Settling In

We're all moved into our apartment. It's comfortable and surprisingly quiet*, with two bedrooms -- including the frightening bunkbed room -- and two baths up one flight of stairs, and an open kitchen/living/dining room up a second flight. There's a dishwasher and a TV and a clothes washer that also dries, sort of (a load takes between 3 and 9 hours -- not exactly energy efficient). All the creature comforts, and then some. Compared to Home Heymans in Gent, it is the lap of luxury (there's furniture!) and we don't even have to hop over puddles of student vomit on the weekends or deal with the shrieks of the drunks celebrating Wednesday. Or Thursday. (They all went home to their parents on Friday.) Here, the pubs close at 11, and there are no revelers in the wee hours.

Phil spent a day orientating, and we had a meal out at a Vietnamese place. It was newly opened and the food was spicy and fresh. The area is jammed with Asian restaurants of all sort, which makes us very happy after 18 years of little but Italian and bad Chinese.  (And the Culinary Institute, but they don't do takeout.)

On Friday the three of us headed to Westminster to take a boat ride down the Thames to Greenwich with the London Centre students and administrators. I met a number of the students, all of whom seemed excited and pleased to be there. The boat ride was typical tourist stuff: a guide with a fake cockney accent giving info and telling extremely

bad and sexist jokes. We did learn something entirely new, though, which I'll bet most of you didn't know: the word "wharf" is an anagram for Ware House at River Front (many websites claim this is entirely made up, but I prefer to believe it).We also saw new things:

the London Eye, a gigantic, overpriced Ferris wheel, which I find annoying; the Gherkin, a building shaped much like a pickle, which certain natives view with scorn but which BT compared to a Faberge egg; and the Shard, the tallest building in London, which struck us as both shocking and fascinating. I'm sure the architecture historians among our readers have Strong Opinions about them all. It's startling to see how much has changed in the skyline since we last spent time here -- much like New York, though for different reasons.

We didn't have long to look around at Greenwich, but managed to see the small WWI naval exhibit in the Maritime Museum, as well as some charming mastheads.

Sadly, BT left us on Saturday, though he will return. He made it back to JFK without incident (but with no seatback TV -- curses on you, Virgin Atlantic!). Lonely without him, on Sunday we explored and shopped, locating the necessities (gym, Indian restaurant, Thai restaurant, pizza restaurant, two bookstores).We happened on a film crew shooting an episode of  a popular TV series set in the 1950s called Grantchester, which explained why all the passers-by were wearing wide pleated pants or hats with veils. We also came across an upscale farmers' market selling honey, pastries, neckties, and beer, where a minstrel serenaded shoppers with Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah."

I have really missed city life...


Our pubs for the week:

on nearby Clerkenwell Road

around the corner, BT's favorite

our spot--they have Belgian beers!

*Well, it was quiet until early this morning, when a construction crew arrived to hammer and scrape down the concrete walls in the courtyard. Just like Belgium -- but two hours later. And with more tea breaks.