A Birthday Celebration

One of my colleagues who is staying at the villa this week had a birthday today. She allowed us to celebrate her [AGE REDACTED] birthday today. Because I was late getting in last week, and because the London Marathon was running on Sunday, we decided to forgo our planned tourism activities last weekend. This birthday gave us the choice opportunity to get a quick tour of London in as well as celebrating Joanne's Birthday.

We started by gathering at The Villa and then piling into Robin's car for the short ride down to the Surbiton Rail Station. We had a round of beers in a pub, took the train into London and took a ride on The London Eye, walked along the Thames and then had a round of beers in a local pub.

Later, we walked around Westminster, had some beers in a pub, and took a walk through St. James Park to Buckingham Palace. After walking along the Mall (pronounced by the locals "mal" with a short "a," the queen does not live at the end of a shopping center!) and found a pub to have a round of beers.

After walking around Covent Garden and seeing St. Paul's cathedral, we found a restaurant and had dinner. (…and you thought I was going to say "we found a pub and had some beers" didn't you! We did have wine for, er, I mean with dinner, though!)

After dinner, we found a pub and had some beers! (Just kidding… we actually, walked down to Charing Cross station and caught a train back to Waterloo to catch a train back to Surbiton. There we found a pub and had some beers.

It was a late night, but I think that we all had a great time. Some of the highlight included happening into a pub and coming across a birthday party in progress for a woman celebrating the same birthday Joanne is celebrating. They sent a bottle of Champaign (and rather nice Champaign at that!) to our table. As we were leaving the restaurant, we came across this sign on a door in the area. I'm not really sure why we should "beware the public" specifically, but in general, it seems like a pretty good idea.

Oh, yes! And on the train back, a group of Goth children struck up a conversation with us on the train from Charing Cross to Waterloo. They wanted one of the "Discs" that was in my back pocket. (They were, in fact, the souvenir maps from the London Eye. One of the girls; obviously drunk, stoned or both saw the foreign maps on the back (the ones that tell you what languages the maps area available in) and said "Dude! This isn't a local map this is a map of Taiwan! Why would you want a map of Taiwan?"

"We're not in Taiwan?" I asked in alarm "Guys! We've gotten on the wrong train! Somehow, we've left Taiwan! I told you we should have gotten of the train at Hsin-Chu!"

The Goth children completely missed the sarcasm and apparently really thought we'd caught a train to Charing Cross from Taiwan! We had a laugh about that all the way back to Surbiton!

I hope that wherever you are today, you have something to celebrate and someone to celebrate it with

Don Bergquist - 27 April 2007