A Few Days in London

JUNE 7^th Planes and Trains and Tubes.. This must be London

Ryanair is not as uptight and stern as I thought from stories on the net and things people had said. No, we didn’t have to pay to use the toilets on the plane! Our flight from Billund (Lego capital of the world) to Stansted, near London was cheap cheap until we added 30 pounds each for a checked bag up to 20 kilos, taxes, fees for using VISA per ticket(how else can we pay on line?), and service charges. Still, the total for the flight was $72 Cdn each. Seating is general, unless you pay extra, and folks jostle for position at the gate, but we got good seats together near the front without having to bruise our elbows.

Thanks, AnnaLise and Dave for your wonderful hospitality and generosity, and for the all the tour-guiding. It was fun playing duets, too. I especially enjoyed playing the Bach Double (a favourite of mine) with you, Dave.

Our Central Hotel in London turns out to be not so terribly central, but is only 10 minutes from a tube station. We had no trouble figuring out the subway, or underground as the English call it, and popped out in a pretty neighbourhood called Golders Green. The main street is a row of brick shops, markets and businesses. The houses are mainly single or duplexes, rather than apartments, and in the middle of the residential area is our little hotel, in all its shabby neglect. We immediately dubbed it Fawlty Towers. Reception was very friendly, and gave us a choice of rooms, telling us that the main building room was much nicer and had good WiFi. Hmmm… checking out the better room, we had no need to see the other! Clean enough, but nothing had been updated or changed in…oh….maybe 40 years! Then we are told that the front desk will be closed until Friday morning for the Jewish high holiday, Shavuot! Closed!! Only the cleaning and kitchen staff (three women) will be around. We have a key to the outside door. Fine. And no outgoing calls on the phones. Incoming calls work with our extension. Oh, really? Folks who tried to reach us got nothing but busy signals. No problem…WiFi is good, so we get on Skype. Then we discover --The server doesn’t support Skype. Humph. The best ambassador for the hotel is the elderly British dear, Peggy, who serves the breakfasts and then helps clean the rooms. She is so attentive and caring, calling us all Dears and Darlings and making sure we have all we need to eat, and who left a pack of chocolate oatie bikkies for us in our room!

In our three days we managed to cover a lot of ground, but really, as usual, we wish we had longer here… like a month, at least..

On our first night we wandered around Leisceister Square, Piccadily Circus and China Town, mainly gawking at the buildings and listening to the buskers. We found a likely looking shop with ducks, chickens, etc. hanging in the window and picked up some sliced BBQ pork to take home for supper. After a tube ride to our neighbourhood, we walked a longer route to the hotel along the main road or high street. There are a few all-night grocers a few blocks from our hotel with great selection of fruit/veg, beer/wine and interesting ethnic cuts in the meat section. Jenn and Lauren, we’ll spare you the details. BBQ pork, well-washed veggies (thanks for all the warnings, everyone; the E. coli problems turned out to be mostly bean sprout related) and a round of duty free malt made for a nice holiday dinner in our kosher inn.

June 8 Churchill’s War Rooms Museum

This is a fabulous museum housed in the underground, bunkered rooms that were Churchill’s command centre for the second world war. It is of special interest to us because of Susan’s mother’s work during the war as a member of the WRENs (Womens Royal English Navy). She worked in those offices as a teletype operator, and it was moving to be there and imagine her at 19, leaving her mum in Newcastle and going to work and sometimes sleep in the confined and smoky environment, completely separate from the world above during the time that buzz bombs were a nightly London occurrence.

Many of the rooms where Churchill worked and met with his cabinet and chiefs of staff are set up exactly as they were then. It’s a large complex. Over 600 people lived/worked there for years. We shard a teary moment watching a recently made video of aged folks recalling their day to day life there.

Walking along Whitehall to Trafalgar Square we admired the monument to the contribution that women made to the war.

At Trafalgar Square Mike recognized St. Martin in the Fields Church. The crypt is now a restaurant. At a table behind, I heard a voice that sounded exactly like Ian Hampton. Not wanting to break the spell, by looking at the man, we sat and imagined Norman and mates sitting down there among the ancient pillars and arches, hatching the formation of The Acadamy of St. Martin in the Fields in the 50s. On second thought, the room may not have been a restaurant then. Back up on the street, we saw a pub or two which looked to be a more likely locale for planning what turned out to be the finest chamber ensemble around for so many decades.

A chat with a lad at the war rooms museum led us to the Princess Louise (pub) on high Holbourne for a pint in an opulent late 19^th century gin palace. It was full of photos of Pr. Louise, daughter of Victoria and Albert. Lake Louise and the province of Alberta are also named after her. The pub was packed with business-people having their post-work pint. Pubs are easy to find. Just look for the crowd of guys in suits standing around on the sidewalk, pints and smokes in hand, chatting animatedly with each other. This particular pub was most ornate, with carved wood cubicles along the bar which hold 6-8 people, two separate entrances, and a posh upstairs room. The walls were covered with paintings, many of Pr. Louise and various court scenes. The beer was ok, but it was so packed we didn’t stay long and moved on to another pub for dinner. This pub, The White Hart, claimed to be the oldest licensed premises in London, where we succumbed to ordering traditional fish and chips. They were okay, but I think that our Willows Galley is still my favourite. The pub was said to be the place where convicted criminals were taken for their last meal and pint before being taken to the gallows. Ouch!

KEW GARDENS

The words ‘Kew Gardens’ always conjures up images to me of the most beautiful and grand English gardens and conservatories, so a visit there is a must for us. Kew Botanical Gardens has its own tube stop, so it was easy to find, and the neighbourhood of little shops, up-scale homes and mature plane trees was beautiful. Kew does not disappoint. There are 3 large glass conservatories plus a couple of small ones, so even though it was cool and rainy we were able to keep warm in the glass houses. One was full of tropical plants, palms and tree ferns. Another, the newer and modern designed Princess of Wales Conservatory, had mostly desert plants, as well as carnivorous plants, etc. Kew does a lot for preserving the world’s flora, collecting and propagating at-risk species, and doing things like helping to re-establish mangroves in areas hit by hurricanes. Outside were extensive grounds with absolutely huge old trees, some planted in the 1600’s. There is King George III’s palace there, too, with a lovely garden restored to its original design. Kew is 250 years old. Mike considered it a good birding spot too, bagging 6 ‘lifers’ including a flock of rose-ringed parakeets, a surprise bird for Britain. Susan was happy with a nice look at the sweet British robin. As is our habit, we closed the place down at 6:30, and would easily have spent hours more, but we had tickets for an evening show!




BILLY ELLIOTT

We bought tickets the first night at a discount ticket place in Leicester Square. There are a couple of vendors, but the most reputable is TCKT’s, right on the edge. We unknowingly bought elsewhere, but I think we came out okay.

I had been fascinated by the movie of the same name, and then saw a documentary re the casting search for the young Billy for the American production of the musical. The story is of a young boy growing up in Newcastle during the time of the miners’ strike. He follows his heart and talent by surreptitiously taking ballet classes instead of boxing. I won’t give away the whole story, but I will say that the music, by Sir Elton John, the dancing and the production was all absolutely amazing.

CHANGING OF THE GUARD

Here it is the third day and we haven’t even seen Buckingham Palace yet! So our first stop was to Green Park where we hopped up onto the stone wall and had a good view over Queen Victoria monument circle to the palace for the Changing of the Guard. There was good and bad about going today. Good was that it was the Queen’s birthday week, so in addition to the regular Changing of the Guard, we were treated to a Horse Guards parade, a 21 gun salute and the band playing Happy Birthday. Bad was that as we sat there we also watched ominous dark clouds scuttle our way; thunder competed with the 21 guns as the rain began to pour down, and folks started heading for shelter beneath the big London Plane trees of the park.

ST. MARTIN IN THE FIELDS

Needless to say, we didn’t dally long, and sloshed our way back toward Trafalgar Square, both of us huddling ineffectively under my teeny travel umbrella. Our destination was a return to St. Martin in the Fields Church. Here we ate lunch in the catacombs cafeteria (very good, by the way, and not expensive). St. Martins hosts free noon hour concerts three times a week, and today’s show featured students from the Purcell Music School. How appropriate! We couldn’t help thinking of Norman, Ian, Simon, Michael, Phillippe, who were there at the beginning of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. (It’s been centuries since there were fields anywhere nearby.) The first performer was a young violinist who played superbly… a Bach solo sonata, a Pagganini Caprice full of fireworks, and the slow movement from Mozart Concerto #4. My, she played beautifully, and we were thrilled to finally hear music in that beautiful space, with the wonderful clear accoustics.

BRAKE-AWAY CYCLE TOURS

The sun broke through and dried things up by the time we came out of the church, so we did a 15 minute (ala Chevy Chase’s European Vacation) run through the National Gallery! We couldn’t spend longer because we were due to meet our cycle tour group, Brake-Away Cycles. Our tour was of London’s Secret Places, rather than the common tourist destinations, and was run by owner/operator Chris. We started at his ‘shop’ in the well-graffitied tunnels next to the Waterloo Train Station, and wound our way through the streets and alley-ways of East London, stopping at sites such as the tower monument commemorating the great fire of London, Jack the Ripper’s pub, the arcade which marked the very centre of Roman London, Bangla-Town, with its grocery store: BanglaCity, a modern office building nick-named the Pickle (also the Chrystal Phallus), Globe Theatre, Lloyds of London building with all the services on the out side of the walls, bell foundry where all the church bells and the cracked Liberty Bell were cast, and we rode across the venerable Tower Bridge at rush hour without a bike lane….. Just to name a few. Cycling on our comfy cruisers with the big seats was fun, but there were a few tense moments negotiating London’s downtown streets, especially with left hand driving.