field trip

I'm not normally a fan of modern architecture or skyscrapers or anything close. I also don't really know what quays are except I think they're pronounced "keys." But tonight I took a field trip up the DLR (Docklands Light Rail) to a place called Canary Wharf/West India Quays. And I'm glad I went.

Though I left the house around 4:45-ish, it was of course already pitch black making it feel like evening when it was still late afternoon. So I only saw the quays and scrapers in the dark. Which is a beautiful, if probably incomplete (that whole thing about darkness hiding things) way to see them. The Docklands are basically across the Thames from Greenwich in the spot where the river twists down and back up in a deep capital "U" shape. The London guidebook I picked up in Bratislava's Next Apache used book shop explained to me (while I sat in a Canary Wharf Starbucks) that the whole area has been fairly recently developed away from the shall-we-say disrepair it had fallen into. Apparently the quays were (are?) part of London's shipping biz. I think they're man-made, but I'm not sure. Perhaps I should go visit Wikipedia, but I don't feel curious or awake enough for that right now.

Tonight the trees outside the high-end shops at the Canary Wharf DLR station and outside the high rise buildings housing offices of people who work late-ish trying to figure a way out of the world's financial free-fall, tonight those trees twinkled with subtle, elegant bluish-purple lights that I think are in honor of Christmas season but could be there all year for all I know. Either way, they're nice.

And unexpectedly, so are all those high rises with office lights mostly still on even as the offices emptied (I'm surprised they get away with that in environment-conscious London, but it would be less striking if they were all dark). It's definitely a different facet of London than the others I've visited thus far. Perhaps I'll make it there in the day time. Sometime before Dec. 23 when I will end this go-around of London life.

In other news, I've been discovering little tricks of the trade lately, little tricks that I'm learning about too late to take much advantage of. Like tonight, for example, I discovered that Lewisham station's DLR entrance boasts TWO ATM machines that are a good five minutes closer to my house than the one I usually go to to get my rent money and other cash. For WEEKS now, I've been walking FIVE whole minutes further (that's TEN minutes round trip of course) than I've needed to!!

Also, tonight in less of an annoyed tone I discovered that the movie theater (aka: cinema as they call it here, probably because this is actually a place that has lots of real theaters where live people perform so that saves any confusion) at West India Quay is actually pretty cheap as movie theaters go. PLUS it's only a cheap DLR ride away. And I've finally firmly concluded tonight that I like the DLR a lot. It just feels more gentle and easy and less grinding than the train I usually have to take to get to places like cinemas. For those of you who have no way to test my theory on this, just trust me. You would agree if you were here. I just know it.

So I concluded my field trip tonight by trying to catch up with my book group in Nashville that read The Secret Life of Bees for November and then went to see the film together. I've handled that book in book stores so many times but never succombed to purchasing it or checking it out from the library. Since I'm still finishing October's book group book and want to read January's book, I decided here was my chance to skip the book and just catch up by watching the movie. It's a good flick. And it was a good night for such a flick.

So there you go. Field trip done. On to tomorrow.