East End Boys and West End Girls

We said goodbye to Anna and Mario at 5am. I think. I was asleep at the time.

Anyhow, they headed off to Croatia, we were off somewhere far more exotic: Kensington. At a much more civilised hour.

Our taxi showed up at eleven and we set off across London. At least we thought it was our taxi. Turns out we accidentally nabbed somebody else's cab by mistake. Oops.

The driver was very entertaining, in his thirties, married with two kids, the youngest a two-year old boy who just discovered the joys of breaking things. TV sets, dining room tables, whatever. His son also discovered the joys of waking dad up by kicking him in the head, which was how he'd started the day.

Which was why our driver was really looking forward to a weekend in the Canaries with a few of his mates for a friend's 40th birthday.

Stories like this make me think not having kids isn't necessarily a bad thing. I like kids, but - wow.

He also entertained us with tales of passengers he'd picked up over the years. Not too long ago he picked up some shabby-looking bloke and started chatting, asking him what he did for a living.

"I do a bit in the music business."

"Really? What?"

"I play guitar."

"Nice. Did you ever play in a band I might have heard of?"

"Maybe. I spent a few years in a small band called Led Zeppellin."

Yeah, Jimmy Page. The cabbie felt like a complete idiot for not recognising him.

He also told us about "the Knowledge", the famous exam London cabbies have to pass before they get their licence. They not only have to memorise every street in London (which I knew), they have to be able to describe the best route between any two points, and recite it street by street and turn by turn to the examiner (which I didn't know), and keep doing it while another examiner whistles, shouts abuse and throws bits of paper at them (which I really didn't know, but that was utterly brilliant).

No surprise it takes three to five years to pass. 

(In Sydney you're lucky to get a cabbie who can find the suburb. I once caught a cab in Pyrmont and asked the driver to take us to Bondi.

"Where's that?"

Even our London cabbie knew where Bondi was. He figured not knowing Bondi was like a Londn cabbie not knowing the way to Buckingham Palace.)

Back to Kensington...

The west side of London is much more refined/affluent/snobby then the east side. Beautiful Georgian buildings, with a considerable amount of restoration going on.

The abba Hotel (a Spanish chain, and no relation to the insufferable Swedish pop band of the same name) was something of a disappointment. Beautiful, but pokey rooms poorly laid out. I once spent two weeks living in a laundry with more room. 

Lunch was in the emptiest pub in London, the Gloucester Arms. There was Emma, me, and the barmaid.

And she disappeared for a while. 

Highlight was the boar burger. I love eating my way through the few remaining wild animals of Britain.

In the evening we caught up with Simon, Guy and Shira again at Baltic, a Polish restaurant in Southwark. Here's Guy and Shira being adorable, while Simon is being insular, geeky and weird in the lower left corner of the screen:

I didn't know Polish food could be that good. There was even a vodka I didn't hate. 

I have no idea what we had. Emma knows it from her childhood, but I never remember what's what. I think  we had zxytregexzh and brzexxwbghys and czyhgfervdtx, but I could be wrong.

I wish we had Polish food of this quality in Sydney. Emma's inspired to dig out the Polish cookbooks.

Back in our broom-cupboard in Kensington we tried to organise our luggage, and failed. Not to worry. We were still just up the street and across the road from the British Natural History Museum.

Guess where were going tomorrow?

(Hint: not Harrods.)