Trip report: London Blitz, Part 1

[serinde]

(Better late than never.)

Redeye flight Newark => Gatwick, which I intended to sleep through. Unfortunately the plane was full and, worse yet, they left the fucking lights on for half the flight. Bleh. We landed more or less on time. I didn't check any luggage, which helped things later on, but was less than salubrious in the schlepping department. (Since they couldn't make up their minds what the weather was going to be, I had to pack more stuff than I'd wanted to.) I also made a canonical error by obeying the "pee now before immigration, because there aren't so many toilets afterwards", which a) was bullshit and b) put me at the end of a line of about eighty people instead of twenty people, as somehow an entire planeload materialized in the three minutes it took me to whiz. I got an unusually hard going-over by the official ("Who are you staying with? How long have you known him? When did you last see him? What does he do for a living?" etc.), and this might have made me cranky, except I figured it was a sort of return snark at the new lame-ass US fingerprinting policy and couldn't really blame 'em. After some mooncalf wandering around the Gatwick shopping area I managed to achieve a sandwich, chips crisps, and water & headed for the Gatwick Express. Some slight additional agitas was generated by the fact that the machine where you pick up your pre-ordered ticket wasn't working, but the agent said it never did and all I had to do was to tell the conductor my reference number. And so it was.

I negotiated Victoria Station in relatively good order, except for the getting lost part (enhanced by my getting-heavier-by-the-moment luggage), and eventually found the Underground entrance. Brief plotz from dire warnings about both the District and Circle lines having trouble, but apparently it was okay in the direction I wanted to go, and I made it to Blackfriars with no transit difficulty. However, at the station, I reached a momentary end-of-rope when I tried to phone sweh only to find that the *#%& pay phone would not take a single one of my coins. (At this point I was exhausted, overheated, and had the achiest shoulder EVAR.) "Fuckit." Headed out of the station and to sweh's building, which was thankfully only a block or so away. The friendly and helpful desk people managed to figure out where to call him and we were joyously reunited.

By this time it was about twenty past eleven, so I just hung out there for a bit and decompressed (and drank the rather terrifying machine crappucino available--hey, it was free) until noon, when we went out and found a quiet pub for lunch. PIE PIE PIE PIE PIE PIE PIE! There is a particular type of very flaky crust used in the British pub pie that I cannot yet duplicate. Probably just as well. After, he headed back to the office, and I went a-wandering. Went up Fleet Street (I think) to St Pauls, then turned towards the river and went across the wobbly bridge, which did not in fact wobble, dammit. I took a couple shots from there, upstream and down and across to the replica of the Globe Theatre. (Which latter I found much less impressive close-up.) The wobbly bridge ends at the Tate Modern, which I could give a shit about being the kind of tasteless barbarian interested only in old stuff that I am, but they have several beautiful groves of beeches around it.

I walked a little along the Southwark bank and then came back across the Blackfriars Bridge, which has some wacky ornamentation on the end--actually, there are two bridges side by side, one for trains and one for cars & pedestrians; I'm not clear on which is The Real Blackfriars Bridge, or if they both are called that, or what. Anyways. Kept going along the Embankment, then turned off to hit Trafalgar Square, which I'd missed last time. I popped my head into the National Gallery, because, um, it was free, and spent a half-hour looking at Renaissance portraits. (I got to see the Arnolfini portrait in person; very cool.) Out again, passed Canada, and then guided by my handy Lonely Planet Guide, made my way to Westminster. I passed a lot of official looking crap, punctuated by a few amusing tidbits (IHNJ, IJLS "The Viscount Slim"), saw Big Ben (and heard it strike the hour but it didn't play a little chiming tune beforehand--I was robbed!), and went into Westminster Abbey, which is really big. The historical mojo there is huge, but I suffered from definite overload. It's like world + dog is buried there--every single stone in the floor is someone's grave marker. This might be neat, except that it gets seriously tiring trying to read them all. High points included the RAF Chapel, Elizabeth & Mary's joint tomb, Henry VII and Elizabeth of York's joint tomb, and I would include Edward the Confessor's tomb except you can't see it. The Coronation Chair wasn't bad, either. On the more retardo note, I discovered the "museum" (one room) right before it closed, and was super-excited to see that they had Elizabeth's burial underwear on display. I KNOW perfectly well, thank you, that you should not take flash photos of old fabrics. Unfortunately this was my first outing with our new digital camera, and I'd thought I'd turned the flash off properly. It was not so, and I got yelled at. I slunk away in deep mortification. Also, I am no closer to learning how they made braies stay up, because they had them pinned to the mannequin. Feh.

It was fourish by then, so I hauled back to the Tube and returned to sweh's office (picking up a bottle of wine en route as a guest-gift for his parents), and--special prize!--found a Lotus Esprit parked outside. Now that is what a sports car should look like, kids. Oh yes. After I finished drooling, we began the epic transit journey (okay, subway to commuter rail to short bus ride) to his parents', had a nice Chinese takeaway (they have Chinese curry over there. It's odd, but tasty) and played a bit of cards, and then I fell over.

More later.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

Yeah, it's an Elise. An Esprit looks like this (http://images.google.com/images?q=lotus+esprit&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search) - much pointier at the front, bigger flat nose, bigger all over, rear spoiler almost always present.