Beyond your wildest imagination

London keeps amazing me with endless possibilities and ideas beyond my wildest imagination.

Traffic-free London

You think that's impossible? Very much possible.
Last weekend I spent in a traffic-free and transport-free central London, visiting beautiful parks and riding a bicycle.

Every year the City of London organises a transport-free weekend called Prudential Ride (that is yet another word I have never heard before). The centre of the city is closed for any transport except Underground, and opened for cyclists. All roads are free to ride and thousands of people mount thousands of bikes and merrily cycle around the empty streets. There are two main routes set up, both of them are pretty sightseeing, so you get it all - enjoy the city without engines and sirens, get a workout and see many major landmarks of London including St Paul's Cathedral, London Tower, Tower bridge, London bridge, Big Ben and many others.

I was in the city with my friend and we didn't plan on cycling. But the sight of people passing by, honking and cheering under the bridges (to get a loud echo in the otherwise totally quiet city) was contagious, so we hopped on a Barclay Bike and went along.

Cycling station next to St. Paul

All ages, all bike sizes 

"Abandoned" city

At some places the city seemed abandoned - streets empty and strangely quiet. On several crossroads there were even musicians - drummers - filling the air with a strong rhythm - maybe one of the reasons was indeed to dissolve the unusual silence. To me both the silence and the nice live rhythm were enjoyable. After a short ride we reached the Tower of London, where a huge exposition of ceramic red poppies is set up as a symbol of blood shed during the World War I. The sight is amazing:

There are 888, 246 poppies - one for each British soldier who died in WWI. The exposition will stay for some time and then every flower (which is said to be unique in shape and form) will be sold for 25 pounds. 

Night with the dinosaurs

Having enjoyed the sight we cycled back to the centre of the Central London and left the bikes at docking stations. Next we explored the famous Natural History Museum, which turned upside down my idea about history museums. This one seemed more like history-geology-geography-biology-anatomy-social science museum and it will take many weekends to explore it all - it is simply HUGE.
Luckily the entrance is officially free. You are kindly asked to provide a small donation of 3 pounds, but noone checks whether you donated or not. It is totally up to you. I marked this museum as a source of weekly exploring - one section at a time, plus numerous exhibitions. You can even stay for the night in Natural History Museum - sleeping next to the dinosaurs.

Music for the masses

Before we entered the Natural History Museum we passed the beautiful Albert Memorial and the Royal Albert Hall next to the Hyde Park.

Albert Monument

Albert Hall didn't impress me from the outside, so I didn't take any pictures of it, but next Friday I went to listen to BBC Proms in the Albert Hall. I am not a big fan of the classical music, but the hall itself impressed me very much:

Albert Hall from the inside

The hall is almost totally empty inside. All the seats are organized into 7-10 rows of circles along the walls one upon another. We sat in the upper circle, on the 5th row and although I have no fear of heights, I felt uneasy "hanging" from the wall in a colossal circular hall with high ceilings. The acoustics was amazing. If someone coughed at the other side of the hall, everyone heard it.

BBC Proms tradition itself starts from some old times, when British government decided to join poorer people to the classical music and sponsored regular concerts previously affordable only by rich people, to everyone. The tickets to the floor for BBC Proms concert cost as little as 5 pounds. You do not have chairs to sit on, but people just stand or even lie down and enjoy the music. The same 5 pounds is the standing gallery on the very top with a beautiful view over the whole hall. The rest of the tickets vary in price, but still affordable. We sat on the upper circle to the side of the stage and the ticket cost me 14 pounds. 

Besides the impressions from the museum and Albert Hall, I must say the Kensington area with the "Museum Street" and Albert Hall is incredibly nice, below is just one example of nice curvy building.

  

Wellcome to Mountain View!

On my second week in London I flew to Mountain View office. After 2 days in Dublin, one full day of house hunting, lots of new information, next Monday at 11 AM I was already leaving office and manoeuvring with my über-suitcase in a crowded Paddington Station. I took Heathrow Express (and if you are coming to Heathrow and have extra 30 pounds, I strongly advise booking a roundtrip from-to airport by Heathrow Express), sent a couple of e-mails from the train (yes, that is the beauty of it, aside from air conditioning and 15 minutes instead of 45 minutes trip to the airport), and in 15 minutes was manoeuvring further along the kilometers of tunnels and walkways of Heathrow.

I haven't flown for 15 years and was slightly afraid of a 10-hour flight and security procedures, but I was pleasantly surprised by the result. After a week of tiring days, I finally had 10 hours with my phone off, sitting in a pretty comfortable seat with a personal touchscreen display with dozens of movies, audiobooks and music channels.

The seat, although the cheapest economy, when reclined, also shifted a bit forward, making sitting just a tiny bit more comfortable. The headrest had "ears" that you could bend to avoid falling onto your neighbour while you sleep. I made a smart move and bought a travel pillow in advance, so with it, a pillow and a blanket provided onboard, I was comfortable.

I love traveling after a busy day or week. In this case seating for 10 hours, being fed 2-3 times, able to sleep for up to 10 hours, with an option to watch movies or listen to the music - that's a luxury I usually cannot afford at home.

The best thing about US (California specifically) is the weather. Of course, had I stayed longer or had I lived in US, I would have been upset by draught and losing electricity from time to time and many more things, but for a 4-day-hotel-business-trip CA looked and felt beautiful.

Since Silicon Valley towns have no public transport, I took a taxi to the office every morning.
No issues with it except Indian English. Every day drivers were different and every day they were Indians. And every day it took me 10 minutes to understand what he was trying to tell me. Even my favourite "I am a foreigner, could you please speak very slow" didn't help here. Because "slow" didn't make it any more understandable. They just replaced letters and vowels at their convenience and it was a wild guess game and a brain workout to understand what they said.

Another nice feature I discovered is a "square" - a small device plugged into the taxi driver's smart phone, reading credit cards. I was amazed. He swiped my card through this - literally - white square, it debited my card, I signed a deal on the screen and entered my e-mail address for the receipt. I was sure my card would be wiped out by the end of the day. Not at all. New technologies. Colleagues at the office shrugged and said it was a usual way of paying these days.

The office itself was nice. Very californian. I would have a hard time working outside: too cosy, nice and warm. But I imagine you get used to it.

The flight from US was as pleasant as the flight to US. The tip for avoiding a jet lag is to choose takeoff and landing times in the middle of the day and make yourself tired before you board. Then you can sleep on the plane (but not too much!), and when you land you still have enough time to get tired again before the night, but not too much to fall asleep too early. 

Do you speak English?

I thought I was fluent in English. Now I know I am not. Good, but not fluent.

Every day I read and hear new words and my dictionary is always open.

Two new interesting ones I got during the last weeks: revamp (I thought it was something to do with vampires) and triage (you might think this is some product evaluation period - not at all!).

triage

noun

1. 1.

   (in medical use) the assignment of degrees of urgency to wounds or illnesses to decide the order of treatment of a large number of patients or casualties.

   "a triage nurse"

   • the process of determining the most important people or things from amongst a large number that require attention.

     "a system of educational triage that allows a few students to get help while the needs of others are neglected"

verb

1. 1.

   decide the order of treatment of (patients or casualties).

   "victims were triaged by paramedics before being transported to hospitals"
2. 
   

revamp

verb

1. 1.

   give new and improved form, structure, or appearance to.

   "an attempt to revamp the museum's image"

noun

1. 1.

   an act of improving the form, structure, or appearance of something.

   "the brand was given a $1 million revamp"

   • a new and improved version.

     "the show was a revamp of an old idea"

   
   

A Sunday in the City

Today I am going to write about a (more) proper London weekend. This Sunday me and my new London friend went to walk in the City. We started with a Leighton House Museum which was highly recommended by TripAdvisor. Having looked at the museum's site, I was immediately inspired by the Arab motives on the pictures, and off we went. Sir Leighton was a rich and famous (within London at least, I presume) artist, who lived in the 19th century. The house, which was also a studio, is quite modest but very nice. The owner had a great taste, and house's interior is a pleasure to look at.

On our way to the museum, my friend took me through a beautiful Holland Park. It used to host one of the biggest properties in the vicinity - the Holland House - until it was demolished by German bombings in 1940. Even a brief glimpse on our way through the park made me make a mental note to come back here later.

Holland park is full of flowers, all for different seasons.

A smurf-house, or a dwarf-house if you please. Leftovers from the mighty castle.

Amazing gallery of paintings - actually one big painting separated by white arches.

Next, our plan was to go have a look at the Festival of Love at Southbank and the Wonderland next to the London eye. Since, it was quite far away from where we were, we decided to take Barclay Bikes. Barclays Cycle Hire is an amazing system for short bike rides: throughout the city there are bike stations with bikes, secured in the slots, and a payment machine next to it. Daily rent costs 2 pounds, however, this is only in case you use the bike for less than 30 minutes at a time. You pay when you first take the bike, cycle for less than half an hour, park it at the next station, and later during the 24 hour period you can take another bike at arbitrary station, and again, if you use it for less than 30 minutes, you are not charged anything extra. If you, however, go over your time limit, i.e. bike is not parked for more than 30 mins, every next hour started costs you 1 pound. This way you can move from station to station, park the bike, wait for 5 minutes, take the bike again and cycle further. The tricky part is that you plan your route, come to the next station, you have, say, 5 minutes to park it and... there are no slots available. So, you are here, standing with the bike at the station and eventually you get charged for overtime just because it was full. A slight variation of the above: you come, there are places, you park the bike, but your bike is the only one at the station now, you wait 5 minutes, in the meanwhile someone comes, pays for the bike and drives away. Now you are in the middle of your journey, you can take the bike now, but there are no bikes. My friend told me, that in spite of the bike company driving around and bringing bikes from one station to another to make sure every station has both bikes and empty slots available, still in the mornings the residential district stations are empty (all went to work) and central London stations are full (all came to work), and in the evenings it is vice versa - everybody is taking bikes from the hot spots in central London and driving them to residential districts.

In spite of all that, we were able to take the bikes and cycle where we wanted, at the same time getting our daily dose of fitness. 

Wonderland  and Festival of Love looked good. Lots of people, lots of music, lots of food - normal big city hangout on a great summer day.