Aaron Around The World    >>    Europe    >>    United Kingdom    >>    London, England

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Tuesday, 5 August 2008 - Back to Edinburgh!

  
I was back up in Edinburgh for the weekend (for an eye exam - they're all good). It's only been four weeks since I left but actually I miss it - I never thought I would say that! I love tearing around London like Speedy Gonzales on a bike (andale andale, arriba arriba, [air horn] HOOONK), but I'm still warming to it.

 
 
The weather was its usual four-seasons-in-one-day hehe. Some things will never change :)

 
This weekend was the start of another world-famous Edinburgh Fringe Festival - bloody great time of year to be in Ed! The crowds are beginning to swarm and the acts are rolling in. Katie and I went to see comedian Des Bishop on Saturday night - bloody funny stuff!
 
 
There is a big parade in the middle of town to mark the start of the Fringe every year, but due to the showery weather we didn't stick around for it (and by the sound of it neither did many others - well over 100,000 people turned up for this last year compared to barely 50,000 this year, and they all got wet). A couple hours later it was clear blue sky again hahaha - welcome to Edinburgh!
 
 
Fringe aside, a run down of the weekend: I got fat on American-style pancakes! The toppings: bacon, banana, vanilla ice cream, and maple syrup (odd combination I know but it's bloody delicious!), lovingly served up by Katie, my girlfriend still living in Edinburgh (she's pretty bloody dulucious herself ;)

 
 
Instead of getting rained on in the Fringe parade we hid out in the Brass Monkey bar. Every Sunday they play a random movie in this room which has really soft flooring and pillows all over the show - good chill-out afternoon! :)

 
Come night it was wandering around Edinburgh (and realising how much I miss it), doing Fringe stuff, listening to some live jazz from these old geezers as part of the Guildford Arms (traditional ale bar) music festival which ties in with the Fringe...

...and hauling our arses up Arthur's Seat to lap up the gorgeous views. This is looking towards Edinburgh Castle (centre top) with the city centre on the far-right.

 
Edinburgh Castle - busy spot at the moment with the Military Tattoo performing throughout the Fringe.
  

And we nearly stood on a few frogs around Arthur's Seat, and probably would have if not for having a torch with us. I never even knew Edinburgh had frogs?!

Ribbit! Ribb... SPLAT! "What the hell was that?"
 
 
Come Monday evening it was another boring one-hour flight back down south. We passed over this big bunch of wind turbines at one point - looked pretty cool from the sky.
  
My nearest airport is London Luton, near the township of Luton but nowhere near London as you can see. They've plonked it right out in the wop-wops some 50kms north of London, so why they add 'London' to the name of the airport I don't know but there you are.

Friday, 8 August 2008 - Dictionary for women! Hehe
Something for the weekend: Dictionary for women ;) All of this sort of crap I put up from time to time can be found here...

Sunday, 10 August 2008 - Who's up for a curry (and a stolen bike)?

  
On the back of a bus. Can anyone think of a good caption for this, because I know there's one here somewhere ;)
  
Right, weather-wise it was the same old shit as always. I swear that on the whole, Edinburgh gets far nicer weather than this place. Anyway, a couple weeks ago I started out at Camden Lock and went one way, and today I went the other.
 
 
Same sort of sights really.
  
Gardening, river boat style.

 
 
I got bored with that and headed into town. I was wanting to follow the River Thames around but with the dodgy weather I thought it best to stay in town near the train stations that will accept bikes. This is Leicester Square in the West End - the best place to be for celebrity spotting in London. Most major London movie premiers are played here and the red carpet gets rolled out for the stars.

 
 
Nearby is Convent Garden, a district dominated by entertainment...
  
Shopping...
  
And street performers doing things we've all seen before at least a dozen times, but we still stand around and watch ;)

 
Covent Garden is home to a big indoor market that has some interesting knik-knaks on offer, and even more performers inside in case the dude juggling on the unicycle outside was a little too cliché for you too :)
 
 
Well, thank goodness for that!
  
Hmm, Australia House has a pair of naked men waiting to greet you. Interesting ;)

 
 
Just round the corner is London's Chinatown - something else I'm sure we've all seen before. Speaking of which did people see the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics on Friday? Bloody spectacular stuff! There's a banner here saying "Chinatown wishes a successful Beijing Olympic" hehe - Asian's and their grasp of plurals never cease to amuse me :)
  
With a name like that I bet they sell more than just food items in there ;)

 
 
On the other side of town in London's East End is Brick Lane, or Indian central more like. The entrance isn't quite as impressive as Chinatown's above but nevermind.
  
Brick Lane is renowned throughout the city for its curry restaurants, with many of them employing touts who will hassle you to eat in their restaurant. You can barter with these bastards, for discounts and freebies and so forth, however the restaurants frequently inflate the prices simply so they can offer you a 'deal'.
  
Regardless, this many people all scoffing down a curry can't be wrong ;)

 
 
Further along Brick Lane it leaves Indian central and becomes fucking-dodgy central. As I was meandering through pedestrians on my bike this dickhole pulled up next to me and asked if I'd like some wheels! I said "It depends where they're stolen from mate", to which he hesitantly claimed they weren't hot, before biking off.
  
He stopped just up the road here, and you don't have to be a detective to know these bikes are as hot as my girlfriend. As I was taking this shot, a passerby stopped and asked the guy in the grey t-shirt above where he got this bike from (pointing to old green piece of shit). "Auction" was his reply, to which the passerby replied "Yeah bullshit pal, that's my mate's bike that got pinched just down the road here two weeks ago!". The fella above said nothing.
  
Further along there's even more dodgy crap for sale; all of it too random for it to not have been previously stolen. At this point it suddenly occurred to me that I was sitting on a £1000 worth of bike and thought it best to get the hell out of there before I got robbed or something. It also started pissing with rain about this point, and so that was all for me. It'll be sunny tomorrow (Monday).

Tuesday, 12 August 2008 - Learn Chinese for the Olympics in five minutes!

English   Chonk
That's not right!   Sum Ting Wong
Are you harbouring a fugitive?   Hu Yu Hai Ding
See me ASAP!   Kum Hia Nao
Stupid man   Dum Fuk
Small horse   Tai Ni Po Ni
Did you go to the beach?   Wai Yu So Tan
I bumped into a coffee table!   Ai Bang Mai Fu Kin Ni
I think you need a face lift!   Chin Tu Fat
It's very dark in here!   Wai So Dim
I thought you were on a diet!   Wai Yu Mun Ching
This is a tow away zone!   No Pah King
Our meeting is scheduled for next week!   Wai Yu Kum Nao
Staying out of sight   Lei Ying Lo
He's cleaning his automobile   Wa Shing Ka
Your body odour is offensive   Yu Stin Ki Pu
Great!   Fa Kin Su Pa

Thursday, 14 August 2008 - Aaron's first day in court!

  
 
I flew back up to Edinburgh last night. This was shot on the final approach looking west over the Forth Bridges across the firth - pretty :)
  
Edinburgh is right in the midst of the Fringe Festival now, and the place is all a buzz. I'm back up here weekend after next and have a couple of festival things lined up - sweet!

 
 
Street performers and queues everywhere you look hehe. Anyway, my actual reason for being here was to appear in court as a witness to my own bashing on Princes Street back in April. Long story short, Lisa (who was with me at the time) couldn't come for this, and the prosicution felt her absence would weaken their case and so it has been adjourned until November now when hopefully she can be here. Incidentally, they took my camera off me at the front door, but not my phone hehe (hooray for phone cameras). The shot on the right is the witness waiting area, where everybody waits around while bored out of their minds! To be continued.

Saturday, 16 August 2008 - Love the gadgets!

  
A while back I was browsing through one of the many gizmo websites over here (www.firebox.com) and found this little thing: an 'action camera'. At the time I dismissed it, but after the last few burns through central London on the bike it occurred to me that this may be actually be handy to capture the absurdity I have to deal with that is London traffic (both vehicular and pedestrian). So I thought bugger it why not, and bought this gimmicky little thing! I slapped it on the bike and let it do its thing while I did another burn through London today. Here are two excerpts of the that ride where I was racing though traffic behind about three motorbikes and scooters, and had to weave my way through the usual gridlocked traffic (good fun!). Unfortunately I didn't have to blast anybody with the air horn (which is always good for a giggle) but as soon as I next do I'll put a video of that up as well hehe ;)

Monday, 18 August 2008 - Mmmm, Chinese!

  
Apart from myself, there are a couple of other Scotland-based consultants at my work currently on site here in London, and as our manager was in town as well tonight we all went out for some grog and food in Chinatown of all places. I was just here weekend before last, and so thought I'd slap a shot up of the chow - yummy! ;)

Friday, 22 August 2008 - More toys! :)

  

Right well I finally got sick of it.

London is huge as you all know, and as you can probably imagine it is a nightmare to navigate without a decent map. Well I got the decent map sorted as soon as I got here, but therein lies another problem. I carry the thing with me in my bag every time I'm out on the bike in case I get hopelessly lost, or have somewhere specific in mind I want to be, but there are three things about it that really ping my bra strap:

A) Each page is just a small segment of an entire map of London, and figuring out exactly where somewhere is in relation to where you currently are is impossible.
2) Having to stop all the time to whip it out, search the index, search the applicable page, get my bearings right and yada yada yada wastes a lot of time.
D) It looks like a bible.

Solution: Get a GPS unit for the bike hahaha - perfect! This is little guy contains full coverage of the UK and Europe, has over 1.5 millions points of interest, allows you to search out an address or whatever and navigates you right to it - no different to in-car sat nav, and even better it's designed specifically for bicycles! Sorted!

Monday, 25 August 2008 - Hooray for long weekends!

  
 
1pm today: pissing down.
  
2pm today: barely a cloud in the sky and the ground had mostly dired hahaha, welcome to Britain! It's an English public holiday today (no idea why, but who cares) so I spent the long weekend back in Edinburgh with Katie.
  
I woke up Saturday morning to beaming sunshine - brilliant! A picnic in the Botanic Gardens seemed like a great idea at the time, but come lunchtime when Katie and I got down there it was mostly overcast hehe. You just can't win with the weather here!

 
 
Ahh squirrels are so cute! Feed one critter and the rest of the park feels entitled.
  
This is the second-to-last weekend of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and the Royal Mile has been more and more packed each time I've been here this month (which is three times by my count hehe, it's like I never left :)

 
On Saturday night a group of us went to the "Best of the Fest", four stand-up comedians that were so good Katie fell asleep hehe.
 
The Reverie Bar just south of the city centre near The Meadows does a mean Sunday roast if anybody happens to be spending a weekend in Edinburgh :) Oh and go see Pixar's WALL-E at the movies - it's great!

 
 
Today was a public holiday down south but in Scotland it was business as usual, so I bussed (no bike - bugger) out to Tranent (southeast of Edinburgh) since I never made it out here before I left, and I tell ya these Scottish towns and villages all look the same after a while, and Tranent is no exception.
  
I did find a good cycle path (that I had to walk for a change) leading out of town that had rabbits running all over it (this one thought he could hide by sticking his head in a bush - where's my air horn?!), but even that ended up going nowhere! Now I have a 7am flight to look forward to back down to reality; I need another holiday!

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Page Comments

you should do some biking around Richmond in London, its an amazing area, innit
- Davydd
I'd just like to point out that as a self-confessed avid Harry Potter fan, Dav is something of an authority on gayness ;)
- Aaron
Loading image...
ok, so while that camera is gay on a pushbike, imagine it on a motorbike¬!
- Davydd
OMG you've finally got videos up!!! AATW will never be the same ;)
Shame I didn't have anything like that last night for the smash I sent you :P
- Jen
Go-go Gadget Camera! Go-go Gadget horn! Go-go Gadget legs! Go-go Gadget Helmet Hair!
- Paul
wow looks like nice weather up in Edinburgh! Guarantee it'll rain for the 2 weekends I'm up :(
- Jen
You are ...
- Paul
I like the one with that chick and the pancakes - yummy ;)
- Aaron
That windmill pic is fab!
- Paul
Nah not really - would only ever occasionally see Dom in the flat anyway...
- Aaron
Was it weird being back in the flat without mr Dom there?
I miss Edinburgh too, 3 weeks till my last goodbye up there :D
- Jen