“So, how is the jet lag?”

I must have been asked this question about 20 times last week, and about 10 today at work. In all honesty, it hasn’t been bad. On the morning of my flight to London, I woke up very early in order to get accustomed to GMT and upon my return, I went to bed at 8:30 EST to sleep it off. Don’t get me wrong: I am tired, just not from time zones. Mainly I’m tired from all the running my friend Bonnie and I did around the city.

The week started off with a bang after we met up with a group of London bloggers at The Camel and Artichoke in Southwark. I had sent out a Tweet about any social media gatherings going on while I was there, and Lewis from ShinyRed pointed me to Andy Bargery‘s group.

It was fantastic to place some faces with the names, particularly the aforementioned Lewis and TechDigest‘s Kat Hannaford. I also got a chance to meet Matt from Londonist, Susi and Jaz also Shiny, Peter from My London Diary, Cedric from A Mountain Dweller in the Thames Valley, Sandrine from Buzz Attitude, and although I hear that Tim Callington was there as well, I didn’t get a chance to meet him.

For an overview, check out this video of the night put together by Chris at ontoLondon. There’s a special treat at 6:22.


Also met up with my good bloggy buddy Stephen Davies while he was in town for the Media Content World Summit, as well as my fantastic, newly-promoted-to-head-of-digital colleague from our London office, Justin Hayward, for a few at Bar 38 in Hammersmith.

The rest of the week was filled with a lot of touristy stuff, as Bonnie was with me for her first trip abroad. I finally got a chance to see St. Paul’s and the Tate Modern, as well as spend some time in neighborhoods I wasn’t really familiar with like Shoreditch, Hammersmith and Islington.

On what little right as an American I had to act as her tour guide, I made sure to take her for a curry on Brick Lane (we snagged a bottle of wine a free poppadoms from the doorman) and to go shopping in Camden. She loved both. In fact, I consider it a personal achievement that her Facebook status today read:

Bonnie…has left her heart in London, and needs to return immediately to reclaim it :)



The only thing I wasn’t prepared for was the walking. Living within walking distance to my office and most shops already, I really didn’t think the extra miles would affect me at all. I was wrong. Dreadfully, dreadfully wrong. By the end of Saturday, my feet were so sore that when stepping off a curb on Oxford Street, the impact of the pavement produced a solitary tear on my left cheek.

Something tells me that I should have brought more supportive shoes.

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