London - Day 4 - "Checkmate"

26 December 2006

Boxing Day

After my too hot shower I sat on the bed waiting for Karen to get back and watching BBC news (on BBC 1). One of the news bites they were playing was about the law that had recently been passed (I assume) against the use of hounds while fox hunting. It was a bit surreal for me when I realized that that was a Boxing Day tradition, but I got a big kick out of it.

We assumed there were going to be lots of sales on Boxing Day, but it turns out that there weren't. This we didn't learn until we had ridden the tube over to Kightsbridge (checkmate, get it?) and discovered that both Harrods and Harvey Nicks were closed.

On our way to Victoria Station (backing up the story, a little) we saw a Military Police car. The officer was wearing a red beret and his uniform was only slightly more reminiscent of their military, but other than that he (and his car) looked the same.

We took the Victoria Line north to Green Park, then the Piccadilly Line southwest to Knightsbridge. Harrods wasn't opening again until the 28th and Harvey Nicks the 27th. From there we walked back towards Wellington Arch (avoiding the hard-sell over-priced bus tour). I changed the camera batteries at Wellington shortly after watching some people pass by in a horse-drawn carriage. At first I thought it was going to be the kind of thing you can catch a ride in, but as it passed it occurred to me that these were people out enjoying the day.

We walked through Hyde Park, to the East of the Serpentine, then north and east to Speaker's Corner. There is a nice little food stand (the kind you see on the National Mall in DC, but with better (and more reasonably priced) food) that we stopped by to take care of lunch on the cheap. We bought a bacon roll (WOW!!!!!!!), a ham/tomato/weird oozy cheese (toasted) sandwich, and a slice of pre-packaged (with tiny spork)orange carrot cake (best I've ever had).

When we were mostly through with our meal the pigeons started gathering and circling us like a pack of hyenas. Karen said like sharks, but she was wrong--"NO SHE'S NOT".

We rode the number 23 bus east to the Courts of Justice (across the street from St. Clarendon Dale, a pleasant little church through which we wandered for 15-20 minutes). Then on to FLEET STREET!!!!! Karen noticed the sign, and given our love of Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, it was a lot of fun to walk along it. I was surprised by how short it was, but it was still cool. By far the best part of it, though, was the barber shop at the end of the street and the eatery with heavily suggestive (of cannibalism, if you're looking for it) advertisements.

I was taking a picture of a nice looking statue out front of St. Paul's (one of the few statues that does NOT depict Queen Victoria), I suffered a fair bit of pigeon interference. Specifically, ONE pigeon (determinedly) interfered with a picture, and even the threat of throwing nearby children at it failed to entice it to leave.



It was then that Karen observed:

Karen: "St. Paul's has revolving doors!"
Michael: "Well it is a church..."

We weren't Catholic enough to want to pay the admission price to the Cathedral, so we walked on toward the Tower of London. Our feet started killing us again, so we caught the number 15 bus to just shy of the Tower. it was cool. We vowed to return to the gift shop (when it was open) though we decided not to pay for the tour (though we are DEFINITELY going to next time).

Tower Bridge was awesome, but our feet *really* started hurting, so we pushed on (also declining to pay the £17 a person admission price for the London Dungeon. We went to London Bridge Station (to get back to Victoria a little faster) but accidentally went up to the rail platform . There we found signs directing us down (down, down) to the tube station. A woman with a Slavic accent approached us and asked for help getting to Victoria, so we had her follow us. Apparently Jubilee Line is the one with the jumper shields (as seen previously on MI-5 from netflix).

Back across the street from Victoria Station, we tried to get Billy Elliot tickets, but they were sold out (we could have queued, but there was no way in HELL we were going to stand for only a chance of getting tickets. We stopped in the station for a bottle of Nivea (for foot rubs) and a chicken/bacon/cucumber/tomato baguette, then started back to the "hotel".

We intended to hit the Sainsbury's on our way back, but it was closed. So, still in pain, we hiked back to the Sainsbury's Local where we picked up a rather tasteless fruit and nut assortment, some dates (meh), a couple of large (2 liter) waters, and orange-pineapple juice, a blackcurrant juice, and CANDY (the vanilla-chocolate bar, the dark/orange chocolate bar, white maltzers and some "biscuits" (the British word for cookies)).

We exchanged foot rubs while watching British Deal or No Deal, the Simpsons, the end of Bedknobs and Broomsticks (YAY!), and the news. I zonked out, and woke up at the end of Freaky Friday. We played three games of Cribbage (Karen 2, Michael 1), ate a Rowntrees candy and some chocolate. As for the juice: we were drinking the blackcurrant juice when we discovered it was concentrate. We were wondering why it was so strong, and as it turns out, we should have added 5 parts water for every 1 part juice. Heh. The orange-pineapple was 1-4 juice to water. It explained SOOOOO much.

We went to bed at around 10:30 and slept (happily).

London - Day 3 - "Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling"

25 December 2006

Christmas

If you haven't figured it out yet, the subtitles so far are episodes of the Prisoner, my favorite British television show.

I learned, while Karen was showering in the TOO HOT shower next to our room, that the tickets I had prearranged through Ticketmaster for Merry Wives: The Musical were for December 23rd. Yes, that's right: The day we arrived in London. I have no idea how it slipped by me. I don't know if it was my mistake or their mistake, but suffice it to say that I felt REALLY awful, sitting on the bed in our disappointing "hotel" room, staring at the wreckage of a perfectly good (and well-looked-forward-to part of the trip) and generally beating myself up about it. I resolved to stay calm until I could procur a phone card and call Stratford-Upon-Avon and confirm (I'll tell you now that we did not end up going to Stratfor-Upon-Avon at all, but *did* get to see the Portobello Road Market instead).

We watched a weird special recap episode from a comedy show (similar to US late night comedy talk shows, but with sketch comedy) the night before that left a rather interesting impression. The show is called The Friday Night Project, and is pretty funny.

While at Sainsbury's the night before we picked up some candy (as well as the pain relief items), including: Aero (a milk chocolate from Nestle with minty "bubbles"), and two kinds of organic chocolate bars from Green & Black (which we learned later we CAN get here in the States).

(These last two paraphrased entries were made in an attempt to stabalize my mood and to capture memories for posterity)

We left the hotel room a little after 11 am. We took our normal route back towards Victoria Station, along which we observed what we assume was a junkie breaking glass of some sort. We walked by on the other side of the road, but he didn't seem to take much interest in us (something I am quite pleased by). I wanted to take his picture (for the police), but we thought it best just to move on somewhat quickly.

From Victoria we headed down Victoria Street to Westminster Abbey (where we took some pictures and listened to the Christmas bells), then on past Downing street (where there were six or so guards with automatic machine guns in and out of the black, box-like, metal gate), through Horseguards, up the portion of the Mall by the column under the Duke of York, and on to Picadilly Circus. We expected to catch tube, but it was shut for the day, so we started the search for food instead.

Next door to the Burger King (I opted not to get a picture of this menu, but it was similar to the situation with the McD's from the day before) was a little donut shop (titled, appropriately, "Donuts and Baguettes") where we bought a Mozarella and Salami baguette and a coke for £7.94 (it was FAR too busy to even try to get a seat), then down the street (west) to another little place called "Piazza Espresso Bar Italiano" where we picked up a Mordatela, Avacado, and Bacon for £3.95 (the better taste, the better deal, and not at all busy). After eating we went into a tacky tourist shop, then decided that we still hurt enough that we might as well just head back.

Back at our hotel we discovered the simple joy of the British version of Deal or No Deal. It is completely different in the Mother Country, and quite a riot to watch, because the contestants all get a box and stand around in a circle, and seem to be *genuinely* upset when the open a bad dollar amount for the playing party. Plus, the monetary offers that are made in no way reflect the expected value of the case at the time. In general, funny, but we wouldn't have watched it if there was something better on one of the other three stations. :)

We exchanged foot massages and while watching Remains of the Day tried not to fall asleep FAR too early...

...Except we did. We fell asleep at 6 pm, and I was awake again by about 11:30.
By 12:30 we were both awake and we watched the end of a strange movie with Robert Downing Jr and Heather Graham. After that we watched Laws of Attraction (Pierce Brosnan and Julianne Moore as divorce lawyers) while I tried to figure out our shopping excursion for Boxing Day.

We watched Boys on the Side (did I mention the Britiish don't censor movies?) while we planned everything we could, napped from around 4~4:30 am to 6 am at which point I tried to shower upstairs (but from that point on I didn't even try to make the attempt, and walked down three flights every morning).