I just got back from a 7-day trip to London and Prague. The trip was amazing. Over the next few posts, I will be posting stories and photos from my trip. I got into London early on the morning of May 24th.
Clearing Customs took about 90 minutes and then I was off to meet my friend Matt at Paddington Station.
I was a little jet-lagged. 
While in London, I was staying at a flat that Matt's parents will be moving into in the coming weeks. The flat is in Hampstead, which is north of London. Matt found a pub online called the Spaniard, which, on the map, looked walkable. Four miles later, I was eating a cheddar and ale chutney sandwich. What is ale chutney? I asked the very same question and nobody seemed to be able to give me a clear answer. Finally, the waitress gave up and just brought me a sample of the chutney. Simply put: it's a chutney with ale in it. So after all of that, I had no choice but to order the sandwich. It wasn't very good.
Later in the week, we went to the Tate Modern. We went on a bank holiday and so the museum was quite crowded. It was an interesting mixture of tourists, foreigners, and British people. There were a lot of families and I noticed, on more than one occasion, moms or dads pointing to and explaining aspects of particular paintings (texture, color, composition, etc) to their 10-year old children. Now, I've been to the Art Institute of Chicago many times, and while I've seen 10-year olds in the museum, I've never once witnessed one critically engaged with a painting (I'm not even going to discuss what most of the parents are like). It was nice to see.
Stay tuned for more!
