London town

On the train back to Paris from London after spending the whole weekend with Julianne, Antonia, and Jack. The whole journey door to door is about 6 hours, so doable for a weekend and the train ride is comfortable.

On Friday, all of us went to a work party at Julianne’s office in Shoreditch. The office is a converted apartment with everyone working in the living room. It had a very start-up feel as to host the party they had pushed all of their desks against the walls and set up a beer pong table in the middle. Everyone was casually dressed and Julianne was the only female employee. It ended up being really fun to meet Julianne’s colleagues and “bant” with Jack and Antonia. Bant is my word of the week and something Jack says all the time. It’s comes from the word banter as in have banter with friends, like when you’re drinking with friends and having a good time. We had a fairly early night as Jack had a rugby match the next day, Antonia had a date, and Julianne and I had to be out of the house by 9:30 am for Richard to show the house to the buyers.

On Saturday, Julianne and I had a nice hipster lunch in Brixton and then proceeded to walk across all of London. We started at Oxford Circus downtown and walked all the way to The Woodman in Battersea, not to mention that we didn’t take the most direct path and had lots of loops. By 2:30 pm when we sat down for lunch we already had 23,000 steps, or about 13 miles, see graph below. When we were walking through Battersea, we were reminiscing of our family’s trip to London last year and kept expecting to see Bell emerge from the trees with an oversized stick to bring home.

After lunch at The Woodman, we went to see Jack play in a rugby match in Dulwich (south London). We weren’t sure if we should go or not, but it ended up being a great decision. The game was at a super nice park where there were about 5 rugby matches going on. Luckily, we found Jack on the first pitch and started to watch the brutal sport that is rugby. I explained to Julianne the basics based on my experiences last weekend at the Scotland vs. France rugby match I attended. I still have no idea what rules govern the ruck and decide who gets the ball after someone is tackled. Jack was a beast on the field and was the biggest guy out there. At one point, this 160 pound dweeby looking guy got some open field and probably would have scored, but Jack lit him up and lifted him out of cleats as he tackled him.

Julianne and I started cheering in celebration, but we quickly stopped as Jack was awarded a red card for his efforts. Apparently Jack tackled the guy too high, but everyone on both teams told the ref that it was a fair tackle. The ref just said sheepishly “I call what I see.” After the game, one of the guys from the other team came up to Jack and said “Mayt, da day dat dats a fowl, iz da day dat pigz fly, mayt.” Jack’s team ended up winning 60-7, but Jack was pissed about the call the rest of the day (his first red card ever, by the way). Jack said we are bad luck and aren't invited to any more rugby games, but he was mostly kidding.

After the game, we picked up some Stellas and started drinking in the kitchen at Herne Hill while listening to 90's rap music. At 9 pm, we decided to grab dinner and had one of the most underwhelming experiences of my life. It was so bad that the next morning Julianne and I felt compelled to leave a Yelp review. The worst part was that I ordered something called "open ravioli", which you would expect to be ravioli that is not closed on one side or something. Wrong. The open ravioli had no ravilio or pasta anywhere. It was just three small piles of food on a plate. Apparently, open ravioli means that you get the insides of what would go into ravioli, but it’s up to you to imagine that the ravioli exists. The portion was equivalent to the inside of three little piece of ravioli. I couldn’t believe it. Afterwards, we went to Marley’s, which is a fast-food chicken sandwich place and I ate an entire chicken sandwich with fries for 3 pounds, after having paid 23 pounds for my “ravioli.”

Sunday morning, Jack, Antonia, Julianne and I had a leisurely stroll around the park by their house and went to the Herne Hill Farmer’s Market where we found Yacob selling baked goods from Richard’s bakery. We had a quick tea and I took off for the train. Overall, a great weekend trip to see Julianne and the cousins and escape the bubble of Fontainebleau.