varied: animal skeletons and stained glass and stuffed pangolins and Scottish paintings.

 I found this old lady who lived in a shoe teapot in a mini-exhibit on shoes.

Nearby was this teapot in an exhibit of faces in objects.

This painting is called something like "that time the china at my parents' house was broken."

This is not a balloon. It's art glass. Scotland produced a lot of art glass.

Too beautiful a day to spend indoors, so I walked along the Kelvin to the Clyde, the main river of Glasgow.

 In the 70s and 80s Glasgow was in poor shape economically, socially, and architecturally. But the community dug in and the government invested.

And today it's a happy and safe city with a lot of restored old buildings alongside new university housing.

 

Next stop: the Riverside Museum of transportation, another grab bag of historic trains, streetcars, tricycles, and cars. 

And inexplicably there are rotating dresses and items from pawn shops, period dressing. 

The big attraction besides the setting is the building itself, designed by Zaha Hadid. I loved this side view.

It's kind of a mess inside with long curving stairwells that lead somewhere you can't see. The main exhibit areas are cavernous, crowded, and noisy.

The most famous view is from the water, where there's also a tall ship or two you can explore. I'm sure the shape is meaningful, but I don't know what it is. It reminds me of a cardiograph.

Usually on trips I try to limit myself to 2 or 3 things max I want to do each day. I do a lot of research, but want time to people watch and discover new things. But today I was on a schedule. Even though it's light until after 10 pm, everything still closes at 5 or 6. 

Plus I've been in Scotland for a whole week and haven't had any Scotch!

This is Sam, who led our tour at the Clydeside Distillery. It's the first single malt distillery to open in Glasgow in 100 years. Unfortunately it's only been open 18 months so you can't taste their products yet.

This copper still has a great view. See the tall ship and Riverside museum in the distance on the right?

After a lot of compulsory learning, we did get to sample three drams of lowland, highland, and peaty Islay Scotch (my personal favorite). It was a lot better than the distillery I went to in Nova Scotia last summer.

Bottom line: Scotland is in the middle of a gin renaissance. That's a lot more to my taste, and cheaper too.

Finally, I was free to go to Hidden Lane.

I blame Miriam for having to order the complete afternoon tea. After sipping peaty Scotch, I ordered a pot of lapsang souchang aka the bacon tea. The woman at the cafe asked if I'd had it before. I laughed. Not the poshest tea, but the scone was perfect.

Earlier I had Kelvingrove Park to myself. On the way back, it was packed with joggers and cyclists and people walking dogs.

As I approached Amadeus, a woman with a thick Glaswegian accent asked me the street number, and I answered it like I'd always lived here and hadn't just arrived yesterday. Passing, always a good sign.