Living it Up in London

I was up late last night reading Kate's old copy of Anne Frank's Diary. (Thanks Kate!) It is a book I probably should have read 10 years ago, but never did. Anne Frank sure know how to write a journal well. Maybe some of her talent will rub off here.

That's Expensive: "Welcome to London"
We're in London and its good to be back in a country that speaks English. Yesterday we went explored Waterloo and Westminster stations. We're slowly working through Camille's list of things to see. We started with Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, 10 Downey Street and Picadilly Circus. We had a thoroughly relaxing time lounging in some chairs in St. James park until an official-looking chap came up to us and demanded 2 pounds for the use of the park chairs. This came as a bit of a surprise to me. "2£? That's expensive!" I said aloud. "Welcome to London" he replied.

Fortunately I haggled him down to only 1£ provided that we left immediately. The practice in Turkey was paying off.

Life in the American Ghetto
We are staying with Kate's family in Cobham just a half-hour train ride from London. Kate is our friend from Mirlo, our freshman dorm at Stanford, and Kate's family is a lot of fun. Kate's dad is a VIP at Cisco, her mom is a novelist, and her two brothers are in college. Sadly for us, Kate is at Stanford this summer doing research. Kate's entire family has a great sense of humor. Last night, we hung out with Kate's older brother Mark who told us his stories from travelling with friends in Japan. He was as lost and clueless as we were in Istanbul. His buddies developed a point system to keep track of shenanigans (Mark won the game after acquring a million points for getting stranded in a subway station as the brunt of a practical joke.) I am a strong proponent of adopting a similar system for our remaining journey.

Kate's dog Duke is also my new favorite. He reminds me of David's dog Milo.

Our physical accommodations are quite cushy. Kate's house is tucked away in a small gated community in the middle of a neighborhood full of US expats, hence the name "American Ghetto." Ethan and I both have our own rooms and private bathrooms.

Barely Scraping Buy With an i-banker's salary
Yesterday we met up with Irungu, another Stanford friend who just started two weeks ago at Citigroup's London office. He's what they call an i-banker in M&A who specializes in emerging markets. In english, that means he gets to travel all over the middle east, Africa and central Europe and hang out with top business execs. It sounds like a good life.

We spent the afternoon exploring his new neighborhood in Canary Warf looking for cheap eats. (So far they had only discovered the McDonalds.) It turns out that, despite the nice nice salary, at the moment he and his citigropu housemates are all totally broke. Their American bank account's can't accept sterlings and the UK banks are taking weeks to process their foreign passports. So at the moment their stuck in a bit of a financial jam. Paying the deposit on their 3-story waterfront apartment on the Thames didn't help either. Fortunately we found an awesome cheap chinese place for dinner and had a full meal for 3 for only 16£!

Fireworks
Last night Ethan had the bright idea of trying to walk back to Kate's place from the train station to find out how long it took. This would have been a good idea had it not been dark, raining and cold. 45 minutes later we arrived quite soggy, but we did catch some fireworks. It seems like everywhere we go our new city rolls out the fireworks for our arrival (See the post on Rome).

This morning we are waiting for Irungu and the plan is to tour the British museum. Tonight we will try to catch Mark perform at the local pub. Cheers!