I spent most of November in London – or too be more precise in and around London. After we left last year, ExxonMobil moved its exploration office from the center of London to a sleepy bedroom town of Leatherhead, almost, but not quite at the end of the rail line. This made the visit a little bit more interesting, rather than re-tracing my steps I was able to explore a new area. I heard about the office before and it was never mentioned in complimentary terms. Typically described as “out in the fields”, impossible to reach by public transport, in the middle of nowhere. The reality was quite different.
(Click on the picture to see it full size, use a back button to return to this spot.) The office actually lies on the edge of the residential part of Leatherhead and can be reached on foot from the center of town (or the train station) in about 30 minutes. There are sidewalks all the way and it proved to be a nice way to start and end a day. Since I arrived at the time of changing leaves and pleasant fall weather it was an all together a pleasant experience.

The office itself is a modern construction with lots of glass and thus light even though the amount of space is a little limited – it houses not only exploration and production but also transportation, marketing and all the other downstream functions. The town of Leatherhead has a handful of restaurants, four pubs, which are never full and a nice walking path along the River Mole. But after a few days there is not much to do and so I frequently took the 50 minute train to London – and there is always a lot to do. I took advantage of making two visits to our late discovery (we ate there only once while we lived in London) – a Czech restaurant in West Hampstead. Had excellent goose breast with dumplings and cabbage (two times).

In the middle of my stay I had to head over to Dublin. This was the first time and what an eye opener. I always envisioned Dublin as a very slow, laid back city but it is just as vibrant as any European capital, with lots of new construction, plenty of expensive stores and a mix of races and languages. It also had to completely change my idea of who the Irish are. I always assumed that most of the population has red hair and freckles – notion developed in a Catholic high school I attended in Ontario (where bulk of the students were of Irish extraction). After looking very carefully for three days I found a handful of “typical Irish” but no more than I would find in Spain or Turkey.

No visit to Dublin would be complete without stopping in the Guinness brewery. We had an early start and so we reached the end of the tour –the Gravity Bar on the 7th floor of a tower around 9 in the morning. Beautiful view of Dublin and not a bad way to start a day. I imagine it gets a lot more crowded later in the day.