· Before being let in, I was told repeatedly that if I wanted a tour, I should come back tomorrow because there was a sermon going on right now. I guess I just look like a tourist and not a Jew.
· An old man limped in wearing a Yankees baseball hat.
· The synagogue was an Orthodox synagogue. But instead of the typical black hats Orthodox men usually wear, these British men wore top hats! Top hats, I tell you! I was waiting for them to pick up their canes and tap dance to Puttin’ On The Ritz.
· There was what sounded like a barbershop octet instead of a cantor. Even the ‘amens’ were sung in harmony.
· The ladies sitting in the balcony with me looked like they were about to go to the Kentucky Derby with their fancy hats.
After services I went to meet D at Nando’s, a popular Portuguese-style chicken chain. Little did I know there was a New Zealand pub-crawl going on outside. Of course, no one came right out and told me that’s what it was; all I saw were throngs of drunk 20-somethings wearing All Blacks shirts with beers in their hand and Australian flags on their back (or worn like a skirt around their waist in some cases). I figured out it was a pub-crawl by reading people’s shirts that cleverly said “Waitangi Circle Line Pub-Crawl 2008.” (Waitangi is another way of saying New Zealand Day.) The gist of the pub-crawl is that you go to a slew of bars along the Circle Line, the Tube line that goes around the heart of downtown London. I think the highlight of watching all the drunken Kiwis was when one girl stopped in the median of the very busy Bayswater Road and funneled a beer.
*You can read some guy’s experience of last year’s pub-crawl here.
They don’t refrigerate eggs in the supermarket.
I have a tendency to pass by huge buildings that are obviously noteworthy and important and have absolutely no idea what they are. (This happened when I moved into my apartment on Tileston Street in the North End and had to ask what they big church was right behind my building.) So just in case you come to London in the near future and see a big, fancy domed building downtown, it’s probably St. Paul’s Cathedral.
What’s really cruel about a city that is already filled with hard-to-navigate streets is when they decide to name three pubs all within a 2-block radius O’Neils.
I was reading an article in Time Out London written by an American ex-pat about the differences in American humor and British humour. (Other than the ‘u.’) These are two jokes that he said an American would find funny but a Brit would be offended by (I can at least concur on the American opinion):
- President Bush said, “If one more person compares me to Hitler, I’m going to gas them.”
- Two Middle Eastern fathers were comparing pictures of their sons. One of the dads said, “Ah, they blow up so fast.”
I’m sure you saw it in the news, but you remember that picture I sent of the Punkyfish store in Camden Market? Well that’s exactly where the fire was on Saturday night. It’s a creepy feeling to know that I was JUST there and now it’s gone. Weird…
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