April 2002 in the UK
England. It was my first trip overseas in eight years and the first time Jenn had been overseas ever. We kicked off our trip by my first jaunt through the new Detroit airport. Wow! Very impressed on my visit (I have to admit that it no longer impresses me as much, but then, I have spent an awful lot of time there since!).
The beginning of our trip was not so auspicious. We boarded and were all pretty much settled in. Jenn had even taken off her shoes and gotten as comfortable as one can get in NWA "cattle" class. Then they announced that there was a mechanical problem -- a "leak" -- and the flight was going to be delayed while they fixed it. None of us felt too good about being on a plane with a "leak" and there was lots of nervous laughter. Finally, they announced that we were going to have to get off the plane and board another one because they couldn't fix this one.
By the time we got off the leaky plane and boarded another one, two hours had passed and we were definitely very very late. The plane was packed full and the seats were definitely NOT comfortable. It was then that I knew that I had spent too much time in First Class to ever go back to life with the commoners.
The first day is always a bit wasted and more so since we
were so late in coming in. At customs, they seemed most interested in who I was and not so in
Jenn. I guess that women's lib really hasn't come to the UK and that as long as the husband has a
good job, who cares what the wife does?
After customs, our great challenge was getting from Gatwick to my cousin Sam's place in Brockley -- a formally industrial, but slowly gentrifying section of southwest London, a bit south of Greenwich. The typical adventurous tourist just takes the Gatwick Express to Victoria station. But no, we had to be more obscure. The trip's major mishap was discovering at our transfer that the platforms don't really explain which platform you need to catch the train you are transferring to. Either you go inside to the lobby and look at the board or you ask someone official for this great secret information.
Exhausted, we finally arrived at my cousin's place and let ourselves in (she was at work), showered, and caught some sleep for a bit, as well as taking in the place. And while my pictures here were taken on our last day, it is probably more logical to talk about my cousin's apartment first.
We'll start off with what is hands-down the most
impressive collection of audio-visual gadgetry I have ever seen and, since I'm a hi fi gear head,
that is quite the
compliment. Kjetil, my cousin's boyfriend, is a Norwegian with the perverse desire to receive not
only the full spectrum of UK television (which, for us Yanks, would barely qualify for the
cheapest American cable company's basic service), but also receive Norwegian TV. The
collected equipment necessary to receive all of this fills quite an impressive spread. I puzzled over
it for some time and it certainly gave me a good ice breaker to ask him about that evening.
Then we have the back yard (see below), for which I have the following observation. On the left side, we have her one neighbor's casual Zen garden (no, not the rocks and pagodas approach, but rather the "where ever things happen to lay" Zen approach). On the right side, her other neighbor apparently wishes to prove to the world that the Empire is not dead, that the Queen's glory still shines, and that the perfect English garden (complete with its golf course quality micro lawn and perfectly manicured shrubbery) is alive and well. And, as you can see: somewhere awkwardly in between these extremes is my cousin's humble attempt at making it look nice without giving herself a coronary stressing out over it.
After a short nap, we were feeling a bit restless and decided to take a stroll around the neighborhood. By some minor miracle, we managed to not get lost or hit by a speeding lorry (truck) careening around the corner on the left (wrong) side of the road.
Feeling a bit peckish (starved), we dropped in a neighborhood shop and bought some crisps (chips). They have interesting flavors. Now, I had been familiarized in the past with salt and vinegar potato chips, so that sea salt and vinegar just seemed like a clever ploy to make something seem fancier than it actually was. However, the shrimp cocktail flavored crisps seemed unique enough to try. Um, and no, I don't mean shrimp flavored. These did not have any shrimp flavoring. The flavor was ketchup and horseradish (exactly what shrimp cocktail sauce- flavored snack food should taste like, right?). Anyway, let's just say that it's not a flavor that I'll be asking them to stock at Woodman's!
It was well around dinner time (i.e., about noon for us sleep-starved States-siders) when Sam and Kjetil came home. We ordered Indian take- away (take-out). This, at least, was normal. It's darned good of those Brits to at least make normal everyday food like Tikka Masala and Korma.
After dinner, foolishly without giving myself a chance to let the curries settle, we jumped in the car and Kjetil and Sam gave us the budget tour of downtown London. Just like the City tour busses do ... if they were driven by a maniac norseman. Actually, Kjetil was fine, but after a bit of winding around the sights, I was definitely in the mood for a break -- even if it was at Sainsbury's to pick up essentials.
Then home and to bed. And of all the oddest things: it was the only rainy day the entire time we were there.
Friday was our big day to do silly tourist things on our
own. So, it seems appropriate to begin with the standard picture of myself across from that silly
place where the Distinguished Gentlemen gather daily to politely tell the Most Distinguished
Gentleman to sod off. I'm actually standing next to the London Eye, but I'll get to that in a
moment.
I'm honestly not too taken with playing tourist. I've never actually been to London as an adult, so it's not an issue of having seen it all before. It's just that I find the idea of going to a place to see the same thing that everyone else sees and taking the same pictures that everyone else takes to be dreadfully BORING. I guess I figure that I can go see London Bridge when I'm 80 and too feeble to experience the "hidden" London.
We began the day at the British Museum, which is largely
filled with old stuff. For the most part, this is the stuff that folks tended to throw away because it
was rubbish. The difference between it and my garbage is that the folks in question were
emperors and so on.
But more seriously, you won't find much of interest at
the Museum, unless a big hunk of rock like the Rosetta Stone (see right) interests you. OK, so
now I'm being a bit silly.... But I have a point:
That's the thing about visiting museums without reading
the background literature before you go. You never quite know what you are going to find! Yes,
I suppose the Rosetta Stone has to be kept somewhere, but I honestly had not given much
thought to where that particular place was.
Below we have some particularly interesting finds. Being an Information Technology specialist, Jenn was particularly amused by these three Babylonian tablets. Each one of them is microscopic in size (a few inches at most). The one on the left is a tablet inventory (card catalog), the one in the middle is a report on copying library tablets (a mend report), and the last one is a royal demand for tablets (interlibrary loan request).
There were many other fine things to see at the Museum. We certainly missed a bunch of them. But what we did see included an ancient man (and then we saw the bog man that he was guarding). We saw some nice Norse and Roman stuff. We even saw a nice display that (to Jenn's dismay) said that all the nifty Russian jewelry was off display because someone was researching it!
By this time, it was getting to be around lunch time and
we gave some thought to getting lunch at the museum, but the restaurant was too fancy and the
cafeteria too plain, so we opted for leaving and going out for lunch in the local vicinity.
Now, there was no shortage of food in the area -- ranging from "authentic"pubs to "authentic" hot dog stands and the ever present Scottish cuisine ("fries with that?"). But, with great luck., we killed two birds with one stone -- finding a branch of the restaurant that we had come all the way across the Atlantic to find. Yes, in the land of kidney pies, we were pilgrims at the holy shrine of ... Yo! Sushi
Yo! Sushi is one of those wonderful Japanese restaurants that does the revolving conveyor belt of Sushi dishes that roll past your table throughout your meal, tempting you. Hm! That looks good! I have no idea what it is, but if I don't grab it right now, I will have to wait another five minutes for it to come around again! (By which point in time, the dish in question may have changed its mind about being eaten, and have crawled off the plate)
The concept is that each dish comes on a colored plate. The plate indicates how much the item costs. If you eat vegetable rolls (Jenn) then you generally pick dishes with cheap plate colors. If you're Paul, however, you pick the expensive ones. At the end of the meal, the waiter counts up your plates and informs you whether your first born son will cover the costs of not. It's quite easy to go completely overboard. We did OK, as long as you imagine that the price on the bill was in dollars....
Having now filled ourselves with Japanese, we headed off to our second major destination: The British Library and its rare books room. Now, the Library isn't the easier thing to find. You emerge to the surface from the Underground and become confronted with the sheer indeniable fact that you don't have a clue where you are. After more false starts than the Ireland peace talks, we did in fact finally find the place -- a very modern library which, for some reason, I did not get a picture of.
So, what can you find in the Library's rare books room? Well, there were some lovely antique maps on the walls and I was enjoying those, when a few medieval manuscripts caught my eye. And then, I noticed some lovely Celtic knotwork in a nice book. Um... perhaps I should say: VERY lovely Celtic knotwork, which was when I decided to actually look at the name tag next to the book (the book that I was maybe six inches from) that said:
Gulp! When I was younger, I had a Lindisfarne Gospels calendar on my wall and spent hours studying the work in it. Never quite imagined that I'd ever see the real thing. So, I was very impressed. But there were all sorts of other neat things available to look at:
Of the entire trip, the Library was definitely the highlight. Best of all, it seems to be unknown by tourists and we were pretty much alone during our visit there. Except for the very confused old lady who came in looking for the Good News Bible but who had been apparently told to seek out the Gutenberg Bible instead. Who says that the only Ugly Americans are American?
Of course, having managed to get lost getting to the
Library, it was natural enough that we would get lost going home as well. In rather silly fashion,
we assumed that the trains to Brockley would be identified and fairly easy to find, especially at
Rush Hour. But, of course, that was naive of us. And, again, we managed to totally confuse
ourselves (and even lose each other) in our effort to find a train home.
The upshot of our misadventures was that by the time we
actually got home, it was time to go out again -- this time to go up the London Eye. The Eye (see
left and right) is the huge ferris wheel built to celebrate the Millenium, along with the Dome, in
Greenwich. It very slowly goes around (probably a good thing, given how high up it goes) and
you get one circle around -- which takes about 20 minutes. The ride is operated by British
Airways and every passenger goes through security screening to get on board. I jokingly thought
that they were just trying to create the total "flight" experience -- until it was pointed out to me
that The Eye would be a prime terrorist target (why do folks always point out things like this
BEFORE you get on board?).
I took many pictures and even a few of my cousin and Kjetil, but the pics mostly did not turn out, except for the ones of my cousin, who has promised severe bodily harm if I publish her pic here.
After the ride on The Eye, we ended up having dinner at an unassuming place that no one had been to before. The food was astounding. I had beef salad and sea bass and I remember it being one of the finest meals I have had in my life. Unfortunately, I have no idea where we ate.
Saturday was more of the same adventures in London tourism (after all, we didn't exactly have a lot of time to do everything). We started the morning off "minding the gap" on the Underground and going to the Customs House, where Jenn had learned there was a nice display of Russian art.
Unfortunately, we learned when we got there that the
exhibit was mostly 18th and 19th century -- eras that have no interest to Jenn -- and the
admittance
was very steep. So, instead, we visited the gift shop and then went out to the courtyard, where
they had timed fountains that you could walk our amidst -- thus providing the one essential
Customs House photo op (see right).
From here, we went on to Harrods so that we could gawk at the prices and the people who can afford to pay them. Harrods, if you don't know already, is the sort of place where one can buy only the very best clothing, dishes, crystal, and so on. And every tourist seems to want to go there just to have a bag from Harrods to carry around the rest of the day.
I'm obviously not too taken with expensive new stuff, but what did catch my attention was the food section and its amazing collection of cheeses. You have not seen a true cheese selection until you've been to Harrods, and I can say this even after living in Wisconsin. Needless to say, half of those cheeses probably caused 90% of the debates of the Agriculture Chapter of the EU, and most of them are forbidden to bring into the United States. But they are still fun to look at.
After Harrods, we went on to the National Gallery,
walking by a few overpriced antique stores along the way and a Quaker Meeting House that was
doubling as an art gallery.
The National Gallery was actually a bit of a
disappointment as its more famous exhibits (like Van Gogh's "Sunflowers") was off display
(recognize a similar theme from yesterday?). However, I still found things to catch my
interest.
Given our divergent interests, Jenn went off to the medieval section, while I stayed with the Classical and Impressionist sections. My two favorite pieces, which I came back to admire again and again were these ones by Pissarro (on the left) and by Gainsborough (on the right). I actually considered buying a print of the Pissarro, but given that we were going directly out to dinner, I knew that I really couldn't lug it all round with me that evening. Instead, I figured I could buy a copy on line from the Gift Shop. However, when I got home, I found out that they don't sell it on-line. So, that was a major loss. I guess I'll know better next time.
It was probably better that we had split up, as we had barely got through the sections we were interested in before the Gallery closed.
When the Gallery closed, we went over to Trafalgar Square
(see left) for a few minutes, and then headed to Leicester Square to meet up with Sam and Kjetil
for dinner. Since we were early, we decided to explore the local neighborhood a bit. The place
was quite lively and there were street performers (see below) ranging from a midget balancing
bicycle wheels on his body to an American fundamentalist preaching the Good Word to the
heathen masses and generally making an ass out of himself.
We had a misunderstanding about where we were all
supposed to meet up and, as a result, we were all about a half hour getting connected. Once we
did, we had to move quickly to get to our restaurant before they gave away our reservation.
Tonight's gastronomic exploration was at Cafe Fish. The speciality (which Kjetil and I shared) was a HUGE plate of shellfish for two people -- shrimp, oysters, clams, mussels, and all sorts of other mollusks. I had never stuffed myself silly on shellfish before and after two beers, I was pretty giddy. In fact, we all were (Jenn must have been on a contact high since she stuck to water and had the steak).
After dinner, while heading home, we were nearly run down by two boys and a girl chasing each other outside a pub, wearing school uniforms (but obviously too old for them). Kjetil explained that it was a new fetish fashion -- or, perhaps, an old fetish that was now a fashion?
Aside #1: Fine Dining in Leicester Square:
(A restaurant near Leicester Square)
A lovely Sunday, perfect for some time in Greenwich (the
picture above is of the Observatory, which we did not actually make it up to).
Rather, I finally got to put some quality time into antiquing. Or rather, I got to do flea marketing. As it turned out, I would have better off going to Greenwich on Thursday, since that is the Antiques day. Sunday is Crafts day. Ick!!
Still, I did manage to find a few stereocards, which is much better than some of my trips manage for me. Being a nice day, a weekend, and a major tourist spot, the place was packed with people.
Sam and Kjetil (who had avoided joining us on my antique run) picked us up so that we could go out to Kew Gardens. But first, we had some Indian food at a buffet in the area. By this point, I think we had basically been Indian'ed-out and we stayed away from that cuisine for the rest of our trip.
Kew Gardens is a lovely huge outdoor and indoor garden set up with a wide assortment of flora from all around the world. While located near Heathrow Airport, it is still a nice place to go on a nice day. It is, unfortunately, located on nearly the other end of London, so it took considerable time for us to get to it. By the time we did, it was late afternoon and we only had about two hours to do the whole thing, which naturally could not be done.
Below we can see that the lovely weather of England has been good to all of the indigenous tropical foliage for which the British Isles are famous.
After our very brief stay at Kew Gardens, we had a brief visit with my Aunt and Uncle. In true English stereotype, we sat in their garden and had cake and tea.
And after that, we piled back in the car and drove home, having managed to pretty much drive full circle around London that day.
For dinner, Jenn cooked for everyone, while Kjetil and I watch Norwegian soccer -- a fact that Jenn teased us for immensely, especially as we put away a few lagers doing so.
Then to bed to be our best for our trip up north the next morning.
Monday morning it
was off to the train station for our great trip north. The train was crowded but fairly pleasant
aside from being stuck at what was basically a table for four with very narrow seats, across from
an American couple trying to figure out their fancy new camera.
Yes, it was the "new" Brit Rail.
After those two uneventful hours on the train, we were at York itself. I had been there for a day in 1992, which of course made me an expert of sorts. Our first mission, however, was to find our B & B -- allegedly a nice stroll from the train station. That is, if you aren't hauling luggage and a wife with sore feet (what's with me and wearing out my traveling companions? -- see my October Seattle trip for more of the same). It took well over an hour to reach the place, and that was after giving up on the map and helpful suggestions from a shop keeper.
The B & B itself was pleasant and unoccupied, as the owner was not officially taking guests this week, but had made an exception on our behalf. Now checked in to our room, it was time to set off and explore the town. This time, we took the city bus back to the town centre.
By the time we got back, it was definitely lunch time and we did the ultimate silly tourist thing and stopped at a pub right in the center of town itself, right in the middle of tourist trap heaven. But the place was actually not so bad. It was one of those ANCIENT stereotypical pubs, like something you expect to be populated by Hobbits or the Keebler Elves, half sinking into the ground. In the States, it was be called something like "Ye Olde Inne" and be decorated with pewter plates and mugs. I don't remember if the place was decorated or not, but that didn't impede on the quaintness factor heavily. I had the lunch special (faggots and pease pie) with a pint of ale. Having no idea whatsoever (beyond the ale) what I was ordering, I was content with meatballs and peas cooked to death. Better than Jimmy Sommerville on a stick, I suppose.
After lunch, we did the Jorvik Center. In the past ten years,
they've added a very tacky "time machine" intro to the layout, but the trip through a viking village
is still a must-do when in York. And the displays of real artifacts and the presence of history
interpreters (which half-decent garb) was a nice addition.
Feeling a need to find a little more authenticity, we hunted down the Archeological Center, whose website advertized that they offered hands-on work for real digging, real dirt, and real old stuff. Unfortunately, they don't really offer this on a Monday when the kids are in school (without prior arrangement), so the place was locked up and closed. Still the Center was in a lovely old church off the beaten path a bit and it was a good stroll, even if we did manage to get lost (again).
With our luck pretty poor and actually running out of things to do in York, within only a few hours of arriving, we strolled through the "shambles" which are full of gift shops of all sorts and varieties, perfect for tourists. The shambles are actually fairly interesting, being a series of narrow streets and walkways that only a medieval town planner would have tolerated.
We ended up at the York Minster (which is the cathedral structure you probably keep noticing in all the pictures above. One of those very grand old cathedrals, it dominates the city. I did not get any pictures however on our first day because they charge for a license to take pictures and we were feeling pretty cheap. Still, it was quite pleasant to walk around.
After an hour or so of gawking, we were both pretty tired and we went outside to discover that at 5pm, the city starts to really go to sleep. The weather turned decidedly colder and most of the folks were clearing out.
It was tea time, so we did tea. We hadn't bothered doing it when we were around real English folks, but since we were now officially tourists, tea seemed the thing to do. We didn't have simply tea, but we didn't really do "high" tea either -- call it "middle" tea. We had scones, a pot of tea, and some jelly. All very proper, I suppose.
After tea, we hit a few antique shops and I got my most serious antiquing in of the trip, finding some cheap postcards.
But, by then, the town was entirely closing down and there was even a threat of a sprinkle or two. We pondered a number of options: finding a real restaurant to eat at (but neither of us were hungry since we had just had tea), going to see a movie, or in some other way killing time since we had thought that we would do a "ghost walk" that evening. The reality was that we were both tired from trekking all day, so we decided to just return back to our B & B. After waiting a while for a bus, we decided that we weren't going to find one this time and ending up (for the second time) walking to the place. A good thing, too, since we never saw a bus the whole way back.
We watched some telly for a bit and then decided we really should eat something and tried a pub across the street from our B & B. The place was near closing and since we weren't really hungry we ended up with chips or something like that. After closing, we trekked over to a grocery store and picked up some munchies, which we took back to our room and consumed in bed watching a TV show about archeology in modern London.
Tuesday morning we awoke and were treated to an "English Country Breakfast" which was basically suitable for feeding the entire country of England, consisting of meats, eggs, toast, and all sorts of other stuff. We were definitely well fed for the day.
Bidding our host farewell, we lugged our luggage back to the train station and checked it for the day, turning our attention to taking a walk on the city wall. The walk was nice, except for a few parts that scared me a bit where the walk gets narrow and the lack of a railing made me a bit nervous about falling.
We ended up at the Castle Museum which features a large display on the history of York. A bit heavy on the past 100 years, it was still an interesting place to spend a few hours. The display on York during WW II was particularly interesting, with its displays of War memorabilia. The fashion section was also interesting. Displays of weaponry were less impressive and something of a let down.
The Castle Museum might not have been our cup of tea (in that it heavily covered historical periods that we generally were not too interested in), but it did help us kill the majority of the morning, leaving us with the matter of what to do the rest of the day. Having tired of interesting native cuisine choices, we ended up at everyone's favorite Scottish restaurant for lunch -- perhaps one of the DIRTIEST McDonald's I had ever been too.
Over lunch, we decided to spend the afternoon at the Minster, this time spending the money of licenses and tickets and getting the whole experience.
So, back at the Minster, I bought a photography license
so I could take all of these lovely pictures (above) of the place. There really are some lovely
things in the place.
One of my favorites was this large wooden chest (badly warped) used to house the bishop's cape
and dated to the early 13th century (i.e., to the period when my SCA persona was alive).
The Minster is an incredible hodgepodge of artifacts donated and collected over an 800 year period and simply reading the dedication plaques is an adventure. A fifty year-old statue can be standing right next to a 400 year-old gate.
I decided to attempt to climb the tower and go up on the roof of the Minster. I had done this before in 1992, which was when I really got to feel the effects of my smoking, but since I had quite smoking eight years ago, I figured I might have a better chance this time. Of course, I was also now ten years older and hadn't really exercised much lately either, so the climb was pretty tough on my system. Still, I got these fabulous pictures (see below) of the city. The view was quite good and the visibility was good too, so I had lots of good opportunity to pick up shots. Jenn decided not to join me and headed in the other direction and toured the crypt instead.
Having now exhausted everything that we had come to York
to do, we would have actually become a bit bored, except that it was also actually about time to
be heading back to the train station to get our train back to London. So, we did some quick
shopping (Jenn hunting for some magazines to read on the trip home and me looking through the
music stores for some CDs that I might not be able to find in the US) and then got to our train.
Jenn picked up a few fashion magazines, but I really didn't find anything that I felt like spending
over $25 for a CD of.
The train back to London was pretty empty yet somehow our assigned seats were right next
to the door to the smoking car. Thus, every time the door to that car opened up, we were hit
with a wave of smoke
I know that I napped for a bit of the return trip and I seem to recall that Jenn did as well, but otherwise the return trip was uneventful.
Aside #2: A Treatise on the Pub Signs of York:
One of the truly quaint things about a stroll through the shambles of York are all the very pretty pub signs. Many of them show tremendous artistic ability, as well as a strong desire to preserve the atmosphere of the place. Of course, everyone's favorite Scottish restaurant, not to be outdone by the others, gave it their best shot as well (see far right).
We got to London around dinner time and decided to go back to Leicester Square and try out Chinatown, settling on a nice looking Chinese restaurant. We had a pretty good fixed price dinner, but a couple facts of life of the UK were definitely taking their toll: the ever present smoking (if the restaurant had a non-smoking area, it really wasn't) and the ever present charge for "still water." Having our food ruined by other folks' smoking is obnoxious, but having to pay $2-3 a glass for tap water is worst of all. Given that Jenn lives on the stuff, we found the charges to be an unexpected expense of traveling. (We learned in retrospect that we had probably been given bottled water in a glass, but since that was not what we asked for, it seemed darkly like an attempt to rip off the foreigners at best).
Getting lost (again) on the way home was the icing on the cake and I think we were both pretty ready to head home by the end of the day.
While we didn't eat at the restaurant pictured below, I couldn't resist taking a picture since the place has been memorialized so well by Warren Zevon in the song, "Werewolves of London":
In the morning, we caught the train out to Gatwick (heading the opposite way of most of the commuters) and arrived in plenty of time for check in. Shopped at the Duty Free, where due to a miscalculation of how much money we had left over, Jenn was unable to buy Lemon Curd (a point that she delighted in reminding me of later). Aside from that, the trip home was uneventful.
I created this page about eight months after the trip occurred, based upon the notes that I took at the time. The trip in many ways was a major turning point. Within a week of returning, Jenn and I had decided to separate and the speed of those events overtook the trip. Those factors made it a bit painful in fact to go back over the trip in my mind. Perhaps they have even colored what I ended up including here and how I treated various subjects. Still, it would have been a shame to have neglected the adventure simply because of events that occurred afterwards.