My friend had a week off so we met up in London for hijinks.

🔥🔥🔥

We tried out a Mexican takeout in the London Victoria station, Mi Casa, for the first time.
Couldn’t really understand their accent but we got a burrito, tacos and nachos. I got the pork which was pretty good. Didn’t really like the salad though and it dripped water everywhere.
The nachos came with a guacamole “dip” but they just kinda plopped it on top and you got less than a handful of them.

Esports advert in the London Underground tunnels.
So this is becoming a thing. Things only ever seem to become mainstream and acceptable after I’ve moved onto other hobbies.

The Mario games have gotten weird since they introduced the New Donkers.

Decided through process of elimination where we wanted to go while eating.
Then we made our way to Covent Garden to visit the London Transport Museum to look at old buses. This area is packed with tourists at this time of year.
We browsed briefly through the antiques on display before finding the entrance to the museum.

Turns out the ticket lasts for a year and it counts as a donation towards charity on your taxes.
The museum was bigger than I thought it would be. I figured it was just an old hall of buses for transport otakus but it had multiple levels, covered the Underground system too and most attendees were children.

Cute sailor fuku onii-chan.

Was it really necessary to re-create the poop?

Old Underground map.
The one thing that I can think of that is missing is the addition of the DLR.

This cute Underground logo shaped coffee table.

Rokodo wanted a photo of this old Underground advert.

Also these two.

If you’ve ever wanted to know the typeface used on the Underground, here it is.

This neat re-creation of the Underground map using circuitry.

There was a collection of 90s objects plus Shrek.

Even in the ye olde days you couldn’t get away from advertising.

Feels like the main advancement in motor vehicles over the decades are in the tyres.

These are some steep steps.

They had a fully functioning road crossing! Spinny blind assistant knob and everything.

One of the more modern buses but with the back cut off.

What kind of bus is this?
Babysitting area for little kids.

There was an art gallery too.
Toys strategically placed to keep the kids distracted while the adults take in all the fine culture.

Finally, I can decorate my home with the patterns designed to hide stains found on our buses.

There was still time in the day so I wanted to check out some office furniture.
I didn’t want to do all that walking/standing on the Underground so we took a bus to Southwark. Turned out to be a lucky call as the Southwark station had just closed due to a fire alert.

This is it. The big showroom these guys said they had on their website.
Literally a bunch of chairs in an alleyway.

I don’t mind spending money on my health and comfort but they all have this one flaw that makes me hesitate to open my wallet.

It was late afternoon by this point so we started making our way to Stratford for dinner.
We were lucky a second time as the Southwark station had just re-opened as we were walking back. Seemed like it was a false alarm earlier.
Someone playing loud music over a BOOMBOX on the way to Stratford. Tutted at them.

I’m buying this entire store.

Had some cheeki Nandos for dinner. The Westfield shopping centre at Stratford isn’t as big as the one in the central London but it still took multiple minutes just to walk to the food court. It was really busy and loud.

Checked out some more office chairs at John Lewis and wow these things are expensive. They had a chair for over £1000. Still, everything had just this one deal-breaking flaw.

Afterwards we watched The Incredibles 2 in the shopping centre’s cinema.
Vue XTREME VIP seats and everything. The seat locations were good but they weren’t that comfortable and they didn’t recline like they were advertised to. Screen was dekai and the 100.1 surround speakers were loud.

The lighting was good. Always changing the colours of the scene. And there's global illumination now.  
The action scenes were well directed. Lots of shit going on at once but you knew where people were in relation to each other and what they were doing.  
Comedy timing was on point.  
Animations were more expressive and more toony with lots of smearing and squashing/stretching.  
Hair has just straight up reached photo-realism at this point.  
Also they gave everyone eyebags even the young characters for some reason.  
But there's a character that just has the permanently tired look with the black bags and that's hot. And Elastigirl is thicc af.  
And Frozone should've been the main character he does like half the work and the ice rendering looked absolutely sick.  
It also feels like we're nearing the peak of food rendering technology.

Night time now so we started making our way to the hotel.
Dropped by a supermarket for refreshments and wow this place is still packed. London.
Hotel wasn’t too far away. About 10 minutes walk. Wouldn’t want to do this everyday if we were staying for more than a couple of days though.

I have no idea what RFID has to do with towels.

No toiletries other than this soap dispenser.

Waterfall tap.

The whole hotel is covered in this lightly textured but still clearly fake bricks wallpaper.
Nice use of normal mapping.

The bathroom was clean enough but the room was crazy dusty.
Turned on the fan and a plume of dust flew out.

Most of the channels on the TV didn’t work. The bed felt cheap and it was shaped like a hill so I kept rolling off. There was no AC so I slept with just a cloth. There was the sound of constant traffic even late into the night. But for a £80 3 person room, can’t really complain.

Weather was pretty 🔥 the next day too.
Did some quick Christmas shopping at Westfield then we headed back to central London.
Needed a new travel card but just a single ticket back home costed more than what I paid on the way up.

Lunch at Misato, Picadilly.
They weren’t open until 12 so I got a haircut while Rokodo hit the arcade. There was a queue before they even opened but the cooks were fast.

Took another quick visit to Covent Garden for this shop of cute things.

This tea better be made of gold to be worth this much.

Pretty tired from all the walking and I still have work that evening so time to head home.