We’ve just arrived back at our AirBnb on our final night in Lima, so it’s time to get comfy on the balcony and reflect on the first stop of our adventures. I arrived on Monday night after a short hop to Madrid and then a much longer flight to Peru, during which I watched King of Thieves – which is basically a much duller version of Ocean’s 8 but with geriatric men. Randi was a few hours behind me, although after 24 hours of not sleeping I have to admit that I just failed to stay awake for her arrival.
Lima is large, but we confined our explorations to three areas: Miraflores (the swanky and upmarket district where we were staying), the hipster and incredibly photogenic Barranco District and the central, historic core which was about 40 minutes away from us. On our first afternoon, we caught the ‘Metropolitano’ into the centre for a walking tour. The Metropolitano is basically a bus in disguise as a train. It has train-like stations with line maps and turnstiles and platform doors, but behind those doors it’s just a big bus, albeit running in a dedicated bus lane. It’s almost like someone took the city’s money, promised to build them a subway and then skimped on construction.
It was only around 2 in the afternoon, but the bus was jam-packed. And in the midst of it all… my phone vanished. Realistically, I was expecting this to happen at some point on our travels – just not on the first day! As soon as I realised it was missing everyone around us on the bus sprung into action, offering their own phones as torches to search the floor and to call my number. But it was definitely gone, and so the plan for our day shifted from “walking tour” to “get a police report for a stolen phone”.
Now, obviously I’d prefer not to have had my phone stolen. But I have to say, the resulting couple of hours were fascinating and surreal. A security guard at the station, Ana, was just coming off her shift and offered to take us to the police station. She then stayed with us for hours as our personal translator and support, which was so incredibly generous of her and hard to imagine happening in other places. We love Ana, and wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without her. She’s still sending us best wishes for our trip over WhatsApp.
The police were friendly enough but somewhat confusing, repeatedly shuffling us between rooms until we manged to explain that we really just needed a report for insurance purposes. They then ushered us into the back of a police car so that two officers could drive us slowly around the centre of Lima, writing – by hand – a lengthy description of the case. We weren’t quite sure where we were going (were we being arrested, perhaps?) but then we arrived at the tourism police station (right next to counter-terrorism) so that they could take over and type it all out again. Finally, after some more waiting and wandering, we got our printed report with the magic stamps of officialdom, and were free to go find me a new phone.
There are no Apple stores in Lima, but there is an authorised reseller (iShop) and getting my hands on a replacement device was no problem. Getting a Peruvian SIM card was… slightly more challenging, as all of the mobile companies have arranged their stores like old-fashioned banks with take-a-number-and-wait ticketing systems, clerks behind booths who need your passport at the first opportunity and lots of unnecessary photocopying. In fairness, my wrangling with T-Mobile afterwards was much worse. But after a couple of days of patiently working out loopholes in their systems, I managed to get my phone restored to more-or-less where it was.
I feel a little bad writing so much about this, because it in no way dampened my enjoyment of Lima as a city and we still got to see everything we had planned. We just got the back of a police car thrown in as an unexpected bonus.
The next day we defiantly took the Metropolitano again (holding our bags a little tighter this time) and finally got to do our walking tour. The central plaza reminded me very much of Quito, and our guide was largely factual although would occasionally spin off down some interesting paths, e.g. “the British are great because they built lots of trains” (sure) and “Peru has a lot of money but we can’t just give people money because you need to teach a man to fish” (hmm). He also promised that a real subway is on the way, although it was pushed back a couple of years due to corruption issues.
Today we stayed in Miraflores and visited the cats of Kennedy Park (Emily Ray would have an absolute field day) and the Huaca Pucllana, a giant clay and adobe pyramid built between 400 and 700 CE which seems to rise up out of nowhere in the middle of a lovely and well-to-do residential area. It was largely a temple (yes, the kind of temple with human sacrifices) with a large ‘administrative area’ attached, which I can only assume was necessary for the filing of reports and issuance of proto-SIM cards.
Finally, tonight we walked down the ocean path to dinner in the Barranco District. I know I described it as ‘hipster’ earlier but it almost had an ‘enchanted tree’ vibe, especially by the light of the setting sun. Having successfully got my phone back to a good spot this morning I was in an excellent mood, and I’m so glad we were able to start our journeys here in this great city.
It’s my last night in London before the first flight on our great adventure tomorrow morning, and I really should pack. Instead, I want to sit and blog about the last two weeks at home, because they have been quite wonderful.
Starting with family, I had a delicious cottage pie cooked for me at Katie’s new flat in West Ham before contributing my Polaroid picture to the fridge and then being beaten very badly at Dominion by Katie and her flatmate Kim. Ouch. On Sunday night, I was back with Tash so that we could all watch Doctor Who together (and a good episode it was too!).
I also scoffed egg sandwiches and chocolate cake at my Grandma’s, lunched with my great uncle Leonard and had dinners with aunts and uncles – making up for my absence at Christmas, hopefully. My mum also got us tickets to see White Teeth at the Tricycle, which was one of my favourite novels when I read it many years ago and was extremely enjoyable on stage, with songs, even if they did rudely relocate some of the Willesden locations to Kilburn.
(“Hey, Dom, wasn’t the Tricycle Theatre recently rebranded to the Kiln Theatre for no particularly good reason?”
“Sure, but I’m still not calling it that.”)
It goes without saying that I invited myself over to spend the night at Cat and Matt’s – largely to watch more unboxing videos, though not before we had a delicious sticky toffee pudding at a fancy pub nearby.
The next night, I caught the train to Chelmsford to stay overnight with Tash at Abbi, Paul and Jack’s house. Jack – who I last saw on the day he was born – is now two and intensely adorable, although not very keen on wearing clothes. He was very excited to show me all of his toys, and Paul was a little less excited for us to watch the sticky sticky stick stick song from Hey Duggee. Sorry Paul.
It was wonderful to be reunited, and we all found Paul’s curry so delicious that we completely forgot that naan bread was gently burning to a crisp in the oven the whole time. I also had to admit that the centre of Chelmsford was all festively lit and nicely pedestrianised, although later we did realise that we faced a long rail replacement bus back to the mothership of London the next morning. Some things never change.
The other people I managed to see this time around were Simon (who joined me for an excellent brunch at the Bad Egg diner with a server who was either American or else doing a very good impression), Melissa (not enough time for everything we could discuss, but we tried our best!) and Matt, Caroline and Charles for what I continue to describe as a ‘Themes & Sources’ evening even though it’s been a decade since we actually had that class together.
But the absolutely best part of this trip was Oliver and Abi’s wedding on Saturday night. Just typing that sentence makes me smile, because I have known the two of them since our first year of university together and I distinctly remember my very strong encouragement to ask each other out when it was so obvious that that’s what should happen. So it was so awesome to see them so happy on their wedding day, hang out with mutual friends until the early hours of Sunday morning and then stay overnight to spend more time together. Thank you and congratulations!
Also – a special shout out to Jason Budd, who I haven’t seen since QPCS days but was an early friend of the blog!
Finally, I went for a Mad Hatter’s Afternoon Tea with Catherine and AJ this afternoon, who happened to be in town this week and wanted to sample the fancier end of the afternoon tea market. They were not on board with the scotch eggs, but I was happy to help out.
OK, enough procrastinating – it really is time to pack five months of clothes into a backpack now. Wish me luck!
When I moved to Chicago in 2014, I rode the Blue Line with Robert from O’Hare airport to the Damen stop, where I got out and waited for Nolan to ride up on his bike and take me to my new home. So I thought it would be appropriate to begin my final Chicago post with this coupley photoshoot picture at Damen which Randi arranged as a birthday present for me this year. And on a related note, I also wanted to give a genuine and heartfelt thanks to the CTA for being awesome over the past four years. Recently I read this New York Times article on Chicago’s public transport renaissance and it made me very proud.
As you might expect, our last week in the city has been very busy with a combination of saying goodbye to people, encouraging those same people to subscribe to this blog for regular updates (hi!) and packing. We shared a tapas dinner with Randi’s bosses and replacement at Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba!, ordered in from Irazu with Jason and Carrie, and then ordered in even more Irazu the very next night at Robert and Julie’s with Todd and Carolyn. (What can I say… Irazu is pretty good.)
We also saw Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald on Saturday with Arielle, although I have to say I thought it was a hot mess. Was it enjoyable to watch? Sure. Did I feel like I had failed to revise for a Harry Potter mythology course and was now doing badly in the exam? Also yes. To be honest, I respectfully request that JK Rowling prioritise writing more Cormoran Strike books. 🙂
Amusingly, my last out-of-Chicago trip with Randi while living here turned out to be to the village of Norridge, a weird little enclave which is surrounded on all sides by the city of Chicago. We went there as part of the paperwork for Randi’s UK visa, which is now (after a last-minute trip to the post office this morning) in the laps of the Home Office gods. If all goes according to plan, we will move to the UK together in mid-2019 after we’ve finished our travelling adventures. Fingers crossed.
Yesterday we had a very potato-centric day making lefse and latkes with First Couple™ Catherine and AJ, before our last Doctor Who Sunday night with Joe, Julie and Amanda. Joe and Julie have put so much effort into making our apartment building a friendly place, where people actually know each other and hang out, which is something I wasn’t sure actually happened in real life but has been really wonderful to experience. And living with Amanda has been so incredibly awesome. A few weeks ago, we started leaving spoof passive-aggressive post-it notes for each other on the fridge because we realised that’s the kind of stuff that never happened in this flat and we wanted to give it a shot. Thank you for being so great.
OK. This post has been gestating for weeks but I’m now sitting at the gate at O’Hare, bags checked and ready to go home, so time is up. Randi has already left for California, and we will reunite in two weeks’ time in Peru.
In the meantime: thank you for having me, Chicago!
Coincidentally, my last day at work on Friday also happened to be Groupon’s 10th birthday. So it was nice to pretend, as 3pm rolled around and the champagne and green cupcakes started to appear, that the party was also for me. Even better was Tiffany Haddish’s guest appearance at our company-wide All Hands meeting the day before. I’ve been at Groupon in one form or another for seven and a half years (despite being rejected for the first job I applied for, fun fact!) so it was a nice note to leave on. I try to keep work largely separate from this blog, but as I wrote in my leaving email, it has been a real privilege to enjoy the company of the people you work with. (Although I was too shy to go up and share the company of Tiffany Haddish.)
Later that night, Robert very generously arranged a leaving party for me and Randi at the Revolution Brewery Tap Room. Everything felt like it had come full circle after my London leaving party in 2014, which Robert was also there for. I still have a week left in Chicago before a brief homecoming UK trip, so there are still some emotional farewells outstanding. But things are moving quickly, as they always do. And while I am very, very grateful at how lucky I am to be able to travel and live in different places over my life, it does mean that there will always be friends across oceans.
Our final visitors to Chicago were Randi’s family friends, the Moffitts, who accompanied us to Chicago’s new ‘experimental’ museum, wndr. It’s a quirky and highly interactive blend of art and science which is super-fun to wander through and play about in. Later we went to our last-ever Improv Shakespeare – or at least, our last for a while! – which turned out to be the rather hilariously out-there What I Learned From My Dog. Murderous dogs devouring cheating husbands and a fabulous mud demon for the Scottish mud dwellers… I will miss you dearly, improvising Shakespearians.
Also, it was great to see Mike Fotopoulos again for a Motel visit the other week with Sara and Sam from work. He is an American who relocated to the UK and is now equally (if not more) excited than me about Crossrail. Amanda’s friend Rebecca also stayed with us this past weekend, and we all gathered on the sofa in our pyjamas to drink wine and watch the first romcom which came our way, Crazy, Stupid, Love. The moral message of the film was kinda appalling. Still fun to watch, though.
Hey there, Japanese Encephalitis! After our final round of vaccinations, I’m not scared of you anymore. Come at me, bro.
People at work keep coming up to me and asking if if I’ve “heard the rumour” that I’m leaving. If the answer was no, this would be a pretty awkward way of firing someone. But yes, after over 4 years in Chicago and over 7 years at Groupon, I will soon be leaving both for new adventures. And “new adventures” here isn’t actually just a euphemism for “changing jobs”. Randi and I will be doing some travelling first, which I will be delighted to blog about… later. I will write about Chicago properly, too. Right now I am caught up in a whirl of transition docs, visa forms and vaccinations. I need to ship my giant Dominion board game box to the UK, sign some paperwork to release my dental records (of which I am sure there are a lot) and figure out the train lines in South East Asia. Lots to do!
For a while it looked like I would outlast Motel Bar in Chicago, which would have been sad. But the bar next to our office has now reopened “under new management”, and after a bit of a dry spell I have been making better use of it again in the past few weeks to have conversations with some of the many wonderful people I work with (case in point: Jason and Brigette) before I leave.
I am even happier, though, that before we left Randi and I finally escaped an escape room together (The Escape Game: Special Ops). We were part of a dream team of CIA operatives assembled by Todd, and I’m proud to say that we saved the world with 10 minutes to spare. We did it! Hurray! World saved!
In the past few weeks we also went back to Spacca Naopli (which is certainly in the running for the world’s best pizza) with Randi’s cousin Arielle, had a birthday dinner downtown with Arielle’s family and ate an awful lot of fondue with Catherine and AJ. Fun fact: Catherine and I got into an argument about the physical nature of post-resurrection Jesus, so I thought it was an excellent moment to ring up the number from those 855-FOR-TRUTH billboards and get an authoritative answer. The operator took my side, naturally. An invaluable service.
This past weekend, Randi’s friend Mike and his girlfriend Melissa finally decided to visit us in Chicago after a bazillion years, so we took them on our patented Chicago tour (there’s a lot of walking involved, but also a lot of cinnamon rolls) which inevitably concluded in Improv Shakespeare. This time the play was Quantum Shark, and between the ventriloquist puppet show, the amazing song of the sailors and the higher-than-average quota of inside Shakespeare jokes it was probably one of my favourites. Don’t laugh at me, but we already have tickets for another show before we go.
If you can’t get to an Improv Shakespeare performance, though, two things recently which I would recommend:
- A Dangerous Dynasty: House of Assad (BBC iPlayer) charts the story of Bashar Assad from shy London eye doctor to dictator of Syria. The most fascinating character is his British-born wife, Asma, who adopts a delusional posture as ‘First Lady’ of Syria with all of the trappings of an American First Lady (visits to schools, charity events, soft-focus TV interviews) but no seeming recognition of how the Assad family’s power is maintained.
- Free Solo, a documentary about rock climber Alex Honnold who becomes the first person to ascend El Capitan in Yellowstone without any ropes or, y’know, any protection whatsoever if he slips. We saw this in the cinema with Mike and while it didn’t inspire me to do any free soloing myself, it was undeniably beautiful and terrifying and crazy.
Jeff DuBowe on Haarlem globetrotters: “One of our favorite spots. Super walking city. I think we were the ones who told your In-Laws about it…” Oct 14, 15:15
