London, 26 June 2024

Truly we live in the future. I’ve spent a couple of days in London so far and not only have I not needed cash, I haven’t even needed my wallet. Everywhere, from getting on the underground to paying for our Uber Boat operated by Thames Clippers, to a croissant to donating 10 pounds at one of those cash boxes in the museum, everything had contactless payment where the only hiccup is when I move my phone too fast sometimes and need it to retry. We are going to have to go out of our way to find something to pay cash for. Transit works by tagging a credit card at the entry and exit - they put a £1 charge on it in the morning (according to my notifications, probably a proof of liveness), and then at the end of the day charge you for your accumulated trips. It’s quite smooth.

It’s also a little … Weird? Off-putting? I dunno. I’m sure the credit card companies who are working with the system just love getting a free stream of data regarding my movements (and subsequent purchases) throughout London. Super convenient though.

I’m going to show you one photo from St. Paul’s Cathedral below. I took a lot more, but I imagine most people would get bored seeing a lot of photos of that kind of thing. Pretty lovely all around. What struck me about the whole thing was that Christopher Wren designed a big renovation for the older cathedral (I believe it was number four on that site, the prior three all burned down) shortly before that cathedral, too, burned down. Wren got to start over, and proposed this big dome that’s kind of wild. He’d never really built that sort of thing before, just manifested it into being or something.

The dome itself, I took a photosphere of, as best as I could while standing in the center. Like most photospheres, there are a lot of orphaned legs. See if you can find my feet.

In the crypt, his son put up a tablet that says “if you seek a monument for Christopher Wren, look around you”. Except, it’s in Latin? So they spell his name “Christophorus” which sounds like an element or something, and the “look around you” part is “circumspice”, which puts me in mind of the Michigan state motto.

Anywho, we went from there to the Docklands museum, which told the story of the port of London as it evolved over time. I seem to have forgotten to take any photos there, probably because it was fascinating. In that kind of nerd museumgoing kind of way. I learned a lot about British involvement in the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and also a lot about how British people view that involvement. There was quite a bit about wartime life as well- people working in the docks when the bombs were falling. Did you know, they speed-built an underwater fuel pipeline across the English Channel, in order to provide fuel to Allied mechanized units? I didn’t know that. They called it project PLUTO for Pipe Line Under The Ocean. Full marks for the definite article being part of the acronym.

Dinner was at Rovi, which is an Ottolenghi restaurant. We had:

• Asparagus Filo cigars with an apple truffle labneh (not shown)

• Beef carpaccio, confit garlic and lime, pickled shallots, mizuna (top left)

• Burrata, aleppo chili courgette (so much fancier than zucchini), elderflower vinaigrette (top right)

• Jerusalem Mixed Grill (chicken thigh, liver, heart, in a really resoundingly delicious spice mix) with pickles and flatbread (center)

• Warm msabbha chickpeas with confit garlic and tomato / coconut sauce (not shown).

• Jamun Saffron sorbet with a mango sauce (bottom left)

• Ricotta pie with apricots and cute little flowers (bottom right)

Winners of the night were: us, everything was fantastic, except maaaybe the ricotta pie wasn’t Chrissy’s favorite. Also the chickpeas were my favorite, but don’t tell the other dishes, I don’t want them to get jealous. We have eaten so well on this trip (including our time in Morocco), it will be hard to go back to cooking when we get back.