The first time I walked by the Texas Embassy, I did a double take. Surely Texas doesn’t have its own embassy in the UK? That would be bizarre, but not completely unexpected given the inflated ego of the state’s residents (and I say this as a Californian ). Well, as it turns out, it is just the name of a Tex-Mex restaurant near Trafalgar Square. My friends and I spent our 4th of July here in 2005 when the soggy London weather forced us to cancel our plans for an Independence Day barbecue. If you can’t have hot dogs, you might as well celebrate our country’s independence from the Brits with margaritas and nachos.

Photos from my January 3-11, 2010 return to London, with day trips to snow-covered Oxford and Gloucester.

Via Transport for London comes this new ad campaign regarding the dangers of illegal cabs. Now if only DC had a competent agency like TFL to regulate cabs I might be willing to take them more often. London cabbies are truly the best in the world.

Because “I’ll have a half-liter of (insert beer here)” just sounds lame:

The European Parliament voted to allow the continued use of the pint and the mile on Tuesday, sparing British drinkers from having to order half liters and Irish drivers from staying below 110 kilometers an hour. Before the measure passed, Britain and Ireland, the only European countries still widely using British imperial units of measurement, were required to set dates for scrapping them next year. The vote in Strasbourg, France, also allows shops to post imperial and metric measurements side by side.

I want to move back to the UK and be an MP.

London does quite well. Washington? Eh…

New York takes the #1 spot. Still, I could never live there.

The Atheist Bus Campaign was launched to counter the plethora of religious adverts on display. I really can’t see this going over very well in the United States. There would be protests and blah, blah, blah, because the megachurch pastors would get their flock all riled up.

Back to the Blitz:

“We’re back to where we started, with the government bailing out the banks and everybody reusing their teabags.”

My friend India Knight, a columnist for The Sunday Times, joined me. “It’s quite nice,” she said. “A bit like the Blitz. A bit of decadence in the dark, you know?”

“Socialism is bursting out all over,” I said.

“I know,” said India. “Greed is not good.”

The restaurants in Primrose Hill were looking pretty but empty. The men finished their coffee and shrugged as they left. “Good luck,” one said to the cafe owner. “Things are going to be very tough.”

Another old friend turned up with cigarettes for everybody. “It’s amazing,” he said, with an observation about the glistening financial center on the Thames. “It looks as if Canary Wharf is going back to what it was — the Isle of Dogs.”

Not much fun, are you, Boris? But I will admit that he has an awesome first name. And how can you not love the guy’s hairstyle?

Last Call on the London Tube:

London’s new mayor, Boris Johnson, left, said that he was banning alcohol on the city’s public transportation system, effective next month, in an effort to “end the problem of drunken and intimidating behavior on the Tube.” Some subway workers said they welcomed the move as a way to change the unpleasant late-night atmosphere in the subways. But Bob Crow, general secretary of the union representing transportation employees, said the plan had been put into place too hastily and would be difficult to enforce. “Perhaps the mayor will come out with his underpants on over his trousers like Superman one Saturday to show us how it should be done,” he told Agence France-Presse.

When I first moved to the UK, I was pretty shocked to see people eating fast food and downing cans of beer on the Tube. It was a big change from the DC metro system, where they arrest 12 year olds for eating french fries in the stations.

Yeah, these photos are over two years old (September ‘05) and I just got around to uploading them. I’ve only got 100+ more to go.

These were all taken during my last week in London, when I decided to make one more quick visit to some of the sights in the city.

Buckingham Palace, view from the backyard

As to be expected, the Queen has a ridiculously large backyard

Hanging out in the palace backyard after tea with Lizzie.

A royal swan in Round Pond, Kensington Gardens.

I didn’t want to get to close to the swans as they might recognize me from previous “incidents” and maul me, or something.

Tributes to Princess Diana on the gates of Kensington Palace, her former residence

Last night in the old ‘hood