Part one of two. In this thrilling installment: The Anchor, The George Inn, The and Mayflower, featuring Abbot Ale and London Pride. (Click here to read Part Two.)

As you may or may not know, this past weekend, I jetted off to London to spend a few days with a companion exploring the rich history and richer beer of that fine English town. Why take off for London for just a couple days? Well, because that's the sort of devil-may-care, jet-setting playboy lifestyle I lead. Also, British Airways had a really good deal the results in you getting a roundtrip ticket and two nights in a nice hotel for less than the price of tax and security fees on said tickets.

Normally, when I travel I leave it up to myself to plot an itinerary and seek out the spots I want to visit. I do this partly out of financial stinginess, partly out of a sense of adventure, and partly because what I want to see is not always what the big tours want to take me to see. I'm not one of those snotty travelers who turns his nose up at seeing the big, popular attractions and destinations. Much of the times, those destinations got big specifically because they're worth visiting and it always chafes me when you tell someone you're going to see something like the cathedral of Notre dame, and they sniff at you and smugly respond, "Oh, well, you're not really seeing the real France if you go there." I just like operating on my own timetable and having the freedom to indulge whatever fancy I may find takes me along the way.

But in London, we had naught but a couple days and plenty of history to cover, so we signed up for one of those guided theme tours that sounded like it would appeal to me: Sinister London. Not a walking tour per se, because who wants to walk hither and to in London in January? Especially considering how much of haunted London is spread out over a vast geographical region. So we opted for the bus-based tour, and one that gave you a sort of sampling set of atrocities and hauntings instead f concentrating on a singular topic like Jack the Ripper. I was tempted by the world-famous Jack the Ripper walking tour, but although the man who leads it is an undeniable authority on the topic of macabre London hot spots, he also spends the vast bulk of his website not telling you about his own tour, but rather ranting and raving about how much worse all the other tours are. I admire his bitter insanity, but it's not exactly powerful marketing.

When our bus swung by to pick us up outside our hotel -- another nice feature of the tour we chose -- we joined three women and the guide, who informed us that because it was the off season, the turn-out for the Sinister London tour was as small as the turn-out for the Historic Pubs of London tour, so would we mind terribly if he combined the two tours into one, extended tour of London's most sinister places and most famous old pubs, with ample time provided for both communing with ghouls and downing pints of ale?

I saw no particular problem with this arrangement, especially when he threw in a visit to his favorite out-of-the-way fish and chips shop. That shop -- Long Lane Fish and Chips, located on Long Lane on the south side of the Thames -- was fantastic. And despite what hippies with backpacks tell you about never going where tour guides send you, this is the sort of place we would have cruised by without ever noticing had not our guide recommended it to us.

Well, we got not only fish and chips and a hilarious running commentary from our guide ("And here's Marble Arch, the most boring attraction in London!"), but also a perfectly blended mix of ghastly locations and the historic pubs that happen to be nearby. When your history is as long, storied, drunken, and bloody as London's, you have a pretty good chance of always finding a historic pub next to an historic nightmare, and vice versa. Since this is the Absinthe Diaries, I'll save the talk of Jack the Ripper, grave robbers, and Execution Dock for later and concentrate primarily on the pubs and pints.

Soundtrack for the trip (at least in my head): Trojan Reggae Box Set: U.K. Hits

The Anchor (34 Bankside, Southwark, London, SE1 9EF): Our first pub was located on the less fashionable but obviously up and coming south bank of the Thames, in an area known as Bankside. Bankside was, for a time, the central entertainment district of London, the place you went to indulge in anything you weren't allowed to do in the City of London proper. This means lords and ragamuffins, queens and con men, all descended on Bankside for a night that could consist of seeing the latest Christopher Marlowe play, drinking oneself silly at a pub like The Anchor, or consorting with ladies of easy leisure in one of Bankside's numerous brothels. Although people sum it up as a "red light district" even though there were no lights, red or otherwise, at the time, it has a lot more in common with a place like Gion in Kyoto in that it's not just sex; it's sex and theater and booze and art and culture and general ruckus-raising.

Truth be told, I never even made it inside The Anchor, which is a shame. But the pub is located as sort of a nexus point between an assortment of other sites, including The Clink prison and prison museum, The Shakespeare Globe, and The Rose. Having just finished Leslie Silbert's superb thriller, The Intelligencer, which deals quite a bit with Christopher Marlowe, I was keen on seeing the theater that had served as his sort of home court. Shakespeare's Globe isn't the original building (that burned down in the early 1600s thanks to a prop cannon igniting a thatched roof), and the current building is situated in a different location than the original. It serves primarily as a Shakespeare museum and is a little too modern in its interior decor to provide much of a sense of what it must have been like in previous times.

The Anchor itself has undergone considerable expansion, though the core pub remains largely intact and dates back to 1676, when what had been there before was severely damaged by fire. Additions and expansions have been tacked on throughout the centuries, resulting in a pub that is equal parts watering hole and confounding maze, which must really be dangerous after a few pints. The end result is that The Anchor is a series of smaller rooms and bars all contained in one growing organism. Decor varies from room to room, century to century, and you can get a lovely view of the Thames. The antique and even moody atmosphere of the cul-de-sac on which The Anchor sits results in a lot of movies being made in the area. Tom Cruise even has himself a pint in The Anchor in one of the Mission: Impossible movies. The Clink, an old prison that now has a sort of half-assed museum in it, sits inside an old stone tunnel that has been lovingly adorned with flickering lights and gruesome corpses dangling from cages.

Vinopolis (No.1 Bank End, London, SE1 9BU): Right across the street from The Anchor is a much more modern place called Vinopolis, which as the name suggests is dedicated largely to the consuming of wine, though they have a healthy selection of scotch whiskeys on hand as well. The more space age design seems incongruous on a street as atmospheric as this, but Vinopolis seems interesting never the less, and is yet another sign that London's south bank is poised for rediscovery that should drive the prices sky high and cause the usual sorts of problems that befall a neighborhood when it becomes trendy. I was tempted by Vinopolis' Wine Explorer package, which included tasting of 5 regular wines, a Bombay Sapphire cocktail, 2 premium wines, 2 whiskies, 2 absinthes, and 2 beers. I wanted to see what sort of absinthes they would trot out. London is almost as infamous as Prague for serving up fake absinthe swill like Hill's, and I assume a place as studied and careful in their presentation as Vinopolis would swing a little more upscale, as in, you know, actually serving absinthe instead of crap that called absinthe for marketing purposes but actually has nothing in common with real absinthe. Since the UK is home to Jade Liquors, and Jade distributes one of the best modern absinthes around (Nouvelle Orleans), there's no excuse for not serving the proper stuff.

You can also simply guide yourself around Vinopolis' rather cavernous depths, which sounds pretty good. But our time at this location was up, and it was back on the bus with nary a drop of precious alcohol having touched my chapped lips. So next time, next time.

The George Inn (77 Borough High St. Southwark, London SE1 1NH): Next up on the list south bank list was London's only surviving galleried coach inn. Back in the day, when man traveled by horse and carriage, you obviously needed a place to store your horse and carriage when you stopped for a bite or an evening's sleep. Coach inns were pretty much killed off with the spread of railway travel, and most of them disappeared from the London landscape. The George Inn, located in what was at one time one of the busiest intersections of travel, has survived and looks much the way it did when a fellow like Charles Dickens would retire to the place for a quick pint. Nearby is the courtyard but not the building that was once the location of the Tabard galleried coach inn, made famous in 1388 as the tavern that serves and starting point for the journey of the characters in Geoffery Chaucer's damnable piece of medieval filth and moral corruption known as The Canterbury Tales. These days, the courtyard isn't much to look at, but it's still nice to imagine yourself walking the same cobblestones as Chaucer or his bawdy handmaid.

Both The George and the Tabard were destroyed in the 1676 fire that swept through Southwark and promptly rebuilt. But the Tabard was demolished for good during the 19th Century, while The George and its handsome balconied galleries overlooking the courtyard survive to this day. Parts of it were destroyed and used as a train depot, but the beautiful south building remains intact and is now protected by the National Trust. It's also protected by a few burly looking doormen who stand at the entrance to the courtyard on Borough High Street and keep an eye out for anyone clad in too much partisan football club gear. The neighborhood has trouble with a couple rival clubs, and The George is keen on seeing its historic halls are not fucked up by fucked up footballers. As long as you're not clad in a jersey or club jacket, the doormen won't give you a second glance. But as we saw as we entered the courtyard, walking in with such clothing will get you stopped and interviewed, and possibly denied entry.

Like The Anchor but less expansive, The George Inn is a series of connected smaller rooms and bars, including the Coffee Room (now the Middle Bar), which was a favorite haunt of Dickens when he was jotting out various works about ragamuffins offering to shine yah boots, guv'ner or perhaps requesting that please sir, might they be granted a bit more gruel?

London Pride: If you're touring pubs, you have to grab a pint of London Pride. So I'd been told, and I am nothing if not obedient when someone names something alcoholic and says, "Darling, you simply must try this!" London Pride is made at Fuller's Brewery in Chiswick, London, which has been cranking out the brew for lo these past hundred and sixty years now. The Fuller Brewery is one of London's few aged yet independent breweries. It occupies a plot that has been a brewery since the 17th century, and members of the Fuller family remain involved with the company as they have since 1845. London Pride offers a thirsty drinker a well-balanced complexity and depth of taste, made from three different types of hops but brewed so that the hops don't dominate the malt. How's that for some beer drinkin' lingo? My usual is, "Dang, this shit good!" so I'm trying to branch out a little bit. If we had this beer in America, it would be my standard go-to beverage. It was absolutely delicious and went down very easy. Even my traveling companion, herself no fan of beer, was able to sample a sip or two without screwing her face up into a anguished visage of pain and terror, which is her reaction to most beers. Simply put, London Pride does London proud.

The Mayflower (117 Rotherhithe Street, London SE16 4NF): Originally known simply as The Shippe, a boat captained by one Christopher Jones set out from a dock by this quaint and cozy pub one spring day in 1620, carrying on board a group of Puritans who I assume did not wander into the bar for a couple pints before their departure. The Puritans were departing England to escape religious persecution and establish a home for themselves in the so-called New World. Stop me if you've heard this one before. Anyway, after depositing his pilgrim passengers near a large rock in what would become Plymouth, Massachusetts, Jones returned to the Rotherhithe dock, dying in 1622 and being buried in St. Mary's Churchyard, just a few quick steps from the doors of The Shippe.

A century later, the Shippe was renamed The Spread Eagle and Crown, which sounds like a particularly complex position from the Kama Sutra. Restoration of the pub occurred in 1957, and apparently that lot of Puritans who sailed on Jone's ship, The Mayflower, had made something of themselves by then, and so the pub was rechristened The Mayflower in their honor. Word has it that planks from the original Mayflower were even used during the 1700s reconstruction of the pub. As to which planks those actually are, I don't know, but The Mayflower is an immensely cozy and inviting place to sit back for a bite or a pint.

Abbot Ale: Brewed in the Suffolk town of Bury St Edmunds, Abbot Ale is the Greene King Brewery's flagship brand, and it certainly didn't let me down. I've heard that there is a tremendous difference in the taste and quality of beer in England versus the same beer, if you can find it, in America. This is no wives' tale. The difference in taste was remarkable and instantly obvious. Apparently, I'd just never had beer. Even something as simple as Guinness or Bodington's is astoundingly better in England, and that's not just a myth or trick of expectations. I also got to experience fine English ale served at the proper temperature, which is coolish but not cold, and although my nation of ice cold beer drinkers may be aghast at the concept, it really is better that way. Chilly temperatures kill the active yeast cultures, so when you hear Coors or someone celebrating how ice cold and freezing their beer is, remember that just means it's crap. Full-flavored and smooth as a Southern gent, Abbot Ale is brewed with pale crystal and amber malts to give it an appealing color and rich, malty taste with floral tones and a distant hint of fruit. Abbot is one of the big names in British beer, and I have to say that it pretty much lived up to the hype for a relatively unsophisticated beer drinker from America like me. Not like I'm going to give up the black and tan at home, but ff you don't like beer, it might be because, like me, you'd just never really had it done and served properly. Sure beats Natural Lite, that's for damn certain.

In part two: The Ten Bells and Prospect of Whitby, featuring Bombadier and Spitfire.

Labels: Drink