London #1 Short Version:
Our Norway journey gave way to a vacation in London that turned out to be quite nice, quite busy, quite tiring. London is huge, and I think we saw most of the important parts in our 12 day trip, and even got some Bath in.
Long Version:
12 days in London. On the first day in London, my Fiancee gave to me, one Partridge in a Pear Tree!
OK, enough singing jokes...
Day 1 : We get to London via Bergen, so it wasn't too bad of a plane trip. It's rather nice to get one hour jet lag when traveling to London. We decided to try and travel light, so we fit everything into our backpacks, something that I now know is an utter necessity if you plan to travel cheep and be on the move alot. Speaking of cheep, we found a room for 30 pounds a night. About 50 bucks. Think Animal House in San Francisco and your getting close to our first impression. The house is set up like SF joints, thin and tall with the narrow hallways filled with college agers milling about smoking and drinking. Our room hadn't been cleaned, but that didn't really stand out. The curtain on the window was a wedged in blanket, the floor was a bit grungy, the bed was small and not exactly quality, and the shower had it's own mop with a sign that said 'Please clean up after yourself'. Different. We slept.
Day 2:The morning came and we set out to be tourists. The first item on our London To-Do list was a red double decker bus ride. We rode that bus for about an hour, mostly 'cause we got on going the wrong way, but eventually we ended up at Hyde Park and we walked our way to Buckingham Palace. Beautiful walk. Buckingham palace is a bit ridiculous, with those guys in red strutting around. A few people came and went from the palace and the guards didn't even look their way. Some other guards took care of that. Seem odd to have guards that don't guard. Oh well. Harods, the has- everything department store was much more interesting. Imagine a upper class Macy's that fills a whole mall that's been squished into a cube, and you're getting close. It's fancy, ritzy, and friggin huge. There is a room for meat, a room for bread, a room for jewelry,etc.; all on the first floor. There are 5 floors. A floor of womens shoes. Sports wear including polo outfits and saddles, half a floor of stuffed animals. Incredible. We spend half a day there. We ate pizza early that day, which was a very nice change from Norwegian food, so we were able to take in some Chocolate Fondue on floor 4 after looking at the Christmas room on floor 2. I was quite impressed. We headed over to the Wedgewood room on floor 5 after.
Day 3: Our tour book talked about these things called 'markets', and from the description we decided to check one out. Portabello Market, they called it. It was just like the pictures on TV of those 3rd world countries with narrow streets and guys selling fish out of a van and enough people that you can't see anything beond the fish van in front of you. I was pretty amazed at this place, an entire road, maybe a mile of it, the middle filled with people trying to see the vendors that filled the edges. We ate Mexican food here. Oh, man, that was fantastic, and Karin got a wallet, complete with Underground Pass Pocket. Very London. Very Sheik. Dinosaurs at the History and Science Museum. I can't say too much about the place, you just have to go there. See more below. We went back again.
Day 4 Bath: Not a bath, but Bath the town, now stop with the kiddie humor and pay attention. It's a damn nice place, and a huge change from London. It's much smaller and quieter and still has as much history. The Romans built a R&R joint here on top of the hot spring, and the ruins are still there. We toured this for most of a day. Very cool.It had the ruins and history of the Romans, and the 1700 buildup of the city as a place of healing. The water was suppose to cure things. We tried a glass, and it's pretty nasty stuff. And this was all inside, which was good because it was raining the whole day. Karin and I had our Norway rain gear on, so it was no problem, but it's just nice to be inside on those kinds of days. We saw the Bath Abby. Similar to Westminster Abby, but less crowded with people, both living and dead. I have some really neet picture. For dinner we headed to Sally Lunn's for one of her Bunns. Karin had rarebit. Not rabbit, but rarebit. It's a mix of cheese melted over bread. Very good stuff. Bree-ish. And dessert was fantastic- a Bunn with strawberry jam and clotted cream. I'm not sure what clotted cream is, bu the effect is has on me is friggin fantastic. We went back again just for this later in the trip.
Day 5 Bath 2: We crazed Bath for our second day, this time taking it easy and doing the bus tours. Very nice time we had on this cool Monday. We were the only people on the bus.
Day 6 Museums: Natural History and Victoria and Albert. Amazing. Think Exploratatorium but as a museum and you're close. At the front door greeting guests is one of those giant dinosaur skeletons filling the room. And it only gets better. Each hall walks you through the why do I care problem of museums and makes an interactive show of the hight points. One exhibit showed the cycle of life with a rabbit who ate grass, shat, died, decayed, and ended with grass growing on the grave. At the end of the tape, the girls voice, who was asking questions to the parental voice, demonstrated her graspness of this world truth with :"Oh boy!, Can we recycle another rabbit?". Friggin funny stuff. Best museum I've seen. We went on 2 days. And took lunch breaks of bread, olives and cheese on both days. Can't complain about that. Oh! The also have a full size model of a blue wale. Full size. Think about it.
Day 7 Tower of London: Today we Saw the Tower of London. And, if you are thinking what I was thinking, let me set you straight: It's not just one tower. It's huge. It's a small town inside a wall, that's all inside another wall, that's inside a moat (filled in in the 1800's). I was not prepared for this. We walked around for 5 or 6 hours looking at stuff, listening to tours guides and story tellers. Yes, story tellers. This guy dressed in costume said to the group 'small group today, does anyone have a story about the tower that they would like me to tell... I know most of them.' And he wasn't kidding either. Guy Faulk? Yes. 20 minutes of talking where he set the stage of religious tensions of the 1700 complete with who did what when to whom, then moved into the details of the plot to blow up Parliament complete with names and numbers, then finished with the outcome of Guy and his very shaky signature on the confession after spending a fortnight in the Tower. Any English teacher would be proud. A perfect Document Based Question answer. We saw the Crown Jewels. It's amazing how much energy went into creating trinkets for invented needs. The Coronation Ceremony involves 2 Scepters with huge demands, and a crown. All of gold covered with jewels...well I don't need to explain..it's the Crown Jewels.. and then there are half dozen crowns, a dozen gold maces, some huge goblets and eating stuff, a massive punch bowl-solid gold with intricate carvings.. all for a grandiose pissing contest of Mine's Bigger. What a life. And the Armory! That was cool. All the gold trinkets is a waste of time, but building suits of Armour and giant lances, now that's good use of the national GNP! It really was just like you imagine. They had huge suits of armor and swords and lances and pikes and horse armor, and kids armor, and guns and cannons, and then we were into the 1800's or so when guns came about and ended the reign of the knight. But while it lasted it was what the books were about. Simply amazing.
Day 8: Headed over the see London by Bus. We did the open top tourist bus. I got to see where Tony Blair lives. And the most expensive hotel, where Tom Cruz likes to stay. And the hotel that Madonna prefers. Fascinating? This took most of the day, I think. London Eye. We did not, however, go more then once on the London Eye. It's a Huge Ferris Wheel, with a much more respectable name. You get to ride once around for about 15 bucks a person, and this one circle takes half an hour. From the top we were looking down on Big Ben lit up in the night. I have pictures.
Day 9: Bus Tour and British Museum. Fish n Chips. The British Museum took us almost a day, and we didn't really see it all. The highlights were the Greek Pantheon and the dead old dudes, or, as the guide called them, Egyptian Mummies. In addition to this coolness, they had plaster casts of art from other places, including David. That was neat to see. Then we had lunch of bread, cheese, olives, and a hot chocolate. We finished off the day with a England classic of Fish'n Chips. Pretty damn good.
Day 10: If I had known how much we'd get done this day, I'd have scheduled it to be 2. 4:30am we awoke to the neighborly sound of People-so-Drunk-They-Don't- Know-How-Loud-They're-Talking arriving in the room upstairs. And their floor, our ceiling, squeaked. About 5am something publish hit our unlikable 1st floor window, 3 times. So we left. So glad to have the budget accommodations behind us. And due to our budget selection, we didn't feel 'comfortable' leaving our bags. So we carried them for the rest of the day. Keep that in mind as this day unfolds before you. We did some maintenance work with picking up pictures and trying to find breakfast (London doesn't open till 9. We ate at McDonald's. Don't you dare tell anyone.) Then headed over to see the cathedrals. St Paul's was first. And easily the best building I've been in. Ridiculous may be a good word here, but I'll save that word for Westminster Abby. I'll call this one Amazing. It's huge, and huge in all 3 dimensions, including a 500 step walkway that takes you up to a 'whispering gallery', where a whisper will bounce around the wall of the tremendous dome that you're standing in the edge of. Looking down is not recommended for those afraid of heights. Then the stairs continue up again to the top of the dome and have a nice view of the city. Then the stairs continue up again, to the point above the dome for a spectacular view of the city. I have pictures. And under the floor of this building are the 'Catacombs', or the 'Crypt'.. or something equally enticing. It's filled with dead people and odes to dead people. There were people that I've heard of lying around down there, some of the in enormous granite sarcophagus's. Sarcophagi? And a food court. We headed over to Westminster Abbey to see that one while we were in the neighborhood, and found a big line. After some humming and hawing we decided to go anyway and he line moved pretty fast, kinda like a ride at Disneyland. And the similarities didn't end there. It was almost a ride, like Splash Mountain or Pirates of the Caribbean, only thing missing was sitting in a moving car. Or the water. That was also missing. It was a walking path that weaved through the 'highlights' of the Abby. You couldn't roam around and admire, you had to follow the path, and not too slowly of course, or the guy behind you would complain. It weaved though a huge collection of dead people. Kings and Queens, Dukes and Duchesses, a few of which even I had heard of. That was rather impressive, and the amount of dead people that had managed to pack into this place was no less impressive. Weaving through some of the tight places was sketchy with our large packs (remember those?), and turning around was out of the question. And all this stuff wasn't matched. Now I'm not one to criticize style, you've seen how I dress, but each of these large tombs was styled in it's own attention getting, grandiose, not-like-the-others manner and it, well, clashed. The amount of and exquisiteness of these tombs was amazing, and how the place looked so cluttered and messy with these works of art packed inside it was no less striking. We made out way to Bath soon after and began our vacation from this vacation. We got dinner at a Thai place in Bath, and it was good. Wonderful, in fact. Norway just doesn't have flavor like this, we savored our curries like fine brandy. And then we slept well in the warm quite of the B&B.
Day 11 Sunday: After this long in London it was time to relax and do nothing. So we did just that, except for these few exceptions: Breakfast. Cream Tea at Sally Lunns. Dinner at a pub. And working on the London Scrapbook. The pub had this great beer, Courage Best. I highly recommend it. The B&B was the perfect place to this nothing, warm, comfortable, friendly, and we didn't worry about our bags disappearing. How great is that?
12 Monday: The end to our trip began with reluctantly gaining consciousness in a tub. I mean in Bath. We checked out of the B&B and moseyed around the town for a few hours doing some Christmas shopping looking for the ideal gifts for our parents and other loved ones. Booze mostly. The train ride back to London was nice and uneventful, just like we hoped. Our Last Underground trip from Paddingon to Victoria Station happened, and then we were glad to have it behind us. The crowds and mess of the Underground epitomized what we came to dislike about the city; despite the positive characteristics of efficiency and ease. We were glad to be going home.
-Byron Posted by byron at November 07, 2002 11:50 AM