London

Sunday morning dawned bright and cheerful, with the sound of birds in the garden and the sweet little stream running behind it at the Kings' house. We all had a bit of a lie-in before Vanessa and I headed into London.

First stop: Chinatown! We'd planned to go to their favorite real Chinese restaurant (not that "fake" Chinese we have in the States, which I [admittedly] love!), called

The New World...I was told all about how authentic it was, and how amazing the dim sum would be, and wow, was it ever!

The waitresses each continuously push a cart around the restaurant, filled with five or six levels of plates containing different dim sum delicacies. They'll stop at your table, share with you what's on their cart, then let you decide whether you want any of their dishes or not. I chose a bowl of soup with duck and pork (and noodles, of course), and let Vanessa pick the rest of the plates. We ended up having a table laden with things I don't recall ever eating before - little bundles of bean curd, something with "shark's fin" in the name, a plate of cold sliced pork covered in a delicious sauce, prawn fried in curly noodles, and so many more wonton-wrapped items. We dug in and enjoyed them all...and when we both sat back in a near food coma to take a break, Vanessa looked at the time and discovered that only a half hour had passed since we'd arrived! Ha ha! That combination of hunger and great food must've made us living vacuums!

After The New World, we took a walk through the arches and around Chinatown to see the sights. I loved the huge jackfruit and durians on a fruit cart (although I'm quite glad the fetid odor of the latter was kept inside its rind), and especially enjoyed the ducks and other meats hanging in the front windows of some of the restaurants. I can't imagine a Chinese restaurant in York (much less Mooresville) displaying their delicacies quite so blatantly! Very interesting.

Next stop was Leicester Square, as a meeting place with V's cousin Lindsay. I loved that this was the theatre were Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince had premiered days before we stood on that spot, and just had to show my inner tourist and get a photo with the huge poster out front. :)

From there, we three walked down through Trafalgar Square, stopping to check out the One and Other (www.oneandother.co.uk) living art on

the upper corner plinth of the square - I'd seen a man dressed as a snow leopard in a dress coat and trousers just a few days before! - and as we walked on through the fountain area, a guy wearing a chicken suit gave Vanessa a leaflet. Moments later, another man (in plainclothes, not wearing any type of animal costume) walked up, took the leaflet out of Vanessa's hand, and gave it back to the chicken. Then he walked calmly back to his spot beside the fountain to our right. It was absolutely a "what on earth?" moment, especially when we noticed that the man beside him was filming the incident. Who knows...?

After Trafalgar Square, we continued on down toward the river, walking through Whitehall, with its government buildings, shiny mid-street monuments, and even a mounted guard with whom we took our photo. Not being a big fan of horses (beautiful, yes, but also quite large and frightening), I was a bit nervous being so close to one.

We walked through a small group of people (actually, I can specifically label them "tourists", because they so obviously were) clustered around a large black gate, complete with three policemen on guard. I was wondering what was going on there, until I looked around to the street names on the side of the nearest building and realized we were at Downing Street. Despite the fact that nearly all of those people would have trouble picking the current prime minister out of a line-up, and most probably don't even know his name, they were jockeying for the best spot for a photo of Number 10 (which isn't possible, I don't believe...it seemed to be around a corner), and nearly wet themselves with excitement when a car came through the gate. Not terribly surprisingly, it was not Gordon Brown but an ordinary citizen...though that didn't stop people from taking photos of the man. Sheesh.

Continuing on toward the "yep, I'm in London" sight of the Houses of Parliament (which I just discovered is called Westminster Palace...wow, you learn something new every day!), we turned to walk across Westminster Bridge to the south bank of the Thames. I stopped for a moment to take in the intricate stone work of the building, and stare up at Big Ben at the top of the clock tower. It really does give a giddy sense of truly being in London to look up at its most famous landmark.

Catching up to Vanessa and Lindsay after taking my photos and having a moment of inner squee, we walked together across Westminster Bridge, and turned on the other side to amble along past the London Eye (with a queue stretching on and on...making me glad I'd already been up in it back in 2006 and wouldn't have to take my place with the others vying for a pod and a ride). We passed street performer after street performer, only truly stopping to watch a small troupe of breakdancers and a mesmerizing Jason Castro semi-lookalike (yes, yes, that may just be because of the dreads...so sue me) who swirled a set of glass balls around his hands as though they were weightless. Though we mocked him at first, we were stunned into silence by his ability, and ended up watching the whole show...but were glad we had stood on the periphery when he finished and got out the box for a monetary handout!

Moving on along the south bank, we stopped for tea and a snack, enjoyed the polka dot-wrapped trees (an art installation) and skateboarders/bikers in the rather beautiful graffitoed spot they've made their own, underneath a car park. We finally reached our destination of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, where we were to see Romeo and Juliet that evening.

We met up with Vanessa's parents for a few quick pints at The Swan, then headed over to The Globe to check out the little museum before making our way up to our seats for the show. They were fantastic - on the third level, right on the railing overlooking the stage, all six seats in the row just for our little group. The wine was brought out, and we enjoyed the first act of the show...a funny, fast-paced, well-acted version of Shakespeare's famous tragedy.

I never understand - or even catch - all the words in a Shakespeare play, but the sense of really being there, watching a show at The Globe, was quite neat, and it was easy to get into the prose I could understand and enjoy it from our wonderful vantage point. A picnic of sandwiches and tomatoes made a great intermission dinner, and afterward the rest of the play progressed to the beautiful, sniffle-inducing tableau of those star-crossed lovers in the Capulet tomb - the famous end of the "story of woe...Juliet and her Romeo".

Before we headed back home, a walk over the Millennium Bridge in the night air ended our evening in the city with Vanessa's parents. Her fantastic, this-is-getting-framed photo across the Thames shows the beauty of the city after dark...and stands as a reminder that roses by other names may be sweet indeed, but there's certainly only one London.

written by

Mary Rose on July 19, 2009 from London, United Kingdom

from the travel blog: UK 2009

tagged London, Sightseeing, Vanessa and TheGlobe

Send a Compliment

2 comments...

Our first glimpse of London outside the airport was its Underground. The Tube, as it’s known, is an incredible network of mostly underground lines crisscrossing the length and breadth of London, rivaling that of Paris and New York City. Well, at least in theory. What we were unaware of was the fact that weekends in London result in massive closures of parts of the Tube, that is, until we arrived at our transfer point to switch to the line that would take us to the hotel. Nothing starts a trip to a new foreign city off right like staring a big iron gate in the face. This would be a theme throughout the day.

Our hotel was up in the Regent Park neighborhood northwest of the downtown area. It’s a very residential area that is peaceful to walk through as it wound its way up towards the hotel. Being the one who planned out our time in London, I was eager to get going into the city to get a guided tour of St. Paul’s Cathedral, recommended to me as the best place to see all of London from above. Of course, when it comes to trips, it’s impossible to always plan everything perfectly, and people wanted to do silly things like “take a shower” or “eat food” first. And so, our first meal in the marvelous cosmopolitan international city of London was….McDonalds.

We did make it down to St. Paul’s eventually, although too late to get the guided tour. It is an absolutely beautiful place, with a towering dome covered in vast murals and the typical gold-painted, well, everything, often found in Catholic churches. Words can’t quite do it justice, however photography was not allowed, so words will have to suffice. Our main goal there was to get to the top, however, and so it was time for a bit of stair-climbing. 528 stairs to be exact, I believe. It started off easily enough, with the first 267 or so being wide, shallow stairs in a circle. That led to the whispering gallery, which is a balcony around the inside of the dome, and at which point I was yelled at for wearing my hat indoors (sorry God). The next set of stairs was considerably more narrow and more steep. This led to an outdoor area where we were able to see some of the cityscape, but with some obstructions in the way. Finally, we headed up the claustrophobic part of the stairs, where even I with my considerably, er…average, stature, had to duck to avoid smashing my head into the ceiling. At last, at the top, we had a full view of the city, albeit one in which the width of the balcony was roughly 1 person wide. It led to lots of shuffling around as we squeezed past one another in order to get our photographs before descending all the way down to the bottom. My calves think otherwise, but it was certainly worth it.

Next on the agenda was a walking tour of the city provided by London Walks, a company that will take you all over the city of London discussing a variety of specific things, such as the Beatles, Jack the Ripper, or Harry Potter. I decided we should take the highlights tour of the city, having only a day and a half to see it all. From the cathedral, it should’ve been an easy Tube ride to get to the meeting point, however, as I had mentioned above, iron gates were the theme of the day. Transfering between lines in the tube is not quite like Chicago, where you stay on the same track or maybe go upstairs to switch lines. In London, you walk. A lot. Also you go up and down stairs. In our case, we walked from one station, through a second unrelated station, and as we were headed towards our actual destination, found yet another iron gate blocking us, at which point we needed to walk the entire way back to get out of the underground. We were in a bit of a time crunch, so we grabbed the nearest cab. Our cabbie, smoking a Sherlock Holmes pipe and having teeth numbering in the single digits, got us to where we needed to be in time.

Our tour guide was a boisterous woman named Judy with the requisite dry British sense of humor. We began at the Tower of London, where we boarded a boat to take us down the Thames river towards Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. The boat was a bit late picking us up, because, as our luck would have it, today was the Queen’s birthday, and a 42-gun salute was being performed on the river, delaying all traffic. Our guide on the boat was an extremely sarcastic guy who was quick with the jokes while giving us some mostly correct facts about various buildings we passed along the way. I say mostly correct, because, as he told us, “I’m not part of a professional tour company, I’m crew on this boat, so don’t correct me on my facts because, well, I don’t care.” After disembarking, we began our walk around the Houses of Parliament and swung past Westminster Abbey, where all things royal (weddings funerals, etc) take place. We made our way around to St. James’ Park, which has a view of Buckingham Palace, then winding around to a large square where the Royal Horse Guard was being changed. Earlier in the day it had been the site of the processional surrounding the Queen’s birthday events. At last we walked up to Trafalgar Square, commemorating the battle of the same name and Admiral Nelson, who led the British troops. By this point, our legs were feeling pretty tired, and it was time to find some dinner before heading off for the US match.

We happened upon a small place that was showing the football match and had fish and chips. These were our 2 qualifications. As luck would have it, they also served Amstel Beer. Mind you, this is not Amstel Light, but regular Amstel. 4 years ago in Amsterdam on a 90+ degree day, Ryan and I had some Amstel in a bar and declared it the greatest beer ever. While the fact that it was so hot that even Budweiser would’ve tasted good probably swayed our opinion, the point is that it had been 4 years since we last had it and we were eager to try it again. The verdict: still decent beer, however, not the greatest in the world. With the required fish-n-chips meal devoured, it was gametime.

Following even more Tube difficulties, we made it to Stamford Bridge, home of the Premier League-winning Chelsea. While we had thought the stadium was going to be open with a big screen to watch the match, instead it was being shown in a suite. There were probably a few hundred people there to watch, and there may have been 3 other Americans aside from the 4 of us. Did I wear my US jersey? Yes. Did I stand up during the national anthem and turn around while holding up the crest on the jersey? Yes. Did I get roundly booed by everybody? Absolutely. As anyone who watched the match knows, the US got off to a horrible start in the 4th minute, and I feared we would be crushed. The team stiffened up and played much better after that though, and redemption came in the 40th minute at the hands of Robert Green. Lucky goal? Sure, but I’ll take it. Ending in a draw was most likely the best possible outcome of the night, as it kept the English fans from ragging on us while simultaneously preventing them from wanting to kill us had we won. Out on the streets, we were congratulated on the US’s performance and told to be safe on the streets by a guy who, in a random group of 15 people, would be selected as the man most likely to stick a knife in our side in anger. He had scraggly hair, tattoos all up and down his arms, and may have been missing a few teeth, but he was representative of the people we would see throughout the night.

Ryan and I decided to check out the bar scene following the match, expecting to see tons of people out and about, commiserating or celebrating the result. Maybe we went to the wrong part of the city, but it was decidedly quiet. We settled on a pub, had a drink, talked to a very drunk kid who spent the whole time telling us how he was going to root for the US and that England “was shit”. He repeated this many times. At that point, I was completely drained and it was time to head home.

I have to say though, that London went completely against all expectations I had in terms of soccer. I was expecting England jerseys everywhere throughout the day, people ragging on us for wearing US gear, and loads of people out drinking after the match was over. It was not to be. The most we ended up seeing were lots of car flags and one or two drunk people giving us a hard time, but mostly in jest.

More London tomorrow.

written by

nucappy on June 12, 2010 from London, United Kingdom

from the travel blog: London and South Africa - World Cup 2010!

tagged London and WorldCup

Send a Compliment

comment on this...

Fair Ladies

Great Missenden, United Kingdom

A rose by any other name...

London, United Kingdom

Travel to and Arrival in London

London, United Kingdom

Question of the day

London, United Kingdom

Here. We. Go.

Heathrow, United Kingdom

London is a series of tubes

London, United Kingdom

Pictures from London

London, United Kingdom

Atlanta, United States

Thoughts in a train stations

Pisa, Italy

Halfway

London, United Kingdom

Heading South?