Thursday, October 29th, 2009
My friend, D, picked me up from the airport when I arrived, which was very sweet of him. It’s the first time anyone has picked me up at any airport other than Toronto Pearson in a very large number of years. He drove me back to his place so I could drop my bags, change my clothes and grab a cup of coffee, then we headed out the door again. We walked to Balham, about half an hour away, as I slowly grew more and more tunnel-visioned from caffeine and lack of sleep. D took pity on me, and we found a wonderful little caf with lots of light and an all-day brunch.
After that, I knew I had to keep moving in order to stay awake, but didn’t have any specific idea of what I wanted to do beyond ‘touristing sounds fun.’ I lived in London, on and off, for five years, so there are some areas, like Picadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, that I know inside and out. And the last time I had been back to visit I dragged a friend around the Tower, the Museum of London and the National Gallery. So this time we decided to start with Big Ben and the parliament buildings because I hadn’t seen those in a long time.
We ended up spending two days wandering the South Bank. Mostly East of the parliament buildings. That first day, we took a cruise down the Thames. I’ve never done that and it’s been on my list of things to try. It was mostly sunny and not that cold, and we had a fantastic vantage point on the boat. There was an unofficial tour guide – one of the crew – but I could only hear him part of the time. We passed the National Theatre, the Globe, the HMS Belfast, the Tower, Tower Bridge and Canary Wharf (which I had never seen), and ended up going all the way out to Greenwich.
We got off the boat and wandered through the grounds of Greenwich University and the Royal Military College. It was beautiful there, with the big white building standing out in the twilight, and strains of music drifting from one of the windows. We kept wandering, stumbled across a map and realised we weren’t far from the observatory that established Greenwich Mean Time. We hiked up to where it sat at the top of a hill and discovered a spectacular nighttime view of the East End.
I was convinced there was a royal palance in Greenwich, somewhere, so we headed for a castle marked on the map. It turned out to have belonged to an 18th century ‘architect and dramatist.’ It’s stunning, and it looks like it has since been turned into some very expensive flats.
From there, we walked back down to the river and wandered along the bank for a while. We stopped into a pub when we got cold for hot chocolate and coffee. The drinks weren’t great, as it turned out, but the view of the city lights reflected in the river were worth it. We eventually arrived back at the pier where we had gotten off the boat and decided to take the boat back instead of the DLR. While that first boat we had taken was all about touristing leisurely down the river, the second one was much more a water bus. It travelled much faster and stopped much more often.
Friday, October 30th, 2009
The next day was a Friday, so I dragged D down to Borough Market. This is one of my favourite places in London. Or, it used to be. It was in the process of being renovated, and while many of the stalls were still open, nothing was where I remembered it. It’s a whole market, tucked under the arches of a rail bridge and overpasses, so there’s lots of old brick and wrought iron. They sell some of the most unusual treats, and lots of organic and home-made foods. There used to be a stall where you could buy pheasant and other wild game, which was all strung up by its feet, but we couldn’t find it this time. We ate lunch there, and bought snacks. I took photos, D picked up some chili sauce and other bits. Then we headed out along the river again, aiming for the HMS Belfast.
The HMS Belfast was a battle cruiser, commissioned in the ’30s. She fought in WWII and was part of the bombardment at the D-Day landings. She was overhauled in 1950 and last saw active service in the Korean War. She is now permanently docked on the Thames and part of the Imperial War Museum. We spent an hour poking through the various levels with one of those portable audio guides. I was most fascinated by the crew living areas. We eventually retreated up to the deck levels because it was feeling very stuffy and oppressive inside, and I think I might have been a little seasick.
From the Belfast, we walked along the Thames, all the way back to the London Eye. We popped into the Globe along the way, but its regular season had ended and it was only hosting the occasional Christmas event. We also stopped into the National Theatre and browsed the bookstore. And then we headed up on the London Eye.
The ticket comes with a 4-minute 4-D Experience, where the fourth D, it turns out, involved being sprayed with mist and with bubbles. And the ride on the Eye itself was beautiful. It was after dark by this point (by the end of October, it’s getting dark pretty early) so we could see the city lights stretching on forever. There were only a few other people in our car, too, so I was able to move around easily, taking dozens and dozens of photos. Particularly of Big Ben, the Parliament Buildings, St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Thames. So beautiful. And very peaceful, actually.
Saturday, October 31st, 2009
The next day, D was back on his work schedule, so I was on my own. I met up with T, a good friend from drama school, and we wandered idly through the West End and SoHo, chatting. We ended up walking in circles, doublig back on ourselves. Somehow we stumbled onto Carnaby Street, so we browsed the shops there. We parted company at Tottenham Court Road, and I headed up to Camden.
Camden Market is another of my favourite places in London, and another place that has been recently renovated. It used to be its own separate village, but was annexed into a growing London. Many of the old stone buildings are still there, and practically all of them have been converted into a giant market. It’s amazing. Parts of it are still grungy and boho. This is the place where you can still find punks with foot-high bright green mohawks. And goths. Lots of goths. I love it there, grunge and all. And I’m actually quite upset about the areas that have been renovated and cleaned up and turned into cute upscale boutiques. It always happens, though. The bohos make it cool, then the yuppies move in.
That said, some of the renovated areas are absolutely stunning. And they’ve opened up whole new areas that I had never been into before. It was amazing seeing the bones of the old stalls, the old horse hospital, all still mostly intact. And some of the bronze artwork they’ve put in, some of the lampposts and stautary, is just lovely.
Sunday, November 1st, 2009
Sunday was a very laid back day. I headed into the city, in the pouring rain, to meet up with some friends for a pub lunch. I was early, so I sat with a cup of tea and a book for a while. And once my friends joined me, we sat and talked for hours. It was wonderful.
Monday, November 2nd, 2009
I started this day in Sloane Square. Part of the initial drive behind this trip was to find out more about my family history. I’ve been building the family tree, on and off, for a while. When my great-grandmother died, my grandmother and her two little sisters were put into a convent orphanage. When they aged out, they were sent into domestic service in London. I had recently been in contact with the orphanage, and they had sent my grandmother’s records, which included a list of addresses where she had worked in London. They were all in the Sloane Square area, so I headed down there with the list and an A-to-Z and just went to have a look at them all.
From Sloane Square, I headed to the Bank of England. My Granny used to send us money for Christmas when we were little, and I had recently found a 20-pound note that was so old stores wouldn’t take it and even regular banks wouldn’t change it. So I had to head to the Bank of England. It was neat, though. I’d never been to that area before, and it was impressive with its huge stone buildings.
And then from Bank to the British Museum. I had arranged to meet up with another friend, DR, there. We sat and had a cup of tea in the big circular atrium, and then got up to wander through the museum. We started with the rooms off the atrium devoted to the Enlightenment. They seemed to hold a little bit of everything from just about everywhere. It also contained the library of King George III, and the whole area felt like a select library of the British Empire. My favourite thing in the room was a replica of the Rosetta Stone that the public was invited to touch. I loved being able to run my fingers over the stone, to feel the engravings. I’m not sure why that connection was so important to me, but it really made an impact.
From the Enlightenment, we headed upstairs. DR wanted to see the Mesopotamian things and I didn’t much care what we saw, so long as I could just wander through the museum. It turned out Mesopotamia was at the opposite end of the second floor, so we wandered through Ancient Britain to get there. All those old Celtic torques were giving me flashbacks to endless university lectures (I have a degree in Archaeology and Celtic Studies that is completely pristine and unused), but I couldn’t really remember any of the specifics of what I’d been taught.
I loved the Mesopotamian stuff when we got there. Everything, whether it had pictorial engravings or not, was also covered in cuneiform writing. It was beautiful. Having been spoiled earlier, I wanted to run my fingers over everything, as though that physical connection would help me understand what it meant.
We then headed down to the gallery where they keep the big stuff. Mesopotamian, Egyptian, whatever. There were huge sculptures of human-faced animals, and animal-faced humans, taken from palaces and temples in many different countries. Slabs of stone friezes. A reconstruction of giant copper-bound wooden gates. The head and arm of a giant statue, described as colossal, the rest of which is still in the sands where it was found. “Round the ruins of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone, level sands stretch far away.” One of the only poems I know by heart. I’ve always loved the desert.
Also in this room was the Rosetta Stone. The real Rosetta Stone. Encased in glass, this time. No touching. It’s beautiful, with the rows of writing so tight and so neat, and perfectly straight. It contains the same text in Ancient Greek, the everyday language of the Egyptians, and hieroglyphics. Within 25 years of its discovery, historians had cracked the hieroglyphic code. And now a copy of the damn thing is printed on every single item they sell in the gift shop, from paperweights to dish towels.
From there, DR went home, and I went back to Sloane Square to meet up with another friend, S, for a drink at the pub and some London theatre scene gossip. It was an early night home for me, though, because I needed to re-pack my bags and get myself organised for the next leg of my adventure: Morocco.
kithika