Monday: Buckingham Palace, Covent Garden, and SoHo

Starting at the Green Park tube stop, I crossed through Hyde Park on my way to Buckingham Palace, which was immediately visible due to the crowds of people pressed against the gilded gates, as crowded as San Francisco's City Hall the day gay marriage was legalized. I couldn't get close enough to see what all the fuss was about--Is the Queen of England romping about naked? Is there a Queen of England? And what is all this Prime Minister talk?--All of these questions and more trampled through my head as I tried to elbow my way through the throngs of people. Then I heard it--the source of the crowd's attention. The Royal Marching Band had convened for a rousing chorus of 'Celebrate Good Times, C'mon!', immediately followed by the Mission Impossible theme. Fighting Jews in earlocks and Japanese teenagers posing for each other's cameras, I made it to the gate just in time to see them play 'Tequila,' their black furry hats ruffling in the breeze. I snapped a quick photo before retreating to St. James Park, which--despite many recommendations and reports of 'best parkdom'--managed to look exactly like all the others.

You can sit here, but apparently they charge you. That explains why everybody was sitting on the ground.

"I hope they play the theme from 'Star Wars' next..." the crowd is thinking.

"We really need to work on our drumline."

I found the best view of Buckingham was from far, far away. Any closer than this, and your only view is of the back of someone's head.

London's Chinatown. The way you can tell is by the archway (is this a law of all Chinatowns?), and the one Chinese person walking down the street. Unlike San Francisco's Chinatown, which is thirty times larger, dirtier, smellier, more crowded, and rank with rotting meat flesh hanging over your head, this Chinatown was clean and nobody was throwing slop and carcasses out their storefronts, nailing your pants if you were passing at the wrong time. Needless to say, I won't be returning.

I detoured through Covent Garden on my way to the vegetarian Poetry Cafe for lunch, home of the London Poetry Society. Tucked away on a tiny, unmapped alley, the cafe was impossible to find but oh so worth the struggle. There were five things on the chalkboard menu and a tortured artist behind the counter. My vegetarian pie with Greek cheese and daal salad was killer. Turns out there's also a Tuesday night open mike, where I was tempted to return to see if London's spoken word poetry was any better than San Francisco's vagina monologues, but decided it couldn't possibly be any less dramatic and opted to go to a pub, instead.

My feet battered and my tummy full, I trudged over to SoHo Square for a relaxing hour or so of reading and people-watching. And if there is any people-watching in London to be had, it's here...there seemed to be an unspoken rule that if you aren't gay and topless, you had to be young, hip, and futiley in love with someone gay and topless.

And the shopping...oh, the shopping...

One block off of Carnaby was Newburgh Street, an entirely different world. Rather than the crowded, tourist-laden shops of its parallel neighbor, Newburgh was quiet, high-end, and full of treasures...

I tried on the dress in the window and not gonna lie--I looked like a million bucks. And then it turned out to cost a million bucks, so that was the end of our love affair.

Inside the shop...the back of it amphitheatered down while the skylight reflected sentinal brownstones towering above.

The shop below is where I picked up a little something for Deee and Brian. I'm not going to say anything other than it may involve cows, or robots. That's it. I've said too much.

I capped the day with a cocktail at Hush, a courtyard cocktail lounge and restaurant hiding on Lancashire Court (yet another unmapped location given that it is a u-shaped alley off another alley). My 'pear and cinnamon' refresher was PERFECT--nashi pear muddled with cinnamon and shaken with cockspur rum.

I love you, London. I want to bear your children.