Day Six. London. Chilly & Windy

It was our last day - part day, really - in London. We got a relatively early start and headed off to the Tower of London, a site we had missed earlier in the week due to traffic tie-ups around the big student protests. I had been there before, but even so, there is always something new to learn. As we waited for the tour to start, one of the Beefeaters entertained us (is there something about a long military career that creates these homegrown comedians), and what he started, was finished by the official guide, who was both entertaining and funny (at times). After a tour that covered the basics and pointed out all the various parts: the traitor's gate a.k.a. the water gate, the bloody tower, the white tower, the execution site, the chapel and so on, we set off to see the crown jewels. While these were stunning, I can't help but think the collection seemed small for such a long history of monarchs. If you haven't been there, some of the goods are displayed in cases you walk by, but many were in cases that you moved past on a moving walkway (yes, like the ones in airports). I suppose this is to keep the crowds moving, but it was November and there really wasn't much of a crowd. Sue & Dana went through the white tower also with all its armor (armor for adults, kids, horses...) and a fine example of a Norman toilet. We toured some of the other spaces before it was mid-afternoon and we needed to head back to the hotel to pick up our luggage and head for Heathrow.

Our various expenditures on clothing and trinkets were more than our luggage could handle, so we used the extra duffle bag I packed in my luggage for our dirty laundry so we would have room in our regular luggage for our purchases. Little would we know that we would buy two other bags later in Iceland to get everything home.

I'm sure the airport is not anyone's favorite part of traveling and we had hours at Heathrow, with a long delay getting on the plane and getting off the ground. Instead of arriving in Iceland at 11:30 pm, we arrived about 1:30 am and dragged ourselves and our luggage into the hotel at 3 a.m.

Day Five. Thurs. London. Rain.

Sue and Dana wanted to go back to the Camden markets, so we decided to split up Thursday morning. They headed north and I headed towards the Victoria & Albert museum. Once again, I seemed to be on the protest circuit, and my taxi was rerouted due to protests in the area - this time against the UK's involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was the amazing police presence, first vehicles then personnel, that caught our attention first. Because of the protest, the taxi dropped me off a bit further from my destination than expected, but I enjoyed the walk along the street. I love to look at architecture and the V&A and its neighbor, the Natural History museum were splendid buildings to gawk at.



A friend from the UK has been sending me postcards from various V&A exhibits for a couple of years now and she has been correct all along that I would love it. Like most museums, it's exhibits bring out a sense of wonder and awe, but additionally, I found the V&A to be truly inspiring. There is a kind of creative power that rises from the exhibits like scent from a flower (or steam from a hot fish pie which I had in the cafe there), and taking a deep breath of it is heady stuff. Honestly, just the first few exhibits left me verklempted and I was only in the gift shop at the time! Garden sculpture, miniature portraits, the history of jewelry, Japanese textiles, costuming for the theater, silversmithing, furniture, photography, lace-making, and embroidery (and so much more). By the time I saw the large pieces of Belgian lace, it brought tears to my eyes. I saw lace-makers working with their bobbins on small pieces when I was in Brugge 10 years ago, and to imagine the amount of skill and time to produce such a large piece...




It seems one can only handle 3 or 4 hours at best in any museum and I was done in by mid-afternoon. I was expecting to meet the other two back at the hotel room around 4 pm.

We had had a lot of very delicious pub food during our visit. It seemed that each time we decided we were hungry and wanted a place to sit and relax, warm up and dry off, the pubs were the only thing available, but on this last night in the UK, I wanted some ethnic food. It seemed most of the notable ethnic restaurants were further away from where we were staying but with some research I found Masala Zone in Covent Garden. Not only was their food delicious, but their decor was divine, and prices were quite reasonable. From the ceiling hung several hundred colorful marionettes from Rajasthan. It was a terrific end to the day. Photos: 1: the front of the V&A 2.the police presence. The protesters were in front of them. 3. a closeup of part of the lace piece 4. the ceiling of Covent Garden's Masala Zone restaurant

Day Four - London (Wednesday)

Our hotel in London is very spare. The beds are clean, the hot water seems always available but there's some machinery - perhaps a water pump or something - that sounds like a giant stapler being used in the next room. Ca - lunk! ca - lunk! There is a smoke alarm in the nearby hall that chirps on a regular basis (yes, we've mentioned it). We can feel the bed springs but, hey, we are so exhausted at the end of the day that we'd fall asleep on a rock. A couple of things would have made the experience a bit better. 1. wifi that goes a bit faster than dial-up 2. a chair and small table in the room. I'm sitting at the moment with a suitcase between my legs so that I can use it as a surface for the keyboard. Not the best arrangement. However, on the plus side, it's located reasonably close to things, about a mile from Trafalgar Square. Enough said.

Wednesday's adventures: It being the only day predicted to have decent weather we decided to take the tour on the red sightseeing buses (they used to be called London Pride but I think now they are The Big Bus Company). We settled in up top, in the cold, and rode down towards the city proper from Trafalgar towards the Tower of London, zigzagging back and forth over the Thames. We planned to do the London Eye first, but as luck would have it, 24,000 student protesters slowed traffic down to a crawl (and I mean a crawl). So most of our tour was spent looking at the Thames or looking at the protesters, whom we could see one street over between the buildings.

We did eventually get to the eye and had a wonderful ride. Nut soon after we were told the buses couldn't get through and we would have to take the river cruise to get to the Tower. The river cruise was lovely but by the time we got to the Tower it was too late to really enjoy it, so we flagged a taxi and headed to the Victoria Palace where Billy Elliot was playing.

What a musical! It was much more upbeat than I expected, lots of singing and magnificent dancing. We left there upbeat and laughing. Another long day!

Day Three - London

(photo posting not going well)

We decided to spend this day in the Camden town and Camden Lock markets. Our taxi dropped us off on the main drag of Camden which was lined with small shops and other makeshift stalls featuring all kinds of clothing and accessories geared towards the young. Dana's eyes lit up immediately! After wandering in and out of shops here, we headed down to the canal and took a lovely pedestrian bridge over it (reminiscent of those in Venice) which apparently placed us on the furthere edges of Camden Lock market. We found a nice leather shop, a used bookstore and a lovely shop which sold lights and candles. Each store led on to another and we soon found ourselves in what I can only describe as a labyrinth of small stalls. Their may have been some login in the layout but it seemed like a labyrinth. There must of been hundreds of small stalls with such a variety of products! All possible kinds of clothing a teen or 30-something would need to express themselves - retro, goth, pseudo-victorian, funky - and the accessories were just as varied. There were all manner of funky design everywhere: mosaic benches, the back end of small scooters for seating, all manner of saturary.

We had made the mistake of eating a late breakfast on the other side of the bridge, not knowing there was a veritable cornucopia of ethnic foods just over it. We were tortured by the smells of Moroccan, Lebanese, Ethopian, Chinese, Italian food...

Dana bought 1 coat, 2 dresses, 2 tops, 1 hat, a pair of leather boots and a scarf. Not a big day, I think.

More in Part II

Photos from the Camden Markets

Day Two - London

It was raining when we woke on Monday; we could see people on the streets below us with umbrellas so we decided to take in something indoors for the day. Of course, everyone else had the same idea.

We walked down the British Museum and spent the morning wandering through its exhibits. Like the Met in New York, one could spend weeks in the British Museum so we "skimmed" as much as we could. We covered most of the Egyptian, Middle Eastern and European exhibits, choosing to skip North America. We also missed Asia. What we did see was, of course, fascinating. If I ever can get my pictures attached, I'll share some pictures.

We grabbed a cab from there to... Let me pause here to interject some commentary about the fine drivers of the Black Cabs. These drivers train for about four years before becoming a cabbie, having traveled some 400 different routes through the city. They are expected to know not only the streets, but what it on them. Every one of them we have had contact with have spoken understandable English (even the cockney was understandable), were friendly, drove sanely and knew where it was we wanted to go when we told them. How refreshing after the terrifying and sometimes frustrating cab experiences here in the States.






Ok, we grabbed a cab from the British Museum to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. Sue and Dana seem game for almost anything and this swing from "high culture", if you will, to pop culture didn't disturb them at all. In fact, Dana pepped up a little. If you have never been to the wax museum, it is a bit of fun - especially with kids and teens (although I saw a lot of roving bands of 20-somethings). There are various rooms arranged around themes: Hollywood, sports, scary, historical...etc. I had been here ten years before so had seen the "older" figures, but had not seen the latest - and I had to read more name plaques this time around/ We took lots of pictures of Dana with various "sexy British men" (i.e. Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Patrick Stewart, the guy who played Harry Potter) but also with Morgan Freeman, Bob Marley, Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe. The wax figures can be posed with and it was fun to watch other visitors improvise with the dummies. Dana seemed a little reticent at first - probably because she is not used to making such a public display - but after continued encouragement (er..nagging), she relaxed and got into the swing of it. By the time we got to the GW Bush figure, she posed with an exasperated, oh-no-not-again look that even visitors standing nearby thought was funny.

We got through the exhibits in a few hours and then went in search of food. We have been on the "London diet" - two meals and a snack - so this was our second meal. We ate some good sandwiches at the pub at the Sherlock Hotel nearby. We found an ATM to top off our cash reserves and headed back to the hotel to freshen up before...

Monday night was our first theatre night and we were seeing "Les Mis" at the Queen's Theatre (I think it was). We had great seats. It was a fabulous production with many now familiar songs. I'm pretty sure Dana enjoyed her first experience seeing a big city musical production. I did chat up the gentleman next to me, who was from Sydney (Amanda, he seemed not to know you...wonder why). All good time was had by all.