London, day two

I spent the morning checking out, finding a breakfast place (Who knew that a bacon "buttie" could be so tasty!) and wandering around a bit before the meeting

The second day was just as good as the first, even without a few people from the US, who could not come because of the gub'mit shutdown.  Another victory over science!  After the last talk I hurried out to try to see a little more of London:

It really is a lovely city only slightly blackened by roving gangs of drunk Polish soccer hooligans.  

Next stop, a proper English curry.  I found a suggestion for a place on TripAdvisor with the very unpromising name of "Masala Zone".  The decor was kind of like an Indian TGI Fridays, which deepened my suspicion.  However, the food was fantastic!  I can't remember having Indian food that tasty, except maybe at Ajanta.  

From there, I stared blankly at the tube map to figure out how to get back to Paddington station, and then smugly walked by the huge crowd of people jostling each other to get into the elevator: how long could the stairs be?  Very long, it turned out.  Comically long.  193 steps long.  It was no big deal because I was going down, but jeez.

Next:  I managed to get on the right trains and ended up at the airport.  Americans will be happy to hear  that just like in 'Merica, in the UK they reserve their security jobs for the most slothful and humorless of their primary school dropouts.  Two of their finest, and I'm not making this up, thought that the packet of bacon that I was bringing back with me was very suspicious and unpacked every item of my backpack twice because of it. 

After another plane, bus and car I eventually made it back just after midnight.

London, day one

After a bad night, I woke up early to walk around a little bit before the meeting began.  I was surprised to see that in the heart of London, they still leave milk on doorsteps

After some wandering, with a little help from the excellent offline TripAdvisor app

I found the Royal Society.  It is a swanky as it sounds, and every wall is adorned with an original oil or photo of one of their famous past members (Rutherford, Newton, etc).  Here's a famous print of Watson and Crick:

After my sleepless night, I was almost ready to find a corner to curl up on the plush red carpeting, but decided against it.  In any case, the meeting was fantastic:  every talk was interesting, and you could feel the excitement in the room.  After a full day, I had twenty minutes in the National Portrait Gallery before they closed, which was wonderful but obviously not enough time.  Next:  fish and chips time!  Unfortunately the place I found was not great.  After watching a Nevermind the Buzzcocks, I turned in early.

Off to London!

I took the plane to Heathrow this evening;  it went relatively smoothly except that the express train into the city center from the airport, despite being plush and quiet, was not all that "express".  We were apparently stuck behind another slower train, and the conductor kept on complaining to us on the PA about how there was a lot of congestion tonight.  It seemed strange to me, because I always assumed that they knew where all the trains were and optimized things so that at least on commute lines that didn't happen.  Anyway, I eventually arrived in Paddington station, and after staring blankly at the subway map and then the ticket machine for a while, managed to get on the right train towards Covent Garden.  It required a train change, which I decided to skip in favor of walking above ground.  By this time it was just after 10pm, and to my dismay even the pubs stop serving food at 10!  Instead, I checked in at the outrageously expensive hotel.  I had been looking forward to staying there a little, since I just assumed that at that price the room would be fabulous.  First impression of the Strand Place were good:  swanky lobby with a door man.  Once I got out of the elevator however, it looked like a high density casino hotel.  I was still hopeful that the room would be awesome and resplendent in teak and mahogany.  Unfortunately, after swiping my card I quickly discovered a clean, but shoebox sized room looking out over ... dumpsters?  Actually I couldn't really see what was at the bottom of the center of the building but it sure sounded like dumpsters.  It was fine, but felt no better than a $50 room in Vegas.  I didn't have much time to be disappointed though, because I was really, really hungry.  After wandering around for a while and not finding anything open, I eventually gave up and went to the supermarket (Tesco) to buy a sandwich.  I selected a sammich, paid with the horrible self-checkout computer, and walked outside.  The sidewalk in front of Tesco was reminiscent of a zombie movie, but instead of zombies tearing into body parts, it was students and dead eyed junior bankers tearing the wrappers off sandwiches and stuffing them into their mouths.  The only concession to their mealtime was a barely perceptible slowing of their pace while walking away to the tube station.  Being a pretty posh guy, I decided to wait until I got back to the hotel to greedily inhale my BLT and chips.

By this time it was after midnight, and I wanted to get some sleep before the meeting tomorrow at the Royal Society.  Unfortunately, I could hear everything that went on the hallway, including extremly drunk ladies returning from a night of debauchery.  I could hear them slurring and cackling to eachother as they thumped against the walls.  Excellent.

Zoe, Racing

Hopefully CZ will do a guest blog on this, but she had a race today, and she brought little ZZ, who also entered!  It was her first race, and it did not go all that well.  She came in dead last!

Lunchtime ride

Pain de Sucre

Mont San Martin

Cycling with Zoe!

I was planing on cycling up to Proveysieux when we got back to Grenoble, but I could not say not to a "Daddy, can we go biking together?!"

Aigues-Mortes

Today we went into the Petite Camargue, stopping at the beach for a somewhat sandy, but pleasant lunch on the beach at Palavas-les-Flots, and then on to the medieval town of Aigues-Mortes.  The Camargue looks like a totally fascinating place to explore.  If you look at a Google map of the area, you can see a latticework of ponds, marshes and small trails interconnecting everything.  It looks like they grow a lot of wine grapes around there too, but I don't know anything about the quality of the wine.

Our host

Montpellier

We got a call from our old friend Gautier this week, and did a last minute trip down to Montpelier.  He lives within the city limits, but in the outskirts to the East of the city center.  It's a nice area with lots of parks, and not far from the center of town.  Soonb after we arrived, Gautier took us into the real center, and I have to say that it iOS probably one of my very favorite towns in France (even from a short visit).   The center is on a hilltop, and is a really charming, but not at all over-manicured warren of allies and a few big boulevards.  The kids immediately took to Gaut's daughter, and had a great time chasing each other around, riding the double decker merry-go-round, and generally being little savages.  

There are countless excellent looking restaurants, shops and parks.  I would love to have more time to explore at some point! 

My favorite stop was the amazing ice cream place (http://www.amorino.com/fr/).  I had caramel and coconut -- an odd combination,  but pretty amazing flavors.

Langoustines

Sashimi

We went to the best fish place in town -- Lachenal, where Zoe was so excited that she was prancing around chanting "I LOVE FISH! I LOVE FISH"!  She got to touch a very angry lobster:

And then made be buy some langoustines.  When I told her what the slimy white things on the side were, she replied: "Cuddle fish?  They do cuddles?!" and then made the most adorable cuddle pantomime in the history of mankind.  Next: IKEA to buy the fanciest child latex mattress we could buy, because I was worried about brominated fire retardants on our US-spec mattress.

And then home for home grown Shiso and a massive sashimi extravaganza

Legos

Zoe's improvement on the LEGO suggestion: Instead of being the damsel in distress, Madame LEGO is in the driver's seat of the now convertible fire truck (with parts borrowed from Alex's F1 car) with the cat safely in the back seat. The fireman is nowhere to be found.