June 30th 2010 - London: Day 1

Note: If the tense in my posts tend to change sporadically, it's because I'm taking excerpts from my journal and combining them with other notes and whatever memories have been miraculously preserved in my mind until now. This is to share with you as much of my experience as I can. :) 

June... 30th? I don't even know. What day is it? So much doing!

We lost a day (in my head) coming over, walked all around airports and drove through central London from Heathrow to the ibis hotel for an hour on a bus.

Helen is great, she being our British and accordingly accented tour guide through London. She's very lively and fond of acting out the histories she explains while we pass certain points of interest. The significance of driving on the left side of the road was described with much gusto and the brandishing of her invisible sword as she fended of bandits; the easier to reach your weapon with your right hand and ward off assailants when riding on the left hand side! Ah! I love that England has a history for everything. It makes America seem like an infant country.

The hotel lobby is very red and orangey and not much as I expected a British hotel to look. We had a little while to put our luggage in our rooms and freshen up before collecting as a group to take the ten minute walk to Barking Station. Right around the corner of our hotel stands a map of Barking Abbey; founded 666 A.D. The first abbey was destroyed by invading vikings 870, and all that remains of that is a broken Saxon cross. However, St. Margaret's church remains there today and the ruins of the abbey are always open to the public, free of charge. I wish I knew all this when we were there. Not that we had time to break away from the flurry of group touring, but there was a lovely little cemetery on the parish grounds I would have loved to visit. The castle-like structure of St. Margaret's makes it look like a wonderful place to see the inside of.

The tube was kind of awesome. You get packed on like sardines and shoved out like cows the second doors swing open, but it feels like part of the real London adventure! As I listened intently to Helen's instructions about how to manage the tube, I noticed she said, "Yeh" at the end of almost every sentence. "So this is what you're going to do with your ticket, yeh?" "Everyone knows where we're going and has the first stop memorized, yeh?" Adorable. =)

There was this wave of panic that came over me as we prepared to shove our way onto the tube for the first time. A momentary breath of relief and then nervous anticipation as we neared the stop. Would the station be announced in time? Would it be loud enough? Would the announcement be in such a thick London accent that I wouldn't understand it like some of Mrs. Lovett's spoken lines? Would I get left behind and end up as Group Enemy #1 by causing poor Helen to come back and fetch me? How upset would I be if forced to stay in London forever?

But there was no real reason for alarm as every last one of us managed to get on and off at precisely the right stations thanks to some great teamwork, the holding on to one another's bag straps, and the communal passing along of information. Once we got the hang of it, it was really a simple process.

We walked to dinner at Bistro 1 for bangers and mash, [Sara: Not to be confused with the sign of distress] and banana cream pie that was not like our banana cream pie straight off the tube. Our route (thanks to Google maps and hopefully my memory if it serves) went something like this:


View Larger Map

There was more orange coloredness in the restaurant. I had no idea Londoners are so fond of dark orange colors. I ate as must as I could, which was still far less than I wanted to, (I chickened out of ordering beer) and off we went to trek back towards Oxford Circus and Regent St. where we were given our first "free time" of the trip. Free time is when you're allowed to explore in a safe group of 3 or more people whatever it strikes your interest to visit within a reasonable distance of the meeting point.

We fiddled around in the Liberty store. It's really gorgeous, Gothic looking on the outside but there's not a single interesting thing inside. Maybe the prettily wrapped chocolate.

Where we were all evening reminds us of SF, just the buildings are older and you hear many foreign accents... but wait, you hear the mesh of accented races in SF too! The people here all mind their own business and seem to have an endless energy of such bustling that fascinates me. It reminds me of how Mrs. Hale described Milton in North and South. Everyone has something to do. People like us who stand around without a mug of something strong just outside a pub look--or at least feel--terribly out of place. Like we're just gawking and idling when we should be at least drinking while gawking.

[Sara drew a pigeon. IN LONDON.] As I'm too lazy to scan each page of Sara's lovely artwork, I'll put a picture of the pigeons. I know, it's not the same, but it's something...

Helen led the group to the London Palladium where we had tickets provided by our tour company (EF Tours is amazing!! *cough*Advertise. Advertise.*cough*) because of a mix up regarding how much time we were supposed to spend in London. At first they'd intended to compensate us with tickets to "Wicked" but it was absolutely sold out and so instead we were taken to "Sister Act." The theater was beautiful and made me feel quite under dressed, but the content in the musical had Angie and me seriously uncomfortable and the Uttingers were really kind in escorting us out to walk the streets of London at night rather than sit for the rest of the play.

I. Fell. In. Love. London at night is brilliant. Everything closes early so you have these virtually empty streets with the most beautiful buildings to ogle free of disruptions from other tourists' heads while the breeze after a long warm day of walking can only be called delicious. The hotels look like palaces and almost every street corner has some new and lovely thing that reminds one of this movie or that snippet of literature. We passed the home of BBC, had pictures in a telephone booth, found exquisite wrought iron gates, stone gargoyles, community parks, and Wimpole St.!

Here's something interesting I wrote in my travel journal the next day, after being thoroughly exhausted and foot weary and without any breakfast in me...

All in all I think I might enjoy being here longer, but it's not a place I'd want to live without a very good reason; like novel research. 

My mind has changed since then. You can't hold me responsible for things I say early in the morning. I was quite obviously delusional. ;)