An American in Europe

15 October

John came to visit! – Friday Night

Click “read more” to see photos of John’s first night in London, and read about how we pissed off a celebrity.

First he headed over to Bloomberg to drop off his suitcase with me. Then he spent the day out and about until I got off work.

John’s in town less than one day and he’s had his first tube nightmare.
Photo: John Tube 1

We decided to go out to eat at someplace posh and London-ish. We found The Ivy in John’s Frommer’s guide. It said lots of celebrities eat there, and it serves international cuisine. So we went. The food was excellent. But we didn’t see any celebrities though. . .
Photo: Ivy

. . . Or so we thought.
After our meal, we were checking out our coats in the cloak room. A group of self-important Americans entered and we asked them to please take our picture. One man pointed at another and asked us, “Do you want him to be in it?”

“No,” John said, puzzled. Why would we want that dude in our picture? So the group carried on in a fuss and the man taking our picture acted very rude, as if he couldn’t be bothered.

Why the fuss? It’s just a stinkin’ picture. These are the exact people that give Americans a bad name, I thought.

“Where are you from?” asked the rude American man, holding my camera and acting like he’d never used one before.

I answered, “I’m from New Jersey, and he’s from New York.” I jerked my thumb at John, and excitedly asked them where they were from. They didn’t answer.

The man took the picture and said he hopes it turned out OK. Then he turned to a friend and said, “They might as well have been from Antarctica.”

The entire next day that incident nagged at me. It didn’t make any sense, and that rude American guy looked kind of familiar.

Saturday night, John and I met Kris and her fiancée Mark in Picadilly to grab some dinner.

We passed a billboard advertising One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, with Christian Slater’s big ole face grinning down at us.

And then it hit me.

“John! That’s the guy that took our picture!”

HA! John goes, “YEAH! It was, oh my God! . ..” Cuz he realized too!!

There's no mistaking it. It was definitely him.

Kris, who is a proud Cali girl and knows her celebs was disappointed in us, I could tell. ;)

Christian Slater took this picture:
Photo: Slater Pic

But, as this blog entry applies to Friday night, we didn’t know who that rude American was yet.

So back to Friday night…

London night life. I can’t write the names of these drinks, they are so racy. Haha
Photo: Night life, John & AJ

“Hey, nice vest. Are you from Vancouver?”
Photo: John at the bar

Shooters
Photo: Shooters

Me with a cop in Leicester Square. (That’s pronounced “Lester” not Lie-sess-ter. I learned that my first week.)
Photo: AJ Cop Leicester

Here’s the Burger King that preys on drunks. It costs 20 pence to pee!
Photo: Twenty p

You don’t wanna mess with this
Photo: John Leicester Square

Lots of the buildings here light up with purple lights. I like it.
Photo: Purple lighted building

This is my camera aim after a couple of shooters
Photo: John off center

He’s happy because this OTHER Burger King didn’t charge for the bathroom. Drat.
Photo: John Happy BK

Then it was time for us to work our way home via the night busses, because the Tube had stopped running. Here’s Leicester Square in the middle of the night – very Manhattan-esque, only with prettier buildings. I had to quash John’s urge to ask the bus drivers, “Excuse me, do you have enough petrol?” hahahahhaha
Photo: Leicester Square busy
The End
posted at 23:55:00 on 10/15/04 by ajluvsu - Category: General

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