Transplanting a Seattleite

R and I had our last pastries from Ole and Steen (almond and apricot or orange or something like that), not too sweet, very satisfying. We walked over to Embankment Station and took the Underground to South Kensington. We just used our phones without an app, tap in tap out (unlike NYC where you only have to tap in).

Lots of tunnels to V&A, and we poked our heads out to get a photo of the Natural History Museum. We wandered a bit at V&A. R enjoyed the glass display. The V&A functions largely as an open all the time design library, with the expected strengths and weaknesses. Lots of school groups.

We came back, stopped at Caffe Concerto to get two croissants and they didn’t have pain au chocolate, or at least they said they didn’t which was legitimately odd. I set A. up with brunch: a croissant, a banana, strawberries, a slice of cheese. Then R. and I went to Ship and Shovell, which had order and pay at the counter first pub rules, unlike Sherlock Holmes Pub dining room. We split a fish and chips, he got a side salad and I got a side of onion rings. He had a nettle beer and I had a golden ale which was tasty (Badger, I think). Empty when we got there a little before 1 and full by the time we left.

He headed over to Embankment to take the Underground the other direction to get pictures of Tower Bridge; I went back to the hotel to chill out because I’m about done with the Doing Things part of vacation, and there’s still one more dinner out at 40 Elephants, plus Operation Mincement at the Fortune Theater. If A. is bored, we will try the portrait gallery, otherwise, I’m staying put and possibly snacking if I get hungry. I should probably also pack up because tomorrow starts early.

Later:

40 Elephants was a blast. It’s really just a bar, but after Ship and Shovell, I wasn’t that hungry. A. ate a meal, but R. and I just had a small plate (the chicken karaage) and drinks. I had 2 really good sidecars. The theming is fantastic and the service is good.

We dropped A. off at the hotel, and walked over to the Fortune Theatre to see Operation Mincement. Oree looked good, so I bought a couple pastries for tomorrow for A. and R. which was probably not the best plan because I had to keep track of them and not let them get crushed during the show.

The show was amazing. The book is legit great. Very, very little speaking, almost all singing. Small cast, and gender bent casting played completely straight. The man who played Hester is soooo good at it. I’m going to try to see if I can go see it again. I loved the whole thing. R. didn’t love it as much — he had trouble making out the words. It is a goofy show, but it’s also telling a straight story from history while simultaneously making a whole lot of subtle but heavy hitting points about classism and sexism, ambition, conflict between personal motivations and the needs of the group / collective, and how stories get told later versus what happened in the moment and whose stories get told and just all the really good stuff. Nice zinger at MAGA in it, too.

R. and I had more Pave from Liberte for breakfast (it does not stale quickly, yay!), and then we walked over to the Thames and looked at Big Ben and then over to Buckingham and caught the tail end of the changing of the guard accidentally, learned that Macron was visiting in a couple of days (on the 8th) based on the massive alternating and same sized French and English flags on the mall. We stopped at Chestnut bakery and got A. a croissant and a Nutella brookie (and a croissant for R.s breakfast tomorrow) and then went to a Tesco Express and bought fruit, veg, cooked chicken, cheddar cheese for A. and Stilton for R. On the way back to the hotel, we passed Cream Dream, and I picked up a chocolate and hazelnut sweet for later — that’s the vegan bakery I’d meant to go to last night but did not. Ukrainian. There is a conspicuous lack of Russians in this city, which I’m not sad about at all. It’s a little creepy how many of them there were in Paris, and I’m still kicking myself about that lamp I bought.

We came back to the hotel, and I got a reservation at the rooftop at St James Trafalgar for 1:45 pm, and adjusted our Sherlock Holmes pub reservation from 5 to 615.

I think between Pride and Macron’s visit, we have a partial explanation for why it’s been so easy to get dining reservations. But it might also have been the absence of Russians.

Later: OK, Rooftop was excellent. I brought my umbrella, wore my travel vest and left my visor and sunglasses at the hotel, so obviously, the sun came out and they retracted the roof. Thank you, fucking Murphy, I guess? Great spicy margarita, really really amazing mushroom taco (vegan). R. got the cheeseburger and fries and the skinny fries were mad delicious. I seem to have finally broken my Too Many Burgers streak. England is really good about having vegan everywhere.

We went to the National Gallery and I got some good pics of the Van Eyck wedding and the mirror in the background. Did you know there were miniatures surrounding the mirror? Because I sure as hell did not know that. WTF. The Rosa Bonheur is hung so that if you stand just in the hallway to the gift shop it’s nearly perfect so good on them for doing that right. Claude (one name) has some really nice landscapes with some really useless figures in them. There was a really nice Finnish post-impressionist. The building itself is very beautiful, and there are some nice mosaics on the floor, unattributed as near as I can tell, which is a pity. We’ll probably go back with A. later. It was moderately crowded.

There’s a great picture of Westerkerk, and very little around it. So weird to see it that open to the sky around it!

We saw a super old dude in black and white check suit with hat and amazing shoes.

Dinner was at Sherlock Holmes Pub. They were out of both the pale and the amber, and British IPAs don’t taste like much altho Roland got one anyway. The Sherlock Holmes room / exhibit is very cute. Since it is a Sunday, the menu is different and at first, I thought we had a complete fail on our hands. They still had the fish and chips, so R. got that, and I’d planned to share it with him. But the burger, steak and chicken escalopes were NOT on the menu, so A. wound up with the roast chicken instead, which came with cabbage, stuffing, carrots, duck fat roasted potatoes and a pig in a blanket (sausage wrapped in bacon in this case). I figured I’d split that with her if she hated it. She tried the cabbage (two bites!) but decided no, and she didn’t care for the carrots (probably the thyme, and she doesn’t like them cooked anyway) or the stuffing. But the bird, potatoes and pig in a blanket went down the hatch and she was mad when I tried a bite of the sausage. LOL Calories listed on the menu, with the fish and chips being around 1200 and the chicken around 1300. It’s a good thing we only got the two, especially since we then added some stuff to it.

I had about half the fish, and I ate the stuffing, carrots and cabbage. R. added a yorkshire pudding, which A. tried a couple bites of but passed on. We also got bread, and split that pretty evenly. A. had the brownie with ice cream for dessert; R. and I split a peach melba tatin that was vegan and awesome. I had a single of Glenmorangie because they were out of the Bruichladdich; Roland had a Lagavulin.

A. was pretty hostile at the beginning, and skeptical of the whole Sunday dinner idea but I showed her a wikipedia article about it and she settled down and the whole dinner wound up being fantastic. It was a nice, cozy meal and wasn’t even a crazy amount of money (115 L and I added 20L in tip, and it totaled out to $157 and change).

I was not aiming for the Sunday Dinner Experience, but it’s nice we had it and that it worked out. I think one of the best parts of it was seeing how they portioned things.

Happy Independence Day!

We got an Uber to Musee D’Orsay after breakfast. We did not have lunch. The impressionist trick works on many but not all of the paintings in 5, including Seurat (altho we didn’t make it to Gauguin). A. kinda blew up after about 40 minutes. She liked the sculpture, but there were too many people in the impressionist rooms. Oh well!

We went to Angiolo, but on the way there we stopped at Damonte & Lacarrieu a “concept store”, but whatever, R. like a lamp in the window so we went in and bought it for a lot of money and ultimately paid almost half that again to ship it to us at home. We’ll see if it shows up, and if I later find it for 20% or less the price online somewhere.

Angiolo for ice cream was amazing and had a bunch of vegan options. Really, really great.

Our efforts to reload our Navigo cards and get one for A. went cartoonishly awry, partly because we’re idiots but mostly because we kept getting distracted by a scam artist who was pretending to be helpful. At one point, he grabbed my money, but I grabbed it right back, so shades of that night in De Wallen I guess. He did snag some of the change from successfully reloading the card, but I think he got maybe 6E out of the deal and when he saw I was headed over to the person to complain he cleared out finally. In all the chaos, I’d accidentally loaded another trip onto a card that had one, and then I finally just used coins in the machine helpful guy said didn’t take coins, and it worked just fine. Then the train was crazy crowded and A. freaked out. Why we didn’t just Uber I will never know, but I’m pretty sure R. has learned from this.

We got home, and I made A. a cheese sandwich (so the cheese is now gone). Then we went to Fugue for dinner which was fantastic. Nikka Coffey Grain whisky is wonderful, and the Eau de Vie from prunes is also really yummy.

I cooked the chicken nuggets for A. and did the whole box (it was small) and she wound up eating all of it. Which is fine! And she’s eaten almost all of the carrots and lettuce and had some grapes and an apple. The apple juice was a little too tart. Win some lose some.

In the end, it was breakfast, ice cream and dinner for R. and me (no lunch today), which worked out well.

I did some laundry, but only mine, not anyone else’s. R. says he has clothes to get until he’s home. We made a bunch of reservations for the England days, and mostly planned tomorrow’s travels.

I took A. to Studios in the morning, with the full express pass and did the Spiderman ride, Crush’s Coster, Ratatouille, Twilight Zone. R. did Cars Road Trip with us, and the earth quake, burning fuel tanker and flash flood really drives home how they are completely referencing Universal Studios Tram ride with Road Trip.

A. did the parachute drop, which was so calm it almost wasn’t a drop ride. Cute theming tho.

A. and I had lunch at Hollywood Gardens and I got the Holly-Red burger, which was weird but pretty good. I also had the Magnum Vegan which was awesome. It was 90 when we left. Ugh.

I cooked the rest of the food (the other half of the steak, the other piece of chicken) and served it to the three of us for a light dinner. We followed it up with cookies and other baked goodies on Main Street when we went back to the park.

We went to DisneyLand in the evening and did Star Tours, Small World, I did Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. R. and I did Hyperspace Mountain, which I regretted. He used A.’s express pass since it has a barrel roll and she was not interested.

Went to DisneyLand. A. was difficult. We did Phantom Manor twice and took pictures and looked at the Lair of the Dragon which was awesome. A. and I really, really, really enjoyed that. It would have been a miserable day otherwise. Pirates of the Caribbean was being refurbished, as was Buzz Lightyear.

We had lunch at Annette’s Diner. A. had the chicken wings and celery and I had a burger and fries. Way too many burgers and fries on this trip already.

R. and I got an uber to a Carrefour and I bought groceries so we could feed A. and sometimes us at the hotel.

We went back to DisneyLand in the evening and did Star Tours, and the Mysteries of the Nautilus, which like the Lair of the Dragon was really awesome.

I bought some bakery items to bring to my cousin once removed A. R. and I had coffee with her. PJ joined us, and we heard the story of what happened to H and PJ’s first daughter (who died at 15 days), and how PJ’s biological mother (alcoholic) left and could not attend the funeral because she had a cruise scheduled. H. and A. did not get along and H wanted a different mother-in-law and that didn’t work out either. Ouch. Tough tough tough.

Very nice to see both of them.

Lunch at Ferron — Italian, well-traveled, hired a local baker to produce real Italian bread with a view to producing Italian food that fits into Frisian expectations. Results are excellent, and really interesting — unusual to see someone other than Asians taking this approach, but it’s always interesting and often amazing. I got the Oedipus Thai Thai (beer) which was tasty but handed it over to Roland because it had lemongrass in it. He got a Rochefort Trappist, which I wound up finishing.

R. and I walked over to the Heerenveen museum which was unexpectedly awesome. A longtime apotheker’s display was in the gift shop. There was some interesting modern art, some of it looking kinda kinky in an iconic apple sort of way. There was a ton of stuff — library, office furniture, artwork — that once belonged to and/or pertained to the life of Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis, an atheist socialist activist. He didn’t go by Ferdinand, but since he was also antimilitary, it got me wondering about Munro Leaf’s book for the kiddos. Is this yet another reference I failed to recognize. Early person to be cremated in Westerveld. 100% not expecting to learn that much about socialism in Heerenveen. The attic of the museum includes a puzzle / escape room! But mostly, it’s a display made to look like it could be someone’s attic where all kinds of old things are stashed. I was especially excited to see a bunch of Meccano, but R. was more interested in the enormous plane (for wood working). There was also a room about the 80th anniversary of the German occupation ending (that was not in the attic).

Dinner in Wolvega at ‘T Stad Huys Grand Cafe. My chair lost a leg towards the end. Yikes! A’s steak was not medium rare — it was rare. I ate the middle part. Fries were good. I had the vegan stew and it was good. Baked potatoes were really good. R. had an Advocaat, and A. got the apple streudel with vanilla saus, vanilla ice cream and vanilla whipped cream. I had a Belgian dubbel and a local Trippel (Gudzekop, maybe?).

It is Memorial Day, which is, variously, a Monday where one may not have to go to school and/or work, a day where one has to figure out how to juggle child care responsibilities while still having to go to work, a day to remember those who have died in the service of our country and, for me, this year, a moment to remember how much I enjoyed Over My Dead Body by Greg Melville, because the author did such a lovely job of placing Decoration Day in historical and cultural context.

At the moment, I’m catching up on blogging, because I’ve been attending Balticon and hanging out with my sister and niblings who joined me at the con. It was a much shorter train ride for them than it was for me, and we left all the menfolk at home. It’s been fun and I’ve learned a ton. I’ll probably come back. Ironically, my sister wasn’t that enthused about this con, until I unilaterally decided to go with A. and invited them to come with me. Once here, it is being compared very favorably to RavenCon. Certainly, it is bigger, and both cons are very reader/writer focused, so the programming at both is what we love, but the quality of the moderation and the qualifications and competencies of the panel participants is wildly better. Some overlap, tho! Balticon is still running as a hybrid con which is nice to see.

ETA: I bought a tiara, a print, and a bottle of whisky over the last few days. The tiara wrapped up nicely and didn’t take up much space. The print is going to have to be handcarried. The whisky, it turns out, fits into a side pocket on the fjallraven kanken 17” laptop bag. It’s in a plastic bag within the pocket, in an effort to encourage people to not see what’s in my backpack. I’ll report back whether I have to ditch it on the way home. In theory, I think I can bring it on the train. Obviously this would not work on a plane.

ETAYA: I got a 30 minute reprieve on checking out, which was handy because A. wasn’t quite ready. We left our bags with the front desk, and walked over to the science museum where we looked around and saw the planetarium spring skies show. A. could not have dippin dots (sad face) because we were out of lactaid. Our next stop was a CVS where we bought offbrand lactase and branded Pepcid, both of which I intend to leave packed for future trips. Because of all this. CVS was a few doors down from a Shake Shack, so that’s where we had lunch including a frozen custard for A. She got the chicken sandwich, which looked really good.

We walked across the street to the con hotel to use the bathrooms, and then back to the Residence Inn to pick up our bags. We got an uber from there to the train station. My sister had gotten her train changed to an earlier one, still in the quiet car, so she was already home. I initially went to the wrong track, realized it was the wrong direction, asked for help, switched sides of the island (no need to go back up the stairs, yay!) and waited a couple more minutes and boarded. So far, have not had any damage to the print or the whisky. Presumably the tiara and so forth are fine in the bags.

We had a really nice time! I panicked a little, because time was getting tight, but we got to the train station about 30 minutes before boarding, so I even got to use the bathroom. The con floor was totally dead when we stopped at that hotel, so we had a bathroom to ourselves there. I know it’s stupid, but getting to have clean, quiet bathrooms is amazing.

Also! While waiting to board, there was someone with a paper Analog bungied on top of his roller so we chit-chatted. He’s got a novel coming out in the Eric Flint Ring of Fire universe involving Venice getting a radio (maybe 1633?). Apparently that’s where Charles Gannon is editing, keeping that massive multiverse going post death of Eric Flint. I couldn’t remember as we were chatting which panel I saw Gannon on; it was The Stakes are High and They’re Well Done, which was mostly about pacing. That’s the panel where I finally realized that all the “getting the beats right” comments were references to Save the Cat by Blake Snyder, and thus more examples of Novel / Story as screenplay.

It was a really good day.

I went to the The Cat Really Is Out to Get You panel about cats in SF. I was there because John Hemry/Jack Campbell was there, and I got there early enough to catch him before the panel started and show him the photo M. took when she met him at I believe Connecticon 10 years ago. I couldn’t attend, and I was envious, and they sweetly got a photo with him at that con. I’d lost it, but they still had it and resent it to me. In person, he’s almost exactly what I expected him to be like and the panel was enjoyable.

At 11:30, my sister and I attended the Sharon Lee interview, which was great. Since this is a hybrid con, I was not 100% certain she’d be there in person, but she was (and I got to see her in a later panel as well). The interviewer did a lovely job, and Sharon Lee’s story of her writing life is lovely and it was all a feel good time. After that, my sister and I went to the Water Street Tavern, which was a whole novel in itself. No unsweetened iced tea. The woman running the bar was hilarious and very entertaining. It’s very much a dive bar that gets a great combination of locals and regulars. It’s super close to the Residence Inn we stayed at, so I passed it repeatedly. The night before, when I’d gone out in a failed attempt to acquire Pepcid for A. (Gas-x ultimately got the job done), I’d passed it and it was crowded and raucous. Much quieter at lunch on a Saturday. I had the fish sandwich, which was fine, and a couple of beers, local, do not recall what but they were fine.

After lunch, I got A. up and through the shower and fed a meal.

I went to the 2:30 Editors Can Be Your Friends. This was really interesting, altho definitely a mixed bag. I was there to see Melissa Scott, and I chatted with her very briefly after the panel. There are a ton of grievances out there on the part of editors because people who submitted manuscripts were not happy with what happened next. Some of these grievances really do not sound great when aired.

I returned to the hotel to get A. in motion for dinner, and then we all ubered over to Bunny’s. I hadn’t intended to do anything non-walkable for this weekend, but I tripped over Bunny’s when reading menus and I couldn’t resist. It was amazing. I got the vegan chicken sandwich with vegan collard greens, and a “Silk Chiffon” cocktail that had a skewer with a little bite of vegan baklava on it. Wow. No regrets. We walked back, and that stretch of Baltimore is absolutely a lovely walk.

I went to a 10 am reading by Chad Ownby, who did a masters on Batman, and Fraser Sherman, who I’d heard on an author panel last year, and whose Atlas Shagged I found hilarious. He read part of a book, and the review piece from the Atlas Shagged collection. It hits a little different this year. I was the only attendee initially, but someone else showed up who was somewhat older than me, and who commented he liked things set in the 70s like some of Sherman’s work, because he cannot keep up with current things. It was a refreshing degree of non-judgment and self-insight. Often, people just trash current things as bad or at least not as good / enjoyable as past things, which is both more judgey AND less self-insightful.

Ownby was a sweetheart, who attempted to engage the other man with descriptions of more contemporary work that might be of interest to him based on other things he said he liked. Gotta love Kids These Days.

I also attended a reading by Sarena Straus, who I’d heard with interest on yesterday’s panel, and Nicole Glover. I will at least try samples from both of them.

The genre mixing panel and the romance in fantasy panel were both really enjoyable. Later in the day, the sex in SFFH panel was even better. It’s really clear that there’s a big age gap around content / trigger warnings / descriptions. People my age acknowledge the need for some trigger warnings; the younger folks seem to grasp that it’s not JUST warning people and potentially scaring readers away. Some of us are using the information to _find_ the stuff we _want_. I’d rather see it presented as “here’s what you can expect to find in this book”, rather than “stay away if this is bad for you”. In general, I prefer Content Warning (would really like to see it as “Content Disclosure”) over Trigger Warning.

A. was not tolerant of being outdoors for the laser presentation, so we arrived late and left almost immediately (but did see the match lit, so, yay). The neurofollies presentation was not much like its description; it was like an Introduction the Neurology, and at the very boring end of things.

We had dinner at Tokyo Sushi. It was good. A. had the chicken Katsu.

I also missed part of the Masquerade in favor of a Cozy Gaming panel, which had the author of the Cleric’s Guide to Smiting on it (bought at the dealer’s room). I’m increasingly curious what exactly people mean by Cozy. I thought I knew, but it’s clear people have different ideas (and also, people know it sells, so they are saying their stuff is cozy more or less independent of any conception of Cozy beyond It Sells).

Masquerade was enjoyable, but a little short.

The Imminent Peril live was okay — that could actually be a fun game to try with friends when it comes out.

I met a lovely young woman at the spice panel, and we chatted after until 11:30 when I bailed to get A. to bed. She reads even more than me, and was very happy to tell me all about it and I was overjoyed to hear her describe it. I finally got one person’s answer to the appeal of MM — it’s sexy, but without involving anyone doing anything to a body that she feels is like hers. Which, first, wow, that’s a clue I’m nonbinary if I ever needed one (I did not), and second, oh, honey.

R. and I went to the Citrus Club. I was 50/50 on whether I was going to go at all, but R. pushed very gently and we walked over. They asked me for a phone number, identified me using Resy, set up a Resy for us and handed us a circle with the Citrus Club logo and pointed us at the elevator. They took that circle back, but we left with a cardboard coaster so we still have circle from them. LOL.

Drinks and small bites were expensive, but yummy. View is incredible. The lime trees smell amazing.

We keep winding up in places that are full of groups of white women in nice dresses hanging out together. At some point, I will be wanting an explanation. My initial theory was that Charleston is where every white woman in the area goes for wedding and wedding-adjacent festivities, but R. is skeptical.

I wound up making a reservation at Marbled and Fin, and that’s where we had dinner. B. asked if he could order the Weller Millenium, which is listed at $3K on the menu (for what is presumably a 2 oz pour altho it is not specified). I said absolutely not, but I did look up the price of a bottle, and it seems to run $7K-$10K a bottle, so while $3K is nuts, it’s within the usual markup range. I do wonder how they keep the staff from sampling and diluting that thing. Our server said someone ordered 7 servings of it once. Food was good, everyone was happy.

We’ve been walking more (to and from the museum yesterday, to and from the Biergarten and the Citrus Club yesterday, to and from Marbled and Fin today). It’s dead flat and the weather’s been fantastic, other than getting a little windy and drizzly going to the Biergarten. It’s gotta really be tough in this town in high summer, but in spring, it’s lovely.