We have reached the UK portion of my summer abroad! Fair warning that this is long, because we packed a LOT into this trip. Also, despite my intention to get all these summer trip posts into five parts, London is being split in two because I got halfway through the first and realized I couldn’t do it all in one. So now this series will be six parts long.

About a week before The Ineffable Con (TIC), which I’ll talk about in a couple posts, Rainstorm and I took a train up to London. (It went through the Chunnel, which has been on my bucket list for a bazillion years, so hurrah! Between that and using a climbing wall earlier in the summer, that was two bucket list goals crossed off this summer. So far.) We made our way to the hotel via a wild bus ride where a woman smacked her head into a wall when the brakes went on too fast and we all had to get off and go to a different bus so medical help could come. That first night, the only thing we did besides grab some food was stop by the nearby queer bookshop, The Common Press, which we did I think like three more times over the week. We went to bed early because 1) travel day and 2) we had a scheduled brunch at Sky Garden the next morning.

Sky Garden is a hideous building but really cool up on the top floor with all the plants and such. More importantly, it was the filming site for the Heaven scenes in the first season of Good Omens. (Sorry, a LOT of these next few travel posts will be GO-centered!) Both of us have been there before, but we scheduled brunch there a few months in advance. On the way there, we stopped by Broadgate Tower to take a photo of the blue and green escalators (the main entrances to Heaven and Hell in GOS1 – and a place I hadn’t been yet!). Then we were off to brunch, which was delicious. And oh hey, I ordered a Kir to go with my brunch – crossing out another bucket list goal! I’d never had one before it and it was quite good.

After brunch and our time taking tons of pics in the garden, we wandered down to St Dunstan’s, where we sadly didn’t get to spend a lot of time because there were a lot of bees around and after the recent hornet situation, neither of us wanted to do that again! So we went back to the hotel for a bit of afternoon rest before wandering to the Soho area. Mostly, we just walked around visiting many things we’ve both seen before, many of them Good Omens filming touchstones like Berwick St, but we also got some delicious mochi near Chinatown, had the most amazing Sri Lankan food at Hoppers, visited a lesbian bar (where I got a French 75 and crossed a fourth bucket list goal off), passed by the Windmill (which I’d seen on my first trip to London, then promised to buy Rainstorm a drink there long before we began dating, and which was apparently in the process of closing after 100 years around the time we were there, hence no drink…), and then spent the evening at a gay bar on the edge of Chinatown. The bar was significant because Rainstorm had been there a year before, texting me about how they thought their then-girlfriend was breaking up with them, and I was cheering them up by telling them I’d buy them a drink at the Windmill, and the waiter that served them the first time was the same waiter that served us together… Ineffable.

And that was just day 1! Day 2 was just as busy. We traveled down to Battersea to hit another major GO destination, the infamous break-up bandstand. A ceremony of some sort was being set up there, and Rainstorm took countless photos of both the setup and all the random passing dogs as I read a story aloud to them. It was lovely to just sit in the park until we were ready to go find lunch. After lunch, we headed up to the Globe, where we’d booked a queer tour. I’m not a Shakespeare person or a history person, and Rainstorm wasn’t particularly interested in a regular tour, either. We originally only wanted to see the Globe for GO reasons (yes, I know, I know) but weren’t planning to do a tour. Only then we found the queer tour, and that was def up both our streets! And the tour actually was quite phenomenal. Made me much more interested in Shakespeare generally – who knew?

We spent the rest of the day on the south bank, taking photos from across the river, having a drink at a place Rainstorm had been to the previous year, wandering through spaces I’d never been to. Unfortunately, on our way back to the bus in the near-dark, I slipped on a loose stone, and now it was my turn to be dealing with a hurt ankle. Ridiculous, yeah? Anyway, we made it home, and the next day, we tried to keep our activities soft and gentle. We wandered through Brick Lane, which was quite close to where we were staying, and down to Spitalfields, where we got lunch at the food market thingy. (Note: I had the best empanadas I’ve ever eaten – including empanadas I had in Colombia – and I had to go back to the vender and gush about them.) Then we took a bus east, and Rainstorm gave me a tour of where they lived back at uni. Afterwards, we headed over to the Vagina Museum for awhile. There were so many interesting exhibits there and I wish we could have stayed longer, but even that minimal walking was getting to be too much on my injured ankle and we took the bus back to our hotel.

Day 4. This was a big one, y’all. Not a ton of walking, thank goodness, but a big day nonetheless. This was our nine-month anniversary, and we’d booked afternoon tea at the Ritz. But let me go back to earlier in the day. The first thing we did was take the bus to near the Boer War Memorial at St James Park. It was HOT, y’all. And we were dressed in our fancy Ritz clothes – a dress, vest, and boots for me, and a long-sleeved button down and vest for Rainstorm. The bus let us out near a Waterstones, and we stopped in for some water and a/c because we still had half an hour or so until we were set to meet up with another fandom friend (who shall be known here as Bebop) for the first time. Eventually, we made our way to the memorial, met up with Bebop, and the three of us took pics of more GO stuff before we settled in at a small movie theatre type spot that Bebop knew of where we could just get coffee and hang out a bit. We all would have loved to spend more time together, but sadly, everyone had time constraints and we pushed them to their limits before we finally hugged and said goodbye.

Then Rainstorm and I walked to the Ritz, trying not to melt in the heat the whole time. They had been there once before, but I hadn’t ever been inside. It was over-the-top lavish! And very exciting, because of course, the Ritz is another major GO spot, which is why we were celebrating our anniversary there. I decided to try everything I was given, even foods I wouldn’t normally enjoy. Including tea – the irony of us being at afternoon tea, yeah? I chose english rose tea and it was actually amazing. (Maybe the reason I don’t like tea is because I live in the US and our tea is generally garbage.) I also enjoyed almost all of the finger sandwiches, including the salmon (which I’ve never liked). Only the cucumber sandwiches stayed on my no list. The Ritz provided vegetarian options for all of Rainstorm’s foods, and they enjoyed all of theirs, too. The scones, of course, were the bestest. We shared glasses of champagne, just like in the show, and this is where the really amazing part happened.

Playing out the scene from S1, we clinked our glasses together – To the world! – and began to talk. Then, from the other room, the pianist began to play. It was the first song since we’d arrived, and it was none other than “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.” Y’all. It couldn’t be more ineffable. We were floored. And yeah, I’m sure that song gets played there quite a bit, given that it mentions the Ritz, but many, many GO fans spent time there over the course of that week leading up to TIC and none of them heard this song played. So yeah, we were beyond excited. The rest of the meal was lovely, and they even brought us a mini-cake with a “happy anniversary” on it, but the song? That was the best part.

After tea, we walked down to St James’ Park again, still too giddy, needing to go sit on the GO bench after all that. As we approached, we saw two teens clearly reading all the GO graffiti that has been left on the bench. We passed them and went to sit on the next bench to wait our turn, but one of them spotted us and their eyes went wide, and they tapped the other. Both began shouting “no way!” and getting really excited because we were obviously GO coded with my white-blond curls and Rainstorm’s maroon hair. This whole next part is just a testament to how wonderfully inclusive this fandom is, as two teens, a 30-something, and a 40-something all geeked out about the same thing together. We told them what had just happened to us at the Ritz, and we traded off taking pictures of each other on the bench, and they actually wrote the line from the song as their chosen graffiti with the date on it for us. (Shut up about the graffiti. I don’t care if it’s wrong or not. I’ve never left any myself but I’m not going to stop others or shame anyone for it, either. That bench is a legend and the messages on it are left there in pure love.) It was a perfect cap to a perfect afternoon.

Okay. That’s longwinded enough for now. The rest of London shenanigans to come in the next post!