It’s hard to write a post about the London Underground, this wasn’t my first visit and I mean… it’s THE underground, the first subway, the start of it all.

This trip I managed to ride the Piccadilly Line, the Northern Line, the Victoria Line, The Bakerloo Line (a lot, this was my home line), and the Jubilee Line this time around. I love it so much, I had forgotten how the trains themselves all fit a similar style but the older the line is the smaller the cars are, in the oldest trains my head is hitting the ceiling most of the time and I never noticed before that the floor is convex with a hump in the middle.

Here’s some pics from the transit museum, some of the first, wooden, underground cars.

 

Another cool thing I got to see is the nearly completed Elizabeth Line, currently called Crossrail. Crossrail will fully open in Dec and is a high speed full-sized train running east-west under London, UNDER the tube, it’s amazing and is currently the largest construction project in Europe.

The day started with the most amazing Salmon, Dill, Caviar Eggs Bennie I have ever had, a place called Story.

I wandered around for a while, down to the water and the old marketplace, found an old Russian guy with a stall selling semi-precious stones and jewelry. He happened to have several quite rare stones that I happened to know the names of, he gave an eyebrow raise of impressed and we were buddies after that. Chatted a while and I told him that I usually try and find a stone from each city I visit, he ended up giving me an extremely fair price on a piece of Baltic Amber (yellow amber) with a bio-inclusion.

 

… a devil in Helsinki.

Most of my flight to Helsinki was a charter of a football team from Birmingham on their way to Helsinki for their championship game… football…. American football…. weird.

Helsinki at night reminds me of Montreal.

Nice Finnish cocktail bar, no review as I wasn’t able to get a seat at the bar.

The all-night burger stand made famous in the NY Times…. was actually pretty great.

Helsinki Cheeseburger.

 

 

I got back to my Airbnb early in order to pack and write a bit, I think it was around 9pm. My host, Andrew was out, other than a quick chat when I arrived we had had amazingly good (or bad) luck at just missing each other since my arrival.

About an hour after I came home I heard Andrew come in, I was in my room with the door closed and was pretty sure I heard feet outside my door, sure enough Andrew started singing something along the lines of:

“Deeeaaaaan…. oh Deeeaaaaaan,

Dean, mysterious Dean,

When will you come down and join me for a whiskey

Oh Dean, my Dean”

So yeah… the evening kinda went from there and my head hurts this morning, was crazy fun though.

They can’t all be winners…

This is The Gibson, a bar that was recommended by several bartenders this week. I walked in and was the only customer, the bar stools looked really uncomfortable but the tables did too so I sat at the bar.

I chatted with the two Italian bartenders about how how warm (25c) it was out today and how thirsty I was and such things, I ordered a Negroni but the bartender started talking about the special drink they had on this week, it sounded cool so I ordered it, I knew as soon as I saw him piling stuff on stuff that this was not going to be good…. a few minutes later I received….

I mean no…. just…. no.

It was nearly impossible to drink, every millimetre of the glass was coated in something sticky, things were leaking out everywhere, I decided to take one for the team and dive in. The drink itself was… not bad so I tried to just chug it before any other humans came in and bore witness to this shame. I drank until there was just a half a glass of muck, no idea what I was supposed to do with the offal.

What I should have done next…. was leave.

Next up the bartender insisted I try another cocktail, he listed the ingredients and I caught the name of a smoky scotch, I explained that I don’t like smoky alcohol, he insisted it was very mild and that I would like it… I did not like it and could not drink it.

But I still didn’t leave, I asked the bartender for a Boulivardier, just a classic one. He started telling me about their version of it, which sounded awful, I put my foot down, a bit aggressively this time and asked for a classic, plain, Boulivardier.

This is what I got….

Yes… because all classic Boulivardiers have figs.

I picked all the crap (herbs and leaves and white chocolate and ginger and figs and cucumber and I don’t know what else) out and stacked it on a napkin, there was no way to drink this “drink” without making a huge mess so I did.

The drink was bad, really bad, I had to have water between each sip to rinse out the herbs from my teeth, unfortunately every single time I took a sip of water the barback came around and refilled my glass in the most annoying way, finally I left the full water glass in front of me and pulled my own water bottle out of my jacket and drank from that instead.

Then they started asking if I was happy, they continued asking if I was happy every 2 minutes until finally I had to leave without finishing this drink either.

I paid and told the bartender I didn’t understand why he was doing what he was doing to all the drinks, while I was sitting there other people (a terrible crowd of blowhards) had come in and I had seen that the drinks he was making me were about as simple as they came, most of the drinks had their own set of instructions. I asked him if he knew a place to get a proper drink nearby and left.

I won’t bother with my normal rankings, this place is a zero.

0

The British Library!

I like libraries, a lot, calm and quiet and no one cares that you are poking around at everything, it’s bliss.

The British Library is a great one and their gallery of rare books was my reason for going.

Below is an 11th century Ethiopian text regarding sainthood within the Ethiopian Christian Church, it’s amazing to me that a book like this can survive a thousand years, looking at it give me a feeling that I can’t describe but I know it makes me feel good.

One of the four original copies of the Magna Carta is also held at the British Library, no photography is allowed and the document sits in a room alone with a guard beside it so getting this shot required real patience.

 

The National Gallery was next on the list, I had heard before that it’s not the greatest gallery and that the entire collection is only about 2500 pieces but there was still a really nice collection of Impressionist works.

The view from the front steps of the National Gallery

Monet painted this piece from a viewpoint of the balcony of the American Bar at The Savoy Hotel around 1900.

The Victoria & Albert Museum

The world’s largest museum of design, lots of cool stuff but I was mostly there to see the jewelry room, it did not disappoint.

Celtic gold ring, 2000BC, Scotland.

I like peridot. This set contains dozens of perfect quality peridot, probably the piece I liked best in this gallery.

Remains of the original walls of the Roman fort of Londinium, more than any other time this period and place in history, Roman and Pre-Roman Britain is my favourite and is the time I have studied the most. Seeing the wall here made me giggle with joy.

 

Breakfast at The Wolseley. great old place across from The Ritz, known for its English Breakfast. I didn’t sleep much last night and had trouble getting going this morning, I got to the Wolseley late and had to sweet talk the host into letting me be the final breakfast seating and not the first lunch seating.

Ordered the breakfast… it was…. fine 😦  oh well, at least the room was cool.

After breakfast I headed to the Tate Modern, the hit rate for what was on display and for what I like was really low, a few cool pieces and a few neat ideas but most of it was really not stuff I like.

This room was kind of neat though, the artist had been playing with the idea of lighting and vision and the room itself was pitch black, the only way to see the art was with the light of a camera flash (his instructions) meaning that you could not see his photography without also creating your own, I liked that.

Another cool thing at the Tate was the fact that the very first piece of art I saw in the first gallery I ventured into was something I know, this photo by William Eggleston. I know the photo because it was used as part of the artwork on one of Big Star’s albums, Eggleston actually lived in Alex Chilton’s parent’s backyard for a number of years and even played piano on a couple of Big Star songs. It was almost exactly a year ago that I was in Memphis, on the Big Star trail, so seeing this piece right away was a connection to my trip last year and it really hit home with me.

The London Transit Museum was also a must. It was quite good, if small and focused too much on kids. The NYC Transit Subway Museum is much better but this was still cool. I’ll do a separate post on the Tube and talk more about things in the museum then.

The first London bus, from 1803… and now I know where “bus” comes from, I had no idea.

COCKTAIL BAR REVIEW TIME!

I’m checking off quite a few of the Top 50 Cocktail Bar list now, next up is #8 in the world, Bar Termini.

Bar Termini is tiny, like really tiny, four seats at the bar and two tables yet still had four staff working. I loved the place from the second I walked in.

History – 5/10

It has no real history but has been on the Top 50 list several times, placing in the top ten globally earns it a 5 even without history.

Atmosphere – 7/10

Designed in the spirit of the train station in Rome, white tile and dark wood, a really nice room, very Italian.

Service – 9/10

This is where Bar Termini shone, both bartenders were energetic, smart, different, funny. The woman in particular was…. I don’t know the best word, playful? enthralling? silly? We had a really good time. She complained to her coworker everytime he came and left that he forgot her chocolate so when I left I ran up the street and bought some to leave with them, we laughed, it was great.

Casino Test – 4/5

Slight altering of the test, the bar really only serves a particular style of Italian drink, so rather than the Casino Test I ordered a Boulivardier with several changes and we chatted, the way they rolled with that was exactly what you want and the drink was outstanding.

The Drinks – 5/5

Perfect.

Comfort – 7/10

Adding a new rating, for comfort, mainly meaning do you feel like hanging around all evening even when you have other plans.

As much as I liked Bar Termini they aren’t really a comfort place, it’s more of a pop in for one drink while walking by place. Tiny seats, tiny room, etc.

The Total – 37/50

Quite a number of cocktail bars on the list of the World’s Top 50 are in London, today I took time to visit #1 and #2.

The American Bar at The Savoy Hotel

Probably the oldest cocktail bar in the world (127 years) and possibly the most famous, The American Bar was chosen as the #1 cocktail bar in the world for the first time ever in 2017.

I stopped in around 2pm (to avoid the rumoured busyness) and was lucky enough to get one of only four seats at the bar (most of the seating is tables). I ordered a Savoy Hotel classic (The Return of the Pink Panther) and settled in. I could write for hours about what I saw and experienced there but will summarize it as much as I can below.

History – 10/10

Come on, no bar has a longer history, at least half a dozen famous cocktails that I love were invented here, it’s an easy 10. It has its own museum in the hotel!

Atmosphere – 9/10

Amazing, a classy, gorgeous room, white suits on everyone working there, a grand piano, just loses a bit for being a pinch chilly and for how noticeably ill-fitting most of the white suits were on the staff.

Service – 8/10

As friendly and classy as everyone working there was I could still have used a pinch more interaction, still very impressive, engaging and welcoming.

Casino Test – 2/5

I request a Casino cocktail in each new cocktail bar I try, it’s an older, somewhat obscure cocktail that I love and how they handle the request says a lot about the bar. There’s 1 point for just knowing the drink, 2 for how they react to a request for a cocktail they don’t know and 2 for the quality of the drink itself. In this case The American Bar gets 2/5 because they didn’t know the drink, they reacted ok but not outstanding to the special order and because, for some reason, the finished drink was really not very good.

The Drinks – 3/5

As noted above the Casino was not great, the Pink Panther was quite good but not mind blowing, also serving an chilled glass on a glass coaster was not a well thought out plan, it kept sticking to the glass and clattering down onto the bar.

TOTAL – 32/40

Dandelyan

Dandelyan was last year’s #1 rated cocktail bar and is currently rated #2. After The American Bar I went for a walk along the river and grabbed a bite to eat and eventually made my way across London to Dandelyan around 5pm.

I found a seat at the bar, the space is quite large and was about 1/3rd full (which is the perfect fullness for a bar). Two very friendly bartenders engaged me right away and we started chatting. I spent a couple hours there and ordered two drinks, my thoughts below:

History – 7/10

Dandelyan has only been around about ten years but it’s been on the top 50 list almost every year and has won more than once, what it may lack in history it makes up for in cachet.

Atmosphere – 8/10

A large room, themed around botanicals and green marble, well done with a view over the river and done without being fussy though I would like to see more wood.

Service – 10/10

Service at Dandelyan was amazing, friendly, intelligent, warm, they actually made me feel like they wanted to get to know me, it was a really heartwarming visit.

Casino Test – 4/5

My bartender did not know the drink but she made it clear she loved to learn, she talked about the drink and asked why I know it and she told me how she can’t wait to finish her shift so she can make herself one. Plus it was the best Casino I have ever tasted.

The Drinks – 5/5

I ordered their take on a Negroni first, which was perfect, then my Casino was also perfect. Nothing more to say,

TOTAL – 34/40

 

Conclusion

The American Bar was memorable but Dandelyan took the time to leave me feeling like visiting again.

After so much fun chatting the Dandelyan staff insisted I pop behind the bar for this photo… really, really cool.

I think day 2 in any city might be my favourite time, you’re getting the lay of the land, zipping to and from your home base is now second nature and you finally feel ready to roll. Running in and out of Tube stations, up and down random streets is making me feel light and pretty and young. I found a jacket and new earbuds and am trying to figure out what to do next.

Breakfast: