Episode 43 - London
WHOA, we are SO back!
I’m sure we all remember the excitement you felt before Christmas, anticipating the moment when you’d wake up with presents under the tree and cheer in the air.
Well let me tell you, that excitement is nothing compared to what I felt in anticipation of this UK trip. Months of planning. Years of dreaming. A lifetime of adventure. I couldn’t wait!
And now, dear reader, the wait is finally over. Come one, come all, to the first stop of Dennis’s tour of the British Isles — London calls, and the answer is finally here!
If this is your first episode and you’re like “what in the world is happening”, start off here!
Thursday, April 3rd, 2025
I landed at Heathrow after a smooth flight from San Francisco that I nearly missed — I was sprinting to the gate, made it there two minutes before it closed, and was the very last one on the plane. I could hardly believe it.
And let me tell you, I got a lot done in that lovely window seat — I wrote two Interosity blogs, watched the entire movie Downfall, read a bit, and even managed to take a nap. The highlights were definitely 1) that the flight attendants were speaking British, not American (I was flying Virgin Airways), and 2) the fact that we flew down the length of Great Britain, and I could see many cities along the way. I saw Anfield! From the sky!
It was pretty interesting to see Britain from the sky, and I noticed that there weren’t too many forests — just farmland and cities. Perhaps I flew over the unforested parts of the country, or maybe the Brits chopped down all the trees to build ships during the whole let’s-industrialize-and-conquer-the-world phase. But that’s beside the point.
Once at Heathrow, I put on my contacts, made it through immigration with no problems, and was on the Elizabeth Line into London in no time at all! And it was crazy — I was shuffling my liked songs on Spotify, and the song that came up was Rule Britannia. That’s fate. This is going to be an EPIC trip!
A smooth Tube ride later, I arrive at the Liverpool Street station and step into London. I’m in awe. It really felt like that movie moment when a protagonist is standing in Times Square and just looking up at the sights and sounds and is truly stunned. I walked over to Emma’s with a huge smile the entire way and really just took it all in.
One of my first observations of London is its architectural diversity — on the same street you’ll see a Gothic church, small brick houses, an ancient cemetery, and a vast, modern glass skyscraper. It’s quite striking, and really really cool to see. There are just so many people from all over the world, everyone is just hustling and bustling, so many languages are being spoken — it’s amazing. I’m already a huge fan!
15 minutes later, I make it to Emma’s apartment. It had been over a year since the last time we saw each other (back when I visited Paris in April), and it was so nice and pretty crazy to see her in 3D again! It was weird to be with her for about 2 minutes, and then it was like we’d seen each other yesterday and no time had passed at all. How amazing.
We made some coffee (they drink espressos here lol), sat on the balcony, and caught up for around half an hour. And then! Joe arrives! He’d taken the bus over from Bristol, and the gang was all back together :)
It was pretty crazy to see Joe again, but then in another 2 minutes, it was like no time had passed at all, too. The three of us headed out to brunch, where we had some delicious focaccia sandwiches and got a lovely lesson on gentrification from Emma, as we were eating brunch in a neighborhood currently getting gentrified. Borat would say “Very nice!”
After brunch, we decided to pay homage to British culture, and walked to the adjacent building to get a pint at the pub (what else would we do). The spot was amazing, Joe had a nice chat with the owner, and it was just perfect weather outside. It was nicer there than it was in California! We celebrated this by going on a stroll around Shoreditch, where we got some lovely bagels, saw Brick Lane, and checked out some lovely murals.
Back home, I took a much-needed nap (I was very jet-lagged), and woke up an hour later to get ready for the momentous event of the evening — the LSE ball!
Emma’s doing her master’s at LSE1, and managed to snag me a ticket to the grand ball her department was doing that night. We got ready, “hired a Santander cycle” (British for “rented a bike”), and we made it there in no time at all after a lovely ride through East London.
The ball was so much fun! For starters, everyone was so well dressed, and fortunately, I wasn’t too underdressed myself after Joe and Emma found some clothes my size in her closet. The only thing that made me stand out (besides the accent) were my lovely Hokas, which starkly contrasted everyone’s dress shoes and heels. But hey, there’s only so much one can do!
The ball was a great experience, particularly because I got to meet Emma’s friends there and chat politics in an environment where people don’t base their personal opinions of you on the political conversations you have with them. I know it’s pretty crazy to think that such a place exists, but it’s real and called “Europe”.
And these conversations were many and diverse — I chatted with a German guy visiting a friend from Cambridge (who subscribed to this blog, hey!) about the Pacific Crest Trail, a Spanish gentleman Niko and his Colorado girlfriend Regan about European hegemony2 and the tomato greenhouses in southern Spain, Finn from Portland who made a one-way trip to Europe for university, and heard from Emma’s roommate Patrycja about how the wife of a German far-right leader did cocaine with her friend. Classic
The wonderful conversations proceeded all night, we had some pints, and danced in the ballroom underneath the LSE student commons buildings. I have to say — watching these future European diplomats and political leaders dance badly was quite a fun time :)
Friday, April 4th
Friday was my first full day in the UK, and a lovely one at that! It started off with a volleyball extravaganza — Emma’s on the LSE volleyball team and had lots of studying to do that morning, so she invited me to the team’s practice in her place.
And it was so much fun! The park was just a short walk from Emma’s and had a really nice sand court, where the six of us there played many games of three-on-three. We had quite the international squad, with the other players coming from Canada, Hong Kong, France, and Turkey, and really just had an amazing time.
At the end, there was only one way to celebrate — take the bus back to LSE and get some yummy sandwiches from Dilietos. We did just that3, and I chatted with Canadian Ben on the second story of the double-decker red bus.
We eventually made it to the LSE, met up with Joe and Emma (who were studying there already), got our delicious sandwiches, and ate them on campus. It was quite lovely — everything there was just so hustling and bustling, there was an electric energy in the air, and everyone seemed really happy to be there. (that rhymed, nice)
After lunch, Joe and I headed to the pub nearby4, where I tried my very first snakebite (it was alright). Joe went back to the library to study, and I headed north to meet up with Sage, a friend from UCLA who was studying abroad in London for the year (hey!). We chatted for a bit about life, work (particularly productivity crises), and Finland (iykyk), then I walked over to the British Museum nearby for a nice afternoon of culture and sophistication.
It was epic — besides saying hi to my favorite stone (hi Rosetta! 🤭) and some great Greek marbles, I stopped by the special exhibit on timekeeping and clocks. They had a really cool section on marine chronometry, which I’m going to tell you about whether you like it or not.
Basically, a huge difficulty in naval navigation was determining longitude (east/west position). Latitude (north/south) position could be easily determined by the sun’s position, but knowing where you were longitudinally was impossible for a long time and a serious headache for all sailors5. In 1717, the British Parliament offered £20,000 (~£3.97 million today) to anyone who could solve this problem, and then my boy John Harrison pulled up.
He figured out that this problem could be solved with timekeeping — if one could have a clock on board that was accurately synced to Greenwich Mean Time (in London), the difference between that time and the time on the sailing ship6 would tell you how far you were from London, and thus your longitude (each hour of difference is ~4 degrees of longitude). But there were no clocks that could do this at the time, since they relied on pendulums that weren’t accurate on moving ships.
So Harrison went ahead and single-handedly invented a new clock that didn’t have this problem, and called it a marine chronometer. Goat. And the British Museum had one of these chronometers on display. Lit.
I’m now a fan of clocks. Who would’ve thought!
Feeling hyped after my clock side quest, I rented another Santander to bike across London to Greenwich to see the Prime Meridian7. The promenades were beautiful, I only took two wrong turns on the crazy streets, and made it there about an hour later.
Greenwich was great! The observatory there8 was unfortunately closed, but I was able to walk across the Prime Meridian and enjoy gorgeous views of Canary Wharf. After a few minutes, I biked back down the hill, across the Thames, and took the DLR train back to Bank station and Emma’s.
It was time for dinner! Patrycja’s friend, Brendan, was visiting from Amsterdam, and it was such a fun evening with the four of us. Brendan is South African, so I was naturally asking him a ton of questions and learning so much. He confirmed that there are a ton of ostrich farms there (where you can ride ostriches, Ostrichland USA doesn’t let you!), and that his grandparents live in Haarlem.
Not that Harlem. I asked.
The highlight of the night was hearing about Brendan’s duck adventures while in college — his dorm complex had a central duck pond, so the upperclassmen would catch them at night and leave them in the rooms of the freshmen who forgot to lock their doors. They’d wake up, and ducks would be all over the room, quacking and shitting everywhere9.
Not only that, but they’d invent drinking games to keep themselves entertained, with the best one by far being duck-related. Each friend would catch a duck, they’d go up to the top floor, and whoever’s duck glided the furthest would win.
I was completely blown away, and it quickly became a frontrunner from the greatest idea I have ever heard. It is simply genius!
After dinner, we walked down the street to a bar and got some drinks, where I learned that Brendan had independently discovered the Split the G app, which my sister helped create. I was almost as blown away by that as I was by the ducks!
Saturday, April 5th
I woke up this morning feeling nice and refreshed, and excited for the fun day ahead. And right away, things started off with a bang.
Since I was leaving Emma’s apartment that morning, I wanted to get her a thank-you gift for being such a wonderful host. She was running low on her delicious orange Italian coffee (the container was orange, not the coffee), so I asked Emma where I could get another tin. She said any store down the street.
I go down the street, and walk into the first “any” store that I see — Co-op. And despite Emma’s confident assertion, the store doesn’t actually have that exact brand, so I got another Italian one that I thought she’d like. I bought the bag of whole beans, then asked the clerk at the counter where I could grind them since I didn’t see a grinder in the aisle. The clerk looked at me like I was crazy and asked me why in the world there’d be a coffee grinder in the store.
Turns out, stores in the UK don’t have coffee grinders, despite the fact that they sell whole coffee beans. Apparently, everyone just has a mini grinder at home, or buys their beans already ground. What a funny thing.
But! I had just bought a bag of whole beans, and needed to grind them because Emma didn’t have a mini grinder at home. The clerk recommended I go to a coffee shop across the street to get them ground (grinded?), and one minute later I walked through the front door of that coffee shop and approached the counter.
The barista is extremely confused by my situation, and reveals that no one in the history of that coffee shop has ever asked for them to grind outside beans. She was willing to do it, but “unfortunately our grinder is broken at the moment” and they’ve been using a less-nice backup one. She recommended that I go down the street and go to grind coffee for them to grind my beans there.
“What’s grind coffee?”, I cluelessly ask. Turns out, it’s not grind coffee, but Grind Coffee — another coffee shop.
I walk over to Grind Coffee with my still-unground coffee, and ask the barista if he could grind my beans. “Are they grind beans?”, he asks.
At this point, I’m super confused because I only know two types of beans — whole beans, and ground beans (I don’t what grind beans are —> perhaps some intermediate, semi-ground form of bean?). Aaaaaand then it turns out that grind beans are not, in fact, grind beans, but Grind Beans — their specifically branded beans. And since my unground whole beans were not Grind Beans, but unground non-Grind beans, they couldn’t grind them10. What the actual fuck
So, I find myself walking back to the original coffee shop, and asking them to use their backup grinder for my still-whole beans. They happily do so, and I order an espresso and chat with the barista as a thank-you for the hassle she went through. I head back to Emma’s 30 minutes after I left (for what in my mind would’ve been a 3-minute trip to get the orange tin of Italian coffee), collapse on the couch, and reveal my tale to her, P, and Brendan to lots of laughter.
The best part was that the entire situation could’ve been entirely avoided if I’d just listened to Emma’s advice to “not buy whole beans”. But how in the world was I supposed to know that these UK stores have no grinders? What a classic Dennis side quest.
After that fiasco, I got my backpack, said bye to Emma et al., and jumped on a Santander bike to head to Notting Hill. I was meeting up with Alexandra! Brooke’s best friend from UCLA!
The ride over was amazing, with stunning views of the Thames, the Houses of Parliament, and Hyde Park. Honestly perfect — the weather couldn’t be any better, so many people out and about, such beautiful architecture. I need to move here!
And seeing Alexandra was amazing. We got coffee and pastries at a lovely shop, and parked ourselves at a table overlooking the Notting Hill Tube station to people-watch and chat. We hadn’t seen each other in over a year, and it was so wonderful to catch up, get to know her more (especially since she’s so important to Brooke), and discuss a tremendously broad variety of topics. Plus, I heard about her Substack, which I read the next day and was blown away by. It’s truly great stuff
After our coffees, we decided to stroll around the area, and checked out the famous Notting Hill streets, housing crescents (which I was really excited about), a map store, an art gallery, and walked all the way to the Hammersmith station. London was in full bloom, and it could not be a nicer day. Such great vibes. Such great photos. A cute bookshop. Red telephone boxes. It was perfect!
I said bye to Alexandra at Hammersmith (it was so wonderful to see you!!), and took the Tube west to Richmond — it was off to Mum’s house!
Mum is Caroline (Joe’s mum), and I hadn’t seen her since the last time I visited London back in December 2023. And it was so lovely. We had a delicious lunch of pizza, then played some Scrabble and caught up. It was really really nice to see her again, and the house was so cozy and made use of the space so well.
After taking a break at home, Joe and I left for a stroll through Richmond and the eventual destination of Richmond Park. It was amazing! The town was bustling, the buildings were cute, and the view overlooking the Thames was stunning. Along the way, Joe told me that Richmond Park has a ton of deer (which you can’t hunt, I asked), which then prompted a mandatory conversation on the treasonous nature of killing British swans. They belong to the King, of course. Why wouldn’t they?
We eventually made it to the park, where we met up with P, Brendan, and Bo (from the LSE ball). They were having a picnic (that we naturally joined), and it was simply the most pleasant and relaxing afternoon in the world. Some dogs came up to us, I shared the coffee story with Bo, we watched Fenton, it was heavenly. I could hardly imagine a better way to pass the afternoon than that.
After about an hour, we packed up and headed toward the park center on the quest of finding deer ourselves. We first found some parakeets (they just fly around the park of course), and eventually spotted the deer strolling around the woods. A whole herd of deer, just there. I was tempted to catch one, but Joe convinced me otherwise. I’m basically his Fenton!
Our enthusiasm for the deer eventually waned, so we walked out the park to get a pint. Along the way, Bo explained to me Belgian history (sorry for pestering you with so many questions), and it was super, super interesting. Apparently, there’s no such thing as a “Belgian” person —> Belgium was arbitrarily created after WWII as a buffer state between France and Germany, and is separated into two distinct parts — the Flemish-speaking (basically Dutch) northern part and the French-speaking southern part. And they kinda don’t like each other.
We made it to the pub and its long line, but the delicious cold pints more than made up for it. We walked across the street to the hillside, and had the best time chilling there and overlooking the beautiful Thames. We chatted about life, watched some amazing one-take mountain biking videos, saw Joe’s friend who manages Manchester United’s social media (how random), then called it a day and strolled back home. We relaxed for a bit, had dinner with Joe and his parents, then went off to bed in preparation for the big day tomorrow.
I fell asleep thinking of gliding ducks.
Sunday, April 6th
Sunday morning was a momentous day. The day of the Southampton Marathon was finally here!
I had signed up for the marathon months ago when Joe told me he was running it since I was curious about the British running experience — I’d run four marathons before (flex), and thought it’d be interesting and fun to do one in the UK, too. No, I didn’t train (I don’t like running that much). And no, it wasn’t a problem.
I’m just built different.
We woke up around 5 am for the 9 am start in Southampton, and were out the house by 6. The drive down was smooth and uneventful, and started off strangely when Joe called shotgun and then walked over to the driver’s side door. He opened it, and there was no steering wheel there, only a seat. WHOA! The drivers sit on the right side of the cars here!!! My first time in a British car, and I was stunned.
Later, I learned about the British roadway system — main freeways are called “motorways”, start with the letter “M”, and are increasingly numbered clockwise from London. Smaller roads start with an “A”, with derivative roads of those starting with a “B”. Pretty interesting stuff.
We made it to Southampton around 7:45, picked up our bibs, and used the loo. We quickly drank our electrolytes, had our gels, and snuck up to the very front of the marathon queue — the big race was about to start, and they had a British lord blow the horn to kick it off. How fun! A lord!
And the marathon went super well! The course was pretty hilly, but there were a ton of folks out and about cheering. We ran two of the same half-marathon loops, and the main highlight was running right through the Southampton Stadium! I was so excited to be inside my first Premier League stadium11, and got a ton of high-fives from the kids and lots of free candy from the parents along the way.
Surprisingly, the first half marathon went super well, and I finished up in around 1:54. And even more surprisingly, I only started dying around Mile 20, not Mile 16 like at LA! I was super proud of myself, and only had to walk up the hills (footnote about this actually being the same speed as the runners at this point but with less impact) and into the headwind up the main bridge. That was crazy.
Around this point, I realized that my in-a-perfect-world goal of running a sub-4 marathon with no training was not just fantasy, but actually possible. I was really struggling at this point (the muscular impact of 40,000 steps on your quads is unbelievable), but put on some super super super hype music12, and really pushed through. It was fucking insane. I crossed the finish line, with a net time of 3:59:51. 9 seconds under the in-a-perfect-world goal. No training. Let’s fucking go!
I was feeling so good at this point, and headed over to the finisher’s area to get my free massage (these free massages post-finish might be the best part of running a marathon). While waiting in line, I chatted with the lady in front of me, who had just finished her 55th marathon (!). She was a dentist in the Royal Navy (wtf), and holds the Guinness World Record for the fastest marathon run in a full desert military uniform. Needless to say, I was very impressed!
And let me tell you, that massage was amazing. The masseurs were students at Southampton University studying sports medicine, and were practicing their craft on us. Apparently, they take a massage class, where they learn to give therapeutic sports massages and practice by massaging each other. Kinda weird, not gonna lie, but I’m not complaining about the end result. They were good!
The funniest part was that the masseurs were thanking me for the experience, and told me they’d be making a LinkedIn post about it. Now that’s what I’m talking about!
Afterward, I met up with Joe, Caroline, his aunt, and friends Anna13 and Lucy at a pub near the finish line, where we celebrated our run in the classic British way — two pints. We hobbled back to the car, drove back to Richmond uneventfully14, where Joe and I took baths (not together unfortunately), cancelled our drinks with Emma and Billy (we could barely walk), had a delicious sausage dinner (thanks Caroline!), and went to bed super early. What a day!
Monday, April 7th
Joe and I woke up sore af, and Joe could barely make it down the stairs. We had a very chill morning — made some coffee, played some Scrabble, and just sat around. Later, we made some delicious scrambled eggs, packed our bags, and were off. Bristol was calling!
We took the train into London, and walked from the Victoria tube station to the bus terminal. We saw a hotel along the way I thought was grand, so naturally I walked in to take a look around. Joe thought I was crazy. Classic Joe. Classic me.
A short time later, we made it to the bus terminal, and right near it, a Tesco’s! We got a meal deal for the road, I bought some more chips15 as a snack. We made it to the bus with no problems, got on board, put our bags up, and grabbed some seats right by the window.
Bristol, here we come!
Best,
Dennis :)
Some interesting anthropological observations to note right off the bat:
People here drive on the left side of the road. Famously. I’ve had to relearn how to jaywalk, and was almost hit by a bus in London three times when I looked the wrong way before crossing
I really love the British grammatical feature of {having a verb}. You’d never catch a British “thinking” about something. No no no! You will, however, find them “having a think”. (As I was writing this blog in the park, the lady next to me literally said “I’ll have a think” lol)
On the topic of British speaking habits, I love their use of the word “sat” to add a slice of linguistic diversity over plain “sitting”. An American would use “sitting” regardless of circumstance, whereas Ben loves to hit me with the “We were sat there and…” I don’t know the fancy linguistic term to describe this, but Joe does. And he told me multiple times already. But don’t worry Joe, I’ve forgotten again, so you can tell it to me one more time.
Gas (sorry, “petrol”) is in pence per liter, not my beloved dollars per gallon
Stoplights here turn yellow before both reds and greens! So their purpose is not solely to tell you to slow down, but rather to indicate that the stoplight is about to change
And on that note, they don’t turn yellow. They turn amber. (Thanks Caroline for the clarification)
Some major axiomatic differences:
These are different than just mere observations or culture shocks, but are rather profound differences in the building blocks of existence. These differences are so profound that you are shaken to your core. This was such an interesting realization, in fact, that I wrote an entire piece on it here:
Stores that sell whole coffee beans don’t have grinders, too. It’s a BYOG situation (bring your own grinder), and boy, did I find that out the hard way!
Each outlet also has a corresponding switch next to it, which you need to flip on before the electricity runs. Twice on this trip already, I’ve plugged in my phone at night just to realize in the morning that it didn’t charge at all because I didn’t flip the switch.
Public transport is comprehensive and arrives on time. What a weird thing!
Media appendix (thanks Ben for the idea!):
LSE = London School of Economics and Political Science
Hegemony, what a cool word!
With the slight hiccup where we missed the first bus because Ian forgot his hat at the park and had to run back and get it
They have pubs on campus in the UK! How I wish American universities had that
Translation: they’d crash their ships
Determined by celestial observations
The equator is the reference point for Earth’s latitude and is geographically determined as being perpendicular to Earth’s rotational axis. But since there are an infinite number of longitude lines on Earth, one needs to be picked as the reference point for the rest of the planet, and gets the epic name of Prime Meridian. It just so happens to be in Greenwich, hence me biking there!
The first cataloged observatory, in fact, with the international reference number 000
Waking up with ducks everywhere? That’d be a dream come true for me!
This might be the greatest sentence I’ve ever written
I later learned that Southampton was relegated in record time this season, so they won’t even be in the Premier League next year 🙃
I was listening to the Acquired podcast about Microsoft before this
Anna’s doing the Portuguese Camino soon and is running the London Marathon in three weeks!
Except for a random country road detour, where we saw a random man walking with grocery bags on an empty, deserted road
Brits call them “crisps”
LOOOVE what a fascinating anthropological time you’re having! (I’ll discuss your liberal use of the term axiom with you later…)
Great blog Dennis,
and proud to be featured in it. Love mum 😊