The London Leg

We left Boston on time Tuesday morning at 8:15. Susan’s brother Dick drove us to Logan airport and we zipped right through check-in and security. Well OK some of the TSA people just HAD to see my apple Powerbook and they spent a few minutes ohhing and ahhing and running their fingers ALL over it. But soon we were free to go. We had a cup of coffee while we waited to board. The flight was actually quite enjoyable. British Airways could teach our airlines a few lessons in what customer service is really all about. Anyway, we enjoyed our flight – which was not full by any means – and in fact had a row of seats to ourselves. The food was good (!) and the time went by quickly.

We arrived at Heathrow a bit early but by the time we picked up our bags and cleared customs it was about 8 pm when we actually walked into the lobby of Terminal 4. We took some cash out of the nearest ATM and dropped off our two largest bags at Left Luggage and then grabbed the Heathrow Express train to Terminal 1. (The train actually goes all the way to Paddington Station, a trip of about 15 minutes.) We met up with Richard who has offered to pick us up and drive us to our hotel in South Kensington. Richard and I were in the same teaching practice group during my course at International House in London just this past September and we had become fast friends. He and his wife Pauline kindly invited me to their house in West Hampstead for dinner twice during school and it was near the end of our course that Richard matter-of-factly said he would come to Heathrow and pick us up.

So after we checked into our hotel – B & B really, the Aster House on Sumner Place – the three of us walked to a nearby Indian restaurant, the Khyber Pass, for a late dinner. The food was delicious and the conversation charming. Richard walked us back to the Aster House and we said goodnight. The plan is that he will return in the morning and give us a bit of a driving tour of central London and then we will be on our own. We also hope to see another friend from International House,, Trevor, later on in the day.

Wednesday.

After a wonderful breakfast at our B & B – in a small conservatory on the first floor of the hotel – we met Richard out front and headed off for a quick personalized tour of the London highlights. We ended up on the southern side of the Thames and parked just east of tower Bridge and near the Greater London authority building where Richard had worked when he “retired”. This structure is one of the more interesting architectural points of interest in London. The building is only about 10 or 12 floors high but is rather circular and each floor appear to be sort of “stacked” on top of the one below it and slanted a bit away from the river, giving one the impression of a building that is going to fall backwards any minute but of course it doesn’t. It is one of those structures you either like or dislike immediately. I seemed to strike us as imaginative, interesting and rather nice to look at. Richard informed us that with few exceptions the interior is all open, no office walls, that sort of thing.

We ate an early lunch at Brown’s right on the waterfront – a popular eatery Richard informed us and if the number of tables were indicative of how many they served at any given time this certainly must be true. Indeed there are a great many places to eat along the waterfront of the Thames, serving some tourists I suppose but it appeared mainly workers from nearby offices.

After lunch Richard dropped us at our hotel and after a short rest we headed back out, this time to the South Kensington tube station where we picked up our 3-day travel cards and then got on the District Line for the Embankment. We were scheduled – so I thought – to meet Trevor at the Starbucks next to the Embankment station at 4 pm. We waited for a half hour and since he didn’t show up I began to conclude that I had gotten the time wrong or something had happened. The weather had since turned rather nasty and Sue and I grabbed our umbrella and went on to Covent Garden, which was rather close by. Originally I had hoped the three of us would have done a southern bank of the Thames walk much like Trevor and I had done my last day in London after I finished the course and before I returned to the States. But since it had been raining steadily pretty much all afternoon – or at least since we left Richard – we opted to keep our traveling by foot to a minimum.

After a stroll around Covent Garden we walked through Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus and down Haymarket street to Miso’s a noodle bar I found during my school stay ion London. During dinner I happened to check the phone to see if there were any messages and sure enough Trevor had sent a text message – I turns out I had indeed gotten the time wrong and we had missed connecting. He suggested we try and meet up the next day and that too is our hope. Anyway he plans to call us in the morning to fix a time and place.

After dinner we head back to Piccadilly Circus and get on the Piccadilly line to South “Ken” station. That’s when we discover that almost right around the corner from our B & B is the Lamborghini car dealer. The first time I have ever seen a car dealer with a sign in the door saying admittance by appointment only and please ring the buzzer. But the cars are certainly beautiful to look at and probably fun to drive. Susan asked what was it about guys and cars like this. I said, “hey they go fast, really fast and they look good, and did I mention they go fast?” It is a pretty strange phenomenon after all.

Thursday.

We woke up to rain a condition, which remained with us for the entire day. After a leisurely breakfast we headed off for the tube station and went to Westminister Abbey where we saw some of world’s most famous people – dead of course but hey that’s a small glitch. Elizabeth 1. Mary queen of Scots, Henry Purcell, Edward Elgar, John Dryden, Keats, Shelley, D. H. Lawrence, Handel, Milton, Chaucer, a whole slew of Edwards but Edward 1 in particular (also known as Edward the confessor who built the Abbey) and Henrys. I don’t mean to sound flippant for surely we were awed by the fact that here were the resting place of some of the western world’s most well-known names, people who have had such an enormous impact on the smallest aspect of our lives though they have been dead and gone from this earth for hundreds of years. It was in fact truly awesome to be there.

Since there were very few places to eat near the Abbey we crossed the bridge to the south side of the Thames and found a wonderful Chinese restaurant in the Saatchi Gallery right next to the London eye (not a great day to be up there). After lunch we took the tube to the Tower of London where we spent the rest of the afternoon. Here was where modern London essentially began. William the Conqueror built the first structure here on Roman remains and of course the tower served as the strongpoint for the kings and queens of England for much of its early history. The place where Lady Jane Grey, Katharine Howard and Anne Boleyn all lost their heads is a place of solemn beauty; the site of the scaffold is next to the small chapel where their bodies were once hastily interred. During the reign of queen Victoria, in the middle of the 19th century, the bodies were removed from their original burial spot, some attempt was made to identify them (and were largely successful with Anne Boleyn) and they were reburied under the altar in the small chapel.

The chapel itself harbored more than 1500 bodies in its crypt. We inquired from one of the Yeoman Warders (the caretakers of the Tower, often referred to as Beefeaters) as to where Sir Thomas More was buried in the chapel – Henry VIII had him executed in I believe 1483 – we were informed that he was in the crypt which was off limits to the casual tourist. But the fellow asked if we would like to see his tomb and we said absolutely yes we would. He took us down just a few flights of stairs and there was a wonderful niche in the crypt wall with a large casket toped by a small bust of the author of Utopia. In front were a few chairs arranged in several rows clearly designed for special prayer services.

It was well after 5 when we left the Tower and took the tube back to our hotel. We left the Aster House about 7 pm to head for an Italian Restaurant, Bertorelli’s, in northeast London. Richard and his wife Pauline were coming down from near Manchester and were to meet us at the restaurant for dinner. Their train ran a bit late but we savored a glass of Prosecco while we waited for them. We had a wonderful dinner and enjoyed their company immensely, talking about the vagaries of our lives mostly but laughing pretty much at the whimsicalities of human nature. Unfortunately they had to catch the last train north back to Manchester so we had an early night and said good bye. We will not see them when we pass through London in January since they will be visiting family in New Zealand so we hope to get together in May. But so much will have happened before then, who can say? At this point in our trip – and certainly in our lives as well we can hardly plan for too much – but that’s OK right now.