well, dear Reader, we've been together more than two years now, and i'm thinking it's about time to take you home with me. that's right, we're going to begin a journey that was over 14 years in the making for me, and start right in the Sceptered Isle's principal city: London. arguably the most important in the modern world's history, it is vast, it is vibrant, and it appears to be thriving. it is also dirty, dangerous and dilapidated in parts, but nobody's perfect, right? actually, i don't love London--i like it, but i don't love it. i suppose most Britons feel this way because foreigners tend to base their impressions of the entire country on this one part of it (hey, it's not like i've ever done that), when we would generally agree that it's not the best part. it's like thinking all of America is like New York, which has cool stuff and lots to see and do, but is cramped and crowded and not exactly picturesque.
some London views, on a Buckingham Palace background, clockwise from top left: boaters on the Serpentine, a long lake in Hyde Park; the world's biggest ferris wheel, London Eye, which stands along the banks of the Thames; a red telephone box across the street from Marble Arch, which was originally one of the gateways to Buckingham Palace; the main entrance to Westminster Cathedral, which sits across the street from the Houses of Parliament; Tower Bridge, which not coincidentally spans the Thames right next to the Tower of London; and a sign from the famous London Underground network of subway trains.
nevertheless, there are pictures to be taken, and plenty of them, as those above demonstrate. and there's plenty more. our first full day in town was spent seeing the major sights, including the very new London Eye ferris wheel and the very old Houses of Parliament and Westminster Cathedral that sit just across the river from it. there are layers upon layers of history here, as in much of Europe, piled so thick it can be hard to tell where one ends and another begins. but i guess that's what makes it all so charming, and what gets the stories of all that history so screwed up. for example, consider the picture below:
Jill and i in front of Big Ben? maybe...
everyone knows what this is, right? Big Ben of course. of course not, actually; Big Ben is not visible from the outside of its tower, the one you see here. Big Ben is in fact the bell that is hanging inside the clock tower at the Houses of Parliament, and is officially known as the Great Bell. so you learn something every day. but not every day is as special as that first full day in London, which saw us celebrating the anniversary of Jill's birth. after our jet-lagged trekking around to such inspiring sights as Platform 9¾ (from the Harry Potter stories) at King's Cross Station, we went back to my sister Kim and her husband Todd's place for a specially prepared birthday dinner and cake.
Jill and i visit JK Rowling's world as we attempt to gain access to platform 9¾ at King's Cross. watch out Harry Potter; below, Jill and the mini jellies-decorated cake that Kim built for her birthday. yum yum, gimme some!
indeed, we ate very well as guests in Todd's kitchen, what with his Jamie Oliver cookbook and all. besides the cake, Kim did pretty well too, exploiting the food aspects of her fascination with Easter. the day after Jill's birthday was Easter Sunday and Kim was intent on dying eggs for the celebration, which is funny because i don't remember ever doing that as children. in fact, as we discovered, it would have been very hard to, because not only are the dyes not readily available, but neither are white eggs. nevertheless, we had to make do, and giving it the old college try worked out pretty well--even Kim's high hopes for the endeavor seemed almost to be met.
Easter Sunday egg dying scenes at Kim and Todd's spacious Central London pad.
but all parties come to an end, and the next day we were back out hiking around a very warm London. and all this very early: Jill and Kim had been wanting to see the musical Wicked on the West End, and Kim had a way to get cheap front row seats, just for lining up at about three o'clock in the morning. okay, it was more like nine, but we were probably still jet-lagged and it was definitely not nine o'clock in Japan. so, like troopers, Todd and i dutifully followed and made the line at the Victoria theater, but before the box office opened at ten Jill and i took off to get a look at Buckingham Palace while Kim and Todd held our spots. i told you they were good hosts. BP is pretty much just a really big, well, palace, and it has some fancy gates and statues around it, but the real draw is the changing of the guard, which is only done every other day. of course, that was not the day we were there, but it was so much the better really, because hardly anybody else showed up either, making a decent picture a lot easier to get.
Jill and i outside Buckingham Palace, above; and below, scenes from inside the infamous Tower of London, on the bank of the Thames.
after securing our excellent tickets for the show, we went over to the Tower of London which, in accordance with standard British nomenclature, is actually a large complex including several towers, built over numerous centuries. happily, despite it absolutely crawling with tourists, we were also able to get some good shots here, which you see above. the tower is warded by the famous "Beefeater" guards, who wear the distinctive red and gold tunics only on special occasions, and don navy blue and red robes on regular days. these guards have charge over the safety of the Crown Jewels, among other things, which are kept and displayed at the tower, and each Beefeater is required to have served in Her Majesty's Armed Forces for at least 22 years. they also reside in (rather smallish seeming) quarters on the tower property, some of which you can see in the uppermost of the polaroids above. due to the volume of tourists, we didn't bother with what would have been a very crowded and possibly barely-audible Beefeater-guided tour, but spent several hours tearing through the many buildings by ourselves. the tower has quite a reputation for torture, which many of the exhibits protest is at least partly undeserved. it seems to have functioned mainly as a gentleman's prison and many people were released and a few even escaped. nevertheless, they have some great exhibits on weapons and torture methods of the various eras, including a room full of long-time prisoners' desperate messages carved into the walls.
pretty great stuff, as was the Tower Bridge just next door to the tower itself, which Jill and i walked across on our way to explore the South bank of the Thames. the only useful thing we found there was a Pret a Manger, a sandwich chain more popularly called Pret. after eating a camembert baguette we slowly made our way back to Kim and Todd's for the show, stopping at the world-famous Harrods department store in swanky Knightsbridge and wandering through Hyde Park to Marble Arch before hitting the Tube.
Jill and me (for some reason wearing her birthday sweatshirt) in front of the Apollo Victoria theater after an excellent performance of the musical Wicked. you should see it, but look at what sitting in the front row did to our necks...
there's plenty to do in London, and plenty of worthwhile stuff we missed doing this time around, which means we'll have to go back sometime, hopefully before another 14 years goes by. the show was really good, as were all the sights we saw while in town, and we definitely recommend theBritishcapital for a visit. just don't forget to see some of the rest of the country when you go there. my (completely unbiased) views on the best parts are coming right up.
some London views, on a Buckingham Palace background, clockwise from top left: boaters on the Serpentine, a long lake in Hyde Park; the world's biggest ferris wheel, London Eye, which stands along the banks of the Thames; a red telephone box across the street from Marble Arch, which was originally one of the gateways to Buckingham Palace; the main entrance to Westminster Cathedral, which sits across the street from the Houses of Parliament; Tower Bridge, which not coincidentally spans the Thames right next to the Tower of London; and a sign from the famous London Underground network of subway trains.
nevertheless, there are pictures to be taken, and plenty of them, as those above demonstrate. and there's plenty more. our first full day in town was spent seeing the major sights, including the very new London Eye ferris wheel and the very old Houses of Parliament and Westminster Cathedral that sit just across the river from it. there are layers upon layers of history here, as in much of Europe, piled so thick it can be hard to tell where one ends and another begins. but i guess that's what makes it all so charming, and what gets the stories of all that history so screwed up. for example, consider the picture below:
Jill and i in front of Big Ben? maybe...
everyone knows what this is, right? Big Ben of course. of course not, actually; Big Ben is not visible from the outside of its tower, the one you see here. Big Ben is in fact the bell that is hanging inside the clock tower at the Houses of Parliament, and is officially known as the Great Bell. so you learn something every day. but not every day is as special as that first full day in London, which saw us celebrating the anniversary of Jill's birth. after our jet-lagged trekking around to such inspiring sights as Platform 9¾ (from the Harry Potter stories) at King's Cross Station, we went back to my sister Kim and her husband Todd's place for a specially prepared birthday dinner and cake.
Jill and i visit JK Rowling's world as we attempt to gain access to platform 9¾ at King's Cross. watch out Harry Potter; below, Jill and the mini jellies-decorated cake that Kim built for her birthday. yum yum, gimme some!
indeed, we ate very well as guests in Todd's kitchen, what with his Jamie Oliver cookbook and all. besides the cake, Kim did pretty well too, exploiting the food aspects of her fascination with Easter. the day after Jill's birthday was Easter Sunday and Kim was intent on dying eggs for the celebration, which is funny because i don't remember ever doing that as children. in fact, as we discovered, it would have been very hard to, because not only are the dyes not readily available, but neither are white eggs. nevertheless, we had to make do, and giving it the old college try worked out pretty well--even Kim's high hopes for the endeavor seemed almost to be met.
Easter Sunday egg dying scenes at Kim and Todd's spacious Central London pad.
but all parties come to an end, and the next day we were back out hiking around a very warm London. and all this very early: Jill and Kim had been wanting to see the musical Wicked on the West End, and Kim had a way to get cheap front row seats, just for lining up at about three o'clock in the morning. okay, it was more like nine, but we were probably still jet-lagged and it was definitely not nine o'clock in Japan. so, like troopers, Todd and i dutifully followed and made the line at the Victoria theater, but before the box office opened at ten Jill and i took off to get a look at Buckingham Palace while Kim and Todd held our spots. i told you they were good hosts. BP is pretty much just a really big, well, palace, and it has some fancy gates and statues around it, but the real draw is the changing of the guard, which is only done every other day. of course, that was not the day we were there, but it was so much the better really, because hardly anybody else showed up either, making a decent picture a lot easier to get.
Jill and i outside Buckingham Palace, above; and below, scenes from inside the infamous Tower of London, on the bank of the Thames.
after securing our excellent tickets for the show, we went over to the Tower of London which, in accordance with standard British nomenclature, is actually a large complex including several towers, built over numerous centuries. happily, despite it absolutely crawling with tourists, we were also able to get some good shots here, which you see above. the tower is warded by the famous "Beefeater" guards, who wear the distinctive red and gold tunics only on special occasions, and don navy blue and red robes on regular days. these guards have charge over the safety of the Crown Jewels, among other things, which are kept and displayed at the tower, and each Beefeater is required to have served in Her Majesty's Armed Forces for at least 22 years. they also reside in (rather smallish seeming) quarters on the tower property, some of which you can see in the uppermost of the polaroids above. due to the volume of tourists, we didn't bother with what would have been a very crowded and possibly barely-audible Beefeater-guided tour, but spent several hours tearing through the many buildings by ourselves. the tower has quite a reputation for torture, which many of the exhibits protest is at least partly undeserved. it seems to have functioned mainly as a gentleman's prison and many people were released and a few even escaped. nevertheless, they have some great exhibits on weapons and torture methods of the various eras, including a room full of long-time prisoners' desperate messages carved into the walls.
pretty great stuff, as was the Tower Bridge just next door to the tower itself, which Jill and i walked across on our way to explore the South bank of the Thames. the only useful thing we found there was a Pret a Manger, a sandwich chain more popularly called Pret. after eating a camembert baguette we slowly made our way back to Kim and Todd's for the show, stopping at the world-famous Harrods department store in swanky Knightsbridge and wandering through Hyde Park to Marble Arch before hitting the Tube.
Jill and me (for some reason wearing her birthday sweatshirt) in front of the Apollo Victoria theater after an excellent performance of the musical Wicked. you should see it, but look at what sitting in the front row did to our necks...
there's plenty to do in London, and plenty of worthwhile stuff we missed doing this time around, which means we'll have to go back sometime, hopefully before another 14 years goes by. the show was really good, as were all the sights we saw while in town, and we definitely recommend theBritishcapital for a visit. just don't forget to see some of the rest of the country when you go there. my (completely unbiased) views on the best parts are coming right up.
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