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The Tube goes down in London, but London doesn't go down the tubes....
We had an early flight from Milan to London. Getting there involved a bus whose departure location took a little hoofing-around to find, even with directions. The bus ride to the airport showed us a whole other area of Milan we hadn't encountered. I couldn't help but think that - with enough time in each of the towns we'd visited - we would have seen more such sights that would have made us feel that each of our visited cities was larger and more complex than the intro-level tourist side of things we'd seen. The baggage check at British Airways was a test of patience. There was only one clerk serving a long line of non-special member-only normal people customers. I suppose that's one way to market your premium service - annoy the people in coach. Other than that, our British Airways experience was really good. We managed to spend all of our remaining Euros in the airport on various food items - including some sort of cream-filled doughnut, only to find that an ample meal was served on the plane. Heathrow is beautiful. I don't say that about many airports, but this one was clearly designed with aesthetics in mind. Like many of the museums we visited, photography is not allowed in most areas. I assume that this is to prevent terrorists from planning attacks, but my cynical side suspects that they know the airport's a work of art and want to sell a souvenir book about it. I just didn't see that book for sale anywhere.... We found coffee - the kind that comes in tall cups! It tasted kinda dismal, actually - like dishwater. I began to worry that Italian espresso ruined me. It did give me a stomach-ache, though - that's something, right? Sigh. After using a credit card to purchase tickets for the train from Heathrow to Paddington Station, we realized that we needed cash. Lillie's checking account has been run down below what we need for our London sojourn, and my bank card was in my wallet at home in Chicago. We can't possibly pay for everything with our credit cards and cash advances carry hefty fees. Fortunately, I had spotted the internet equivalent of pay-phones a few minutes earlier, so we managed to log in and move some money from one account to another, and all was well. 
We took a fast, clean train to Paddington
Station. It wasn't even an express train,
but it was plenty fast. We were at
Paddington Station and a mere half-dozen
blocks' walk from our Hyde Park hotel in
no time at all. We quickly realized that
- even if London drivers are saner than
Roman drivers - we were in more danger
when jaywalking in England than Italy, if
only because our instincts about which way
to look when crossing are so hard-wired
backwards from English traffic.
Our small but decent hotel room was up
four flights of stairs with no elevator.
We had a private shower but a shared
toilet, which also had the dual-mode (#1
and #2) flush.
Lillie and I decided to take the hop-on,
hop-off bus tour to get an overview of
London. Truth to be known, we knew that
we lacked time to do much more than that.
My impression is that London is a town to
be seen over the course of at least two
weeks, if you can afford it. Everywhere
you turn around, there's something from
history class, literature, or popular song
staring you in the face. The same is
certainly true in Rome and Florence,
although you would probably substitute
"art history class" for "literature."
Also, the parts of Italian history that
directly inform US history and culture are
a lot further back in time than many parts
of English history that have significantly
impacted US history.... Or maybe I'm just an
Anglophile.... I'll admit it, I actually got
a little teary at the thought of Nelson
defeating Napoleon as we passed Trafalgar
Square.
The bus tour hit the vast majority of the
big sites, with a pre-recorded audio guide
giving highlights as we went. While we
sat in traffic, some groovy muzak looped
and I think my brain started using it as
its very own hold music, as I caught
myself hearing it in my dreams for the
next three nights.
The pamphlet with the route map indicated
that there was a line that ran in parallel
with the one we took, and it had a live
tour guide. This would have been great
for asking follow-up questions and getting
supplemental information - if we'd have
ever seen one of those buses.
The bus tour was a good investment, but
London's weather was dismal - mid-to-low
50s, gray sky, etc. - what you'd call a
good Chicago spring, except that we were
now in June. By the time we got off the
bus, both Lillie and I felt like our
fingers were frost-bitten.
Lillie and I also both had urgent need of
restroom facilities, so we ducked into
Charing Cross Station. Of course, they
were pay toilets and required exact
change, so I had to run back up the stairs
with a full bladder and wait in line
behind 3 paying customers at a candy shop
to ask for change. Something about the
way I was standing must have telegraphed
my situation to the shopkeep, who made
change without a word.
We navigated our way to the wine bar,
where we met up for dinner/drinks with
Meredith and Sarah, two of Lillie's
DC-area friends who now
make their homes in London. Another one of
Lillie's friends from DC, Ana-Lisa, had
recommended the place to us, based on
something she'd read in a travel magazine.
Neither of Lillie's friends had been
before, but it proved a good pick. I got
a gourmet burger with beef and lamb and
something else in it. Lillie got a prawn
salad, which continued the European trend
of leaving the whole critter intact, which
is kind of a hassle on top of a salad,
with no room to remove the inedible bits.
The wine selection was impressive, but
pricey - so we didn't have too much wine
there, in the end.
We decided to continue our conversation at
a nearby pub. It was somewhat noisy in
the upstairs rooms, so we settled in at a
quieter table in the basement bar area. I
ordered some nice ales for Lillie and I,
and Sarah/Meredith got cocktails with
Pimm's.
Conversation was good and varied and I
waxed as philosophically as the present
voluminous tome would lead you to
conclude. Can you blame a guy? Lillie
and I talked lots, but - with the
exception of the people we met from
Chicago/LA/Canada/Louisiana/Texas - she
was practically the only native English
speaker with whom I'd held a conversation
of any length for about two weeks. She'd
already heard everything I had to say, so
I needed an audience that hadn't already
heard all of my dumb jokes.
The Tube strike made for a longer and more
complicated route home. I must confess to
being somewhat unclear on the precise
causes of the strike, but what little I
heard did little to evince sympathy for
the union. Somewhere in their demands was
the reinstatement of two employees facing
disciplinary action for some egregious offense -
I forget whether it was theft or some sort
of potentially-fatal negligence. Meanwhile, a
big soccer game was to take place at
Wembley the next day, and the Tube is the
only practical means of transport to it.
Perhaps more than anything else, this
coincidence seemed to erode support for
the strikers amongst the Londoners we
encountered.
The bus we took back to Paddington Station
was very crowded, as was the bus stop. At
11pm at night on a Tuesday, young
Londoners are out and active to an extent
we don't even consistently see on weekends
in Chicago, much less weeknights.
Apparently, some form of early closing
time was imposed on many pubs but not
dance clubs (oddly enough), in an effort
to curtail Londoners' drinking. It seemed
like most of the people standing around us
at the bus stop were either going
somewhere that would allow them to
circumvent this drinking curfew and/or
they had clearly and sufficiently gotten
their drinking in earlier.
I slept deeply.
London Day Two:
As in Milan, our continental breakfast
took place in the basement. We had to
wake up somewhat early to make sure that
we got our toast, cereal, juice, and
coffee, and it seemed like things were
about to shut down not too long after we
arrived.
Feeling a need to get myself a big-ass cup
of strong coffee, I persuaded Lillie to go
with me to the Starbucks at Paddington
Station. She ultimately opted for a mocha
at one of the other coffee shops at the
station. My Starbucks was a letdown -
again, it tasted like dishwater to me. By
now, I am growing concerned that two weeks
of espresso has ruined me for life on
regular coffee. Starbucks is like
McDonald's, right - consistent from store
to store? Maybe not. Maybe they adjust
the strength of their brews to suit local
tastes, and the British like coffee that
tastes like dishwater.
Since our hop-on hop-off tour bus tickets
were good for 24 hours and the Tube strike
was still very much on, we waited in the
drizzle to re-board the bus. There was a
nice middle-aged couple from Wyoming
there. The husband had this annoying
self-deprecation habit which I started to
suspect was some weird passive-aggressive
response to knowing that Lillie and I were
from Chicago and perhaps feeling like we -
in our "infinite cosmopolitan-ness" -
would somehow look down on him.
Fortunately, there were two midwestern
college kids, one of whom was from Kansas,
who took over the conversation and
hopefully made the middle-aged husband
feel better about himself.
It was sort of telling about the US
geopolitic that all four of the
midwesterners to whom we were speaking had
voted for Obama, but none of them were
really sold on him at this point. The
message of change spoke to their
frustration with the Bush administration
and the Recession - but I got the feeling
that Obama's opponents have painted him as
sufficiently liberal to arouse distrust.
Case in point, there was a huge surge in
gun and ammunition sales in the months
following Obama's election, presumably
because many Americans feared that their
Second Amendment rights would soon be
curtailed. As it happens, our college-aged
bus companion had taken a hunting knife on
a cross-Atlantic trip and was non-plussed
when a London police officer issued him a
ticket for possession of an unregistered
weapon, telling him that he could in fact
have gone to jail for the offense.
I don't blame the kid for being taken
aback. I personally support Second
Amendment rights, within reason. On the
other hand, that just ain't how Europe
rolls, and I'm somewhat mystified by how
he managed to carry a knife through the
rest of his trip without incident.
I also wonder how the crime statistics
have been affected by weapons bans. After
all, Chicago criminalizes gun ownership.
Unfortunately for anti-gun advocates,
Chicago's relatively high violent crime
stats involving handguns proves the NRA's
case for it. Criminals still own
handguns, but law-abiding citizens have no
deterrent or defense against their
attackers. I suspect that weapons bans
are easier to enforce for criminals and
upright citizens alike on a smaller island
nation like the UK than in the US.
Since the downstairs portion of the
double-decker bus was already filled, we
were obligated to take the complementary
ponchos and sit upstairs. We decided to
get off near Trafalgar, having gotten near
enough to most of the day's destinations
and grown tired of being drizzled upon.
We'd gotten off the bus with the intention
of going to the National Gallery, but we
had grown hungry and decided to try to eat
at a Scottish pub, or - that failing - an
Irish or traditional English pub. We
found an Irish pub called Waxy's that fit the bill,
which - like many pubs in London - was a
multi-floor affair. Very few of the Irish
pubs in America really have the sort of
decor that Waxy's has - it's expensive to
do.
The music on the jukebox was all Irish,
too - if not strictly traditional, then
trad/rock fusion. We had the place more
or less to ourselves. I ordered chicken
and Lillie had fish and chips, with a pint
of stout (not Guinness - might as well
switch it up, right?) and a lager to wash
it down.
After lunch, we walked around the corner
to the Theater Royal Haymarket, where they
were staging Samuel Beckett's Waiting for
Godot, with Patrick Stewart and Ian
McKellan in the main roles. Lillie and I
had seen the marquee from the tour bus the
day before and discussed it. Lillie was
reticent about seeing it, having not read
the play. I tried to sell her on it,
saying, "Look, it's Gandalf and Picard -
or Magneto and Professor X!" to no
committed response.
I decided to go ahead and see if I could
get a ticket an hour and a half before
showtime. In fact, I could get one seat,
and it was 8 rows back dead-center. Since
Lillie was lukewarm to uninterested and I
was psyched, I decided to go for it.
Emerging from the box office area into the
sunshine with a victorious smile, I
immediately began to wonder if I'd done
THE WRONG THING. I took Lillie back in to
see if we could get a second seat, but
none was available near my own and Lillie
said she'd rather wander around than watch
a play without me sitting next to her.
Our beer began doing what it always does
to me when I drink before dinner-time -
namely, make me sleepy, so we went to an
Italian-style coffee shop for a double
espresso for me.
Before parting ways for about 2.5 hours,
we looked at pricing for a touristy photo
studio where we could dress up in various
period costumes. It would have run us
about 40 pounds, so we took a pass. We
decided to meet outside the theater, and
Lillie went off to walk around.
The Theater Royal Haymarket could have
charged 5 pounds just to look at the
theater itself, so 45 pounds (about $70
US) for the show was a pretty good deal.
My seats put me about 15 feet from
Stewart/McKellen for 2 hours, and - as
luck would have it - the woman seated next
to me was a tenured professor of
drama/literature at Stanford in
California, so I had a well-informed
person with whom to discuss the show
during intermission.
I'd read Waiting for Godot in high school
and apparently found it sufficiently cool
to write a really badly derivative piece
of my own that folded in parts influenced
by Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit. I'd never
seen Waiting for Godot performed, though,
and the whole piece took on significantly
more life in the hands of such
heavyweights.
In high school, absurdist existentialism
about God and faith and social class just
seems cool. In this production, it became
more human, real, and resonant. The
characters went from what I imagined in
high school to be black turtleneck and
tights wearing Dieter clones (remember the
"Sprockets" sketch with Mike Meyers on
Saturday Night Live?) to a bunch of
downtrodden hoboes, maybe even local
drunks at some sort of apocalyptic pub at
the end of time, locked into a circular
argument about faith.
In a word: cool. In more words: the play
is already rich, but so much of the
richness comes only in the performances of
capable actors who turn the text into
meaning. Given no scene changes and
relatively little plot as such, it
requires tour de force acting to turn each
beat into something meaningful, rather
than some pretentious abstract clap-trap.
Stewart and McKellan took text and made
characters, which then allowed me to truly
feel the humanity of the piece. Bravo.
In my description of the day's events, I'd
neglected to mention that all of these
things transpired while I was wearing no
underwear. Somehow, I had miscalculated
when I would next need to wash my undies
and I only discovered my error when
dressing that morning. To my delight,
Lillie greeted me after the show with an
appropriate souvenir - London-themed boxer
briefs. I changed into them in the
basement bathroom of the National Portrait
Gallery.
The National Gallery was - sadly - only
open for another 15 minutes, so we decided
to just hang out in Trafalgar Square for a
few minutes before going on a walk that
would take us past Whitehall, 10 Downing
Street, Parliament, Big Ben, Westminster
Abbey, and Buckingham Palace - in short, a
quick tour of the seat of British power
for the last several hundred years.
The Prime Minister's residence had the
expected imposing array of vehicles and
machine-gun-armed personnel out front.
Apparently, Gordon Brown was in a bit of a
pickle while we were there, so perhaps the
feeling that the staff looked ready for a
siege wasn't just my fanciful imagination
but a reflection of internal strife.
There were protestors across the street
from Parliament/Big Ben, going on about
various things - gay rights, Iraq, and -
if I recall correctly - some issue in Sri
Lanka. We ended up taking in both from
across the street at Westminster Abbey,
which - given the size of each - is the
only way to completely fit them into your
field of vision.
Although we'd gone into plenty of churches
on our trip so far and would no doubt have
been impressed by Westminster, 15 pounds
seemed a little steep for our present
purposes. We had no doubts about where
the money was going, though - it seemed
that they were in the process of scrubbing
off the effects of years of pollution,
restoring the façade from a
disturbingly-yellowed (think dog pee on
snow) color to its original gray-white.
Sad to think that for several hundred
years, the pollutants that colored the
church were also going into Londoners'
lungs.
From the church, we proceeded towards
Buckingham Palace, stopping along the way
for some kettle chips, bananas, water, and
a green apple soda.
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