Playing Tourist (Again) in the UK
So, what does London offer the person who has been there twice in the past six years already? Thinking in those terms, probably not an awful lot. And for partially that reason, I have to admit that I was not terribly excited about this most recent trip.
But part of the fun of going to a place you know well is taking along a person who doesn't know it. And while Kriss has been to France (a country I know less well), she has never seen England. And she had lots of ideas of places to see and things she wanted to do. So, between my own apathy about the place and her enthusiasm, I let her make many of our travel decisions. And as a result, I actually got to see a lot about London I have never seen and do things I never would have thought about doing. As a bonus, I also learned a lot about Kriss in the process.
Some general observations about this trip. The weather was surprisingly sunny. There were even some days that were hot (82!). This took me a bit by surprise and I ended up picking up quite a sunburn while I was there. Who would have expected that!
One of the side effects of the weather was that it was ghastly hot in the Underground. As a result, we took buses whenever we could and learned quite a bit about using them. I really had never done that before (I'm a big fan of subways because I can usually figure out where I'm going pretty quick). We saw a lot of the city this way as well.
Another special feature of the particular week we were there (aside from being during Wimbledon) was that there were a lot of Canadian-themed events. Canada Day fell during the time we were there and seemed to be an excuse for groups of Canadian ex-pats to cruise up the Thames in drunken revelry. But there were also a number of seemingly-unrelated Canadian-themed events going on throughout the city.
Another thing that made this trip different was that I rented a cell phone (a “mobile”) for the trip. I didn't use it much but there was something comforting about having access to a phone while I was on the ground. And for anyone thinking about doing it, I strongly recommend leasing one. It is not cheap (about $20/week with the folks we used), but the peace of mind it offered was worth it.
So, we started our trip off through Detroit this time. Originally, NWA insisted that we have a tight connection but I eventually got them to change it to an earlier MSN-DTW flight so we got about four hours of cushion in Detroit. I don't mind, especially for an international flight where it would be really hard to reschedule. We had leisurely sushi and then went to the Club where Kriss got her requisite hot chocolate and we played Quiddler for a bit.
One of the not so pleasant parts of our trip was that NWA put us on a 757 (instead of an Airbus 330) to London and back. To put it simply, the planes are just too small (3-3 seating and negligible leg room). We had exit rows both ways but that 3rd seat was a problem. Invariably, we had big neighbors.
A digression of fat neighbors: I'm not a supermodel myself, but when you're so big that you overflow your seat, I get that you're uncomfortable, but you're used to yourself. Think for a moment about the complete stranger you are sitting next to – they aren't! Going to London was the worst. My neighbor was so big he needed a seatbelt extension (which we found out later was illegal but NWA didn't care about breaking the law!) and of course he had to have the arm rest up. This left me squished against Kriss (not the worst thing) and my back jammed into the other arm rest. Not comfortable and nearly impossible to sleep with, especially since big guy insisted on staying awake all flight fiddling with stuff and generally being a slob. (OK, he was a nice polite fat slob, but he was still way too big for his seat). It was pretty miserable. How miserable? Well, I went ahead and upgraded myself to Business for my next trip.
We arrived with little additional difficulty, sped through customs and getting our bags and bought tickets on the Gatwick Express to Victoria. As our hotel was just three blocks from Victoria, this was terribly convenient. And the worst thing that happened was the look of disgust I got when I attempted to buy a soda from the on-train trolley with a tenner (no small change yet).
We got to Victoria and managed our way through the crowds and chaos, managing crossing the streets (looking both ways three times in case I was looking the wrong way), and found our way to our hotel, where we dropped our bags since it was too early to check in.
The hotel (see left) is located in a charming section of Belgravia on a quiet street smack dab in the middle of everything. The houses on the street were obviously once very fine (Mozart lived in one! -- see right) and have found new life as hotels. There were dozens of hotels in fact. Our room was small, but had a shower en suite and featured breakfast, which could be hot cereal or a “complete” (Canadian bacon, eggs, toast, tomato, and a rotating side – pineapple, or peaches). We opted for the “complete” each day, but it did get a bit tiring having the same thing each day. Regardless, the place was sufficient for our needs, quite affordable, and extremely convenient.
After dropping our bags, we had a few hours to kill and though we were feeling pretty exhausted, I thought we should get up to Camden Passage to catch the Wednesday antique fair. So, we trudged back to Victoria (catching a glimpse of some cute school children in strikingly blue uniforms – Kriss wanted to get a picture but missed the opportunity) and bought our fare cards. Fighting the desire to sleep, we made it up to Camden Passage.
Unfortunately, the past years have not been kind to what was once the best place to buy photos. The area has gentrified and many of the antique shops have closed (including my favorite photo store). As a result, there wasn't much to find. I found one album, but it really didn't have enough to make it worth buying.
We looked for lunch. The first place we thought to drop in on was a quiet looking Italian place, but we got a bit of sticker shock looking at the menu and opted for the cheaper-sounding Pizza Express. Now, it is something of a sign of being ignorant tourists that we did not realize that (1) Pizza Express is a chain that is now more widespread than McDonalds; and (2) that it is hardly fast food (or the British equivalent of a Pizza Hut as we imagined). Pizza Express is actually a fairly fancy upscale Italian place and the prices reflected that accordingly. And while it was lovely, I was pretty much falling asleep in my pie from exhaustion.
After a little more browsing after lunch, we hopped on a bus that took us through China Town and Picadilly Circus, giving Kriss an opportunity for an aboveground tour of the city. Buses, as I noted earlier, became our preferred method of transport. Being by a major railroad station made taking buses much easier. All we had to do was find a bus that said “Victoria” and we knew that it would eventually get us home. Along the way, we might weave around the city crazily and see some sights.
When we got back to our hotel, we unpacked and rested a bit and then took a stroll over to Buckingham Palace. In all my trips to the UK, I cannot recall actually ever seeing the Palace before. It is strikingly unimpressive on the ground. You begin to realize that most of the pictures of it are taking at particular angles to give the impression that it is huge and located in a sylvan setting. In fact, it is rather crowded in by city on at least two sides.
We also went for a walk in Green Park and St James Park, where Kriss was excited to catch her first glimpse of the Eye and we were both struck by all of the unfamiliar birds. We ended up at a pub called “Bag O' Nails” on our way back to the hotel (at the time, we thought it was a fairly authentic pub, but eventually we discovered that it too was a part of a chain). We got fish n' chips, I had two pints, and Kriss had a chocolate fondant for dessert (which she claims is the best dessert she has ever had in her life).
Despite our biological clocks screaming at us to sleep in, I wanted to try to get as early of a start as we could manage. So, we got up early and made our way over to Westminster Pier to catch a boat for Greenwich. We knew that the first boat did not depart until 9:30, but we dutifully wanted to have plenty of time to spare, which we did. So, to kill a spare 40 minutes or so, we walked around Parliament.
Like the palace, Parliament is also a lot more cramped by the surrounding buildings than the usual pictures suggest. Most notable were the high fences and the officers with machine guns ready to do with errant Irish or Arab fanatics. We didn't have the time to go in or anything, but we did walk around the 3/4 of the outside that you can walk around. By the time we had done that and gotten back to the pier, it was time to catch our boat.
On my previous trips to Greenwich, I had just taken the light rail and had not even explored the chance to take boats, but I have to recommend the boat. Even though I got a bit too much sun sitting above deck in the middle of the water, it was a nice way to see London and go by a number of sites that I otherwise would not have seen. First off all, it helped that we had a captain with a wry sense of humor. He not only pointed out the sights but added a bit of wit in the monologue. In addition to pointing out the Tower and the various bridges we were passing under, he also showed us the flats that were selling for 4 million pounds, the flat where they filmed part of Fish Called Wanda (one of Kriss's favorites), and even noted dryly that the only self-cleaning bridge (made of a special stone that chemically reacts to water to scrub away dirt and pollutants) was built by women. In any case, it was a thoroughly enjoyable hour-long cruise down the Thames to Greenwich!
Greenwich itself was a bit subdued. The Cutty Sark is pretty much invisible under all of the renovation work being conducted to fix it up from last year's fire. Greenwich Market (while it was the day of the antique fair) was full of crafts dealers. Luckily, my card dealers I bought from four years ago were still there and I did manage to buy some cards.
Our first destination was the Royal Observatory (again, a place I had not actually been to before). It was quite a hike up the hill and the day was shaping up to be a pretty warm one, so we did it slowly. On the way up, we passed some foreign students attempting to play Cricket (but my guess is that they knew about as much about how to play the game as we did!).
At the Observatory itself, we walked through the buildings, marveled at how fancy they had fixed up the displays (one imagines that the whole thing used to be a lot more staid before someone redesigned the exhibits for the attention-deficit youngsters), and jumped back-and-forth across the Prime Meridian. The highlight was seeing the giant camera obscura (Kriss had heard of these before but she had never seen one and I had never seen one that was so large -- filling an entire room!).
We skipped the planetarium and went back down the hill and grabbed lunch at a noodle shop (probably our cheapest meal – 10 quid – of our entire stay).
After lunch, we made it over to the Maritime Museum in search of a Turner (ironically, on loan for an exhibition in the States). Kriss had wanted to see it because Turner is her latest art "crush." Personally, I find Turners to be kind of dull. But we looked at the other sailing-themed art and looked at all of the Nelson memorabilia (of which I was most struck by how small the guy was!). We also went over to Queens House and took a very brief look at the art on display there.
But by then it was almost 3pm and we needed to head over to East Dulwich to see my cousin Sam, Kjetil, and meet their son James. By prior agreement, I called Sam to let her know that we were on our way. I was a bit surprised when a male voice answered, but figured it was Kjetil and told him that we were on our way. He asked me if I needed help finding the place and I said that I thought we would be OK but be an hour or so, hung up, and thought nothing more about it.
We got a bit turned around on the public transit as I struggled to figure out the best way to get back to London Bridge (and then to East Dulwich), but the true cock-up was the phone soon ringing with Sam asking why I hadn't called her to let her know that we were coming. I was surprised but pointed out that I had just spoken to Kjetil and told him. By the time we got to East Dulwich, the mystery had intensified as Kjetil claimed he hadn't spoken to me at all. We had a mystery on our hands figuring out with whom I had spoken!
That minor detail aside, Sam met us at the train station and walked us back to their house. This is a new one for me as they have moved since I last saw them. The neighborhood they are in now seems a little quieter, but pretty much the same. It is their house, though, that has gotten quite a bit bigger. It was not only bigger, but a good deal lighter than the old one.
We met James, who proved to be quite delightful even while occasionally fussing and showing his age. But mostly, he was enjoying his new toy – a tub full of rubber balls and water that he could splash about with and throw things in and out of (mostly out of). Kriss spent a good part of her time with him, while I caught up with Sam and Kjetil. We had dinner and then went back home (having only a minor problem figuring out our way back home). It was a lovely evening.
Our goal for the morning was to visit the Wetlands Centre, which did not open until 9:30am, so we were not in a major hurry. Also, since the trip required going out of the center (to Hammersmith), we were basically going against rush hour traffic so the cars were not so full.
The Wetland Centre is built on the grounds of an old reservoir (that they blew up and then meticulously converted back to natural wetlands). The landscape proved conducive to not only a good collection of transplanted wetland birds, but also a number of animals dropping by for a visit. As a result it is absolutely teeming with birds and makes for an unusually natural spot (aside from the steady stream of planes coming in to Heathrow) in the center of the city. It also is a fairly unnoticed attraction, yet surprisingly easy to get to (Hammersmith tube stop and then a transfer over to the “Duck Bus” – a direct ride out to the Centre). There are several 100 acres of land, with a series of trails that allow you to walk around and see both the captive birds (who live amidst samplings of regional world flora) and the much larger under-developed sections with more native birds for traditional bird watchers.
The place was a magnet for school groups (since terms were ending soon anyway) so it had a potential for being noisy, but by showing up at opening we were there an hour or so before any tours had started, so we had the opportunity to explore the grounds on our own. This allowed us to not only have the place to ourselves, but also to observe the birds when they were still waking up and had not been chased around a bit by schoolchildren.
We dutifully waited at the tour gathering point at 11am for the first tour, but no guide seemed to show for the regular tour so we appended ourselves to a group of aging Rotarians who politely allowed us to join their group (along with an even quieter Asian gentleman).
I'm not much of a bird expert, but we did see a wide variety of species and enjoyed having the time with nature. It was also the only time during our entire trip that we encountered rain, which seemed appropriate for a wetlands area.
We finished up around 2pm, with a bit of a dilemma – return to the hotel or find something to do before Evensong at 5pm at Westminster Abbey? We were both a bit tired from walking around, but it didn't make a lot of sense to go back to the hotel for only a few minutes. So, we squeezed in a trip up to the British Library to see the rare books collection (one of the highlights of my 2002 trip).
The British Library is no longer the best kept secret in town and it was actually a bit crowded there on a Friday afternoon. We did get to see all of the items, except for the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Magna Carta (both of which were off-exhibit for restoration).
From there, we went to Westminster and walked a bit along the outside of the Abbey to kill a few minutes before Evensong, but showing up early proved to be a good idea as the lines (mostly noisy American band high schoolers on tour) had already started to form.
I had never been to a church service in the UK before or even knew what an Evensong was, but I enjoyed it. A soothing mini-service that allowed us to see inside the Abbey and see how it was intended to be used, while experiencing some beautiful music and getting a spiritual boost (my austere Quaker sensibilities, as usual, finding something unusual in all the ornate decoration and history in front of me).
After the service, I was feeling a bit dehydrated and hungry. We had another 1.5 hours until our pre-paid ride on the Eye was scheduled – enough time for a snack perhaps but not really for dinner. We stopped at a snack wagon outside the Abbey that virtually closed up in front of me (it was just after 6pm). We decided to walk towards the eye, crossing the Thames and walking along the embankment to the Eye (a fairly short walk) and see if we could find something. We ended up at an ice cream shop, picked out some sodas and then bought two ice creams, leaving the store before I realized that we had managed to not pay for the sodas.
After we finished the ice cream, I decided to research how we were supposed to pick up our tickets. A few weeks before, I had ordered them online, making a guess about what time would work for the trip and deciding that we would pay the extra for “Fast Track” tickets that would allow us to bypass the queue. But when we got there, I could see the regular queue and where you bought tickets but not where you did all that Fast Track stuff. Wonderfully, it proved to be very easy: with a credit card and a very attentive staff member (apparently assigned to big spenders like ourselves), we were given our tickets, offered to opportunity to board immediately, whisked past all of the folks with regular tickets, and loaded into the next available car.
For me, it was the second time I had ridden the Eye. It was more crowded this time (Friday night in the Summer versus Monday night in the Spring), but I also found that I wasn't quite as prone to fear of heights the second time around (although I remember vividly being so the first time). Kriss was much more into it than either I or the fellow passengers were and she and I were the only ones who bothered posing for the group photo on the way down.
After the ride and buying our souvenir photo, we stopped at a place selling fresh donuts (so Kriss had an extra specially good day) and we stopped at an Indian restaurant near Victoria station. The donuts were good, the Indian not so much.
Saturday, our big plan for the morning was heading up to Highgate cemetery, which required a fairly long trip up into the northern parts of London. The area where we got out (at the Highgate tube stop) was very pretty and while we had some pretty steep climbing to do, it was a nice day to walk around.
I did not manage to get a picture, but there was one street that was so narrow that only a single (narrow) car could go through at a time and there wasn't a lot of room for pedestrians either!
Our walking tour took us by St Michael's church (which I did not realize at the time actually abuts the cemetery, but is otherwise a fairly unremarkable place. And before we descended to the cemetery, we ended up at this nice placid square called “Pond Square” (so-called because it used to have a pond which had been dried out). In its place was a public loo with quaint Victorian-era fittings.
From there, we descended a narrow and mildly claustrophobia-inducing street that was bordered on both sides by brick fences that marked the boundaries of the east and west sides of the cemetery, with a few notable exceptions like this very modern-looking home called “Valhalla.”
The cemetery itself, is an odd mixture of overgrown old graves and a few new ones (while the place was subject to neglect for many years, it has become trendy again to be buried there). Of the two sides, the west side (available only by guided tour) has the older and more famous graves, although the east side does feature Karl Marx's grave, which is faced by an impressive collection of third-rate 3rd world Marxists who wanted to gain some notoriety through close association.
The east side we were able to browse freely and had relative privacy and quiet to explore the area, although without a specific destination in mind, the place is overwhelming. 
Trees and plants grow everywhere and many of the stone have been shifted by the flora over the years. The markers themselves have worn away quite a bit making many of them hard to read. But there are many fascinating stories to be told.
As I mentioned, for the west side, you have to have a guide, but this proved to be a great thing. Our guide was quite knowledgeable and engaging and gave us a unique tour of the highlights, pointing our commonalities (like the popularity of the Roman symbolism) and the truly bizarre (the grave site of a dog food mogul who hated canines, a blind man who traveled the world and wrote books about his travels, a wealthy Jew who placed himself in a large temple that blocked the view of the city from the promenade so that everyone would have to notice him, etc.). Some of the graves were quite remarkable. So many more were completely anonymous. And all sorts of famous people are buried there, including Charles Dickens's family and the recently-deceased Alexander Litvienko.
All of this put me in the mood to find the grave site of my English hero William Godwin and his wife the proto-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. However, they are not buried at Highgate. Instead, it turned out, there are in the church yard of St. Pancras. Now, most people (including myself) tend to think of St. Pancras as a train station, but it is named after the church, which proved a bit hard to get to, but we had a little time to go hunting for it before tea at my cousin's.
First, we had to find our way back to the Underground, which proved a bit complicated as the cemetery is not particularly near by. And then we had to hunt down some lunch (it was already 1pm and we couldn't find much more than a few pubs and a McDonalds). Everyplace we found was either fast food or just too much hassle for a quick bite. But when we got to St Pancras, Kriss remembered that the British Library had a café, so we headed there and picked up a sandwich (for me) and a fruit cup (for Kriss). After that, we hurried north about a mile up to the old church.
The Godwin grave proved surprisingly easy to locate and was out in the open where you could walk right up to it. Not only are William and Mary buried there, but also William's second wife. Given how much she hated Mary, it seemed an unusual arrangement. I can't imagine that either woman would have been terribly pleased, but I guess it worked out well for Will!
After a few short minutes there, we sped back to the Underground, got to our hotel so I could pick up gifts that my Dad had sent with me for my cousin Anthony and my aunt, and we headed back to Samantha's for tea, where we arrived surprisingly punctual.
Tea was a nice way to get everyone together to meet each other without the hassle of dinner or multiple visits. I hadn't seen Anthony since Jenn and I came out in 2002 and I had never met his wife Suzanne. No one (except Sam, Kjetil, and James of course) had met Kriss.
After tea, we went back to Victoria and went searching for a place to eat dinner. This proved a bit challenging as neither Kriss nor I knew what we wanted to eat. We did find that most of the restaurants in the immediate vicinity of the train station were a bit too touristy for our tastes. We ended up at Santini's -- a fancy Italian place we walked by each day because it is between the hotel and Victoria station. The food was quite good (especially the amazing orange-infused hollandaise I had on asparagus). But Kriss managed to annoy the waiter by ordering her food wrong (asking for the meat to be well done and not ordering a wine) and some things were a bit off (a minuscule entrée and an utterly strange dessert for me). But most notably, it was our most expensive meal of the trip (at 113 pounds!). We found out later that Santini's is a restaurant where you go to meet famous people, but we did not see any of those there.
Sunday morning, we went to church. That was certainly a new experience for me, but Kriss wanted to experience Sunday mass at St Pauls, so we trundled off there. Not that I want to make it sound so bad. It was a lovely service and had lots of what Kriss likes the call “the singy bits.” The sermon (mostly about the meaning of a calling) was interesting as well, and you have a fantastic amount of time during a service to check out the artwork and decorations. That said, it is a bit surreal for a Quaker to be in a programmed service, and especially one as highly scripted as this one was. Lots of call and response. Everything carefully choreographed. And, of course, Holy Communion, which is always the weirdest thing for me. But it was all very pretty and there was something very satisfying about worshipping in London that made me very like I was on a somewhat higher spiritual plane than your typical tourist.
Getting to St Paul's was something of an adventure as the tube stop was closed on Sunday (irony!) and we had to go down to Bank and then walk back. But it was a nice morning and that was not so bad. The nearest public toilet, however, was something of a nightmare, but that is a story upon which it is best not to expound.
After church, we got my requisite Yo Sushi! experience in at the place across the street. It's no way near as much fun as my first time, and the fish is only passable (although Kriss did fairly well with her noodle choices), but it is a de rigueur London stop for me. And they have much cleaner toilets!
After lunch, we crossed the Millenium Bridge to the Tate Modern and the reconstructed Globe Theater, although we didn't go into either of them. Instead, we made our way to the pier to catch the “Tate Boat” that takes you on the Thames from the Tate Modern to the Tate Britain. This gave us another chance to go sailing and was a very pleasant way to get between the two museums (which would otherwise have required a careful choice of buses). I also got a bit of a laugh along the way when a tourist on the boat with us asked us what the big ferris wheel was (how one could not have heard of the Eye, I have no idea!).
The Tate Britain was our destination of choice because of the Turner paintings of course. Most of the better examples at the Tate were on tour in the States, but there were still a couple of rooms' worth for us to look at. My own impression was not altogether positive. Turner seemed to be very fond of yellow and white, which made his paintings look weak and unfinished to me.
I much more enjoyed the pre-Rafaelites. The Lady of Shallot was charming of course, but there were also a number of Fuesli's paintings there that I liked. I picked up a few postcards of my favorities.
After that, we caught a bus back to Victoria and had to figure out something for dinner. My initial thought was that we should try a restaurant at the park called “Inn the Park,” but as we walked over there, I found I wasn't in the mood for it anymore so I cajoled Kriss into going to China Town with me as I recalled there being plenty to eat there. But Kriss isn't much of a Chinese fan and a lot of the restaurants I remember being there, are not anymore. In the end, we ended up at “Ed's,” which billed itself as an authentic American eatery and she got a chocolate shake and I got a bottomless Coke and we had cheeseburgers and fries. We had managed to avoid McDonald's our whole trip, but we still succumbed to American fast food!
Monday was our big trip out of town and up to Cambridge – a place I have never been to before. It proved to be just as quaint and pretty as one imagines the place will be. It helped that the weather was beautiful, but it wasn't so much fun how overrun the place was with tourists. Still, it was a nice day in the country!
Like seasoned pros, we were no longer doing the Underground. Instead, we were off to St. Pancras on the bus, enjoying a nice winding tour of central London on the tail end of rush hour. We made it to the station in time for an express train to Cambridge (something we did not fully appreciate until we took the local back in the evening). We arrived at Cambridge in the late morning.
The first thing to note about Cambridge is that the station is nowhere near where you want to be. The colleges are several (admittedly flat) miles away, so you get a good workout hiking into town. Tellingly, the station is surrounded by an immense bike park where several thousand bicycles are parked. The natives know to pack their own wheels.
One of Kriss's main ambitions for the entire trip was to ride in a punt on the river Cam, so she had placed a reservation some time ago for the afternoon. Given that this was the planned highlight, we figured that our first order of business was to make sure we knew where the place (Granta) was located. This proved surprisingly easy, so we then headed toward the colleges to begin our tour proper.
Our first stop was the town square, where a market was being held. The stalls had souvenirs, a clothes, and lots of fruits and vegetables. We decided to buy some strawberries (and Kriss got a brownie) and we ate a brunch of them sitting across from King's College chapel. We then climbed a church tower that, while a bit of a difficult climb, gave us a fantastic view around the city, giving us a chance to orient ourselves.
Back down on the ground, we bought ticket's into the chapel at King's College (a magnificent medieval cathedral). On our way in, Kriss noticed some cows across the Cam from us that were grazing in a common ground. They became her obsession for the day because they were so white. And also because Kriss is easily obsessed by things like cows!
Leaving her beloved “moos” for a bit, we walked through the chapel and a nice exhibit on its history and method of construction, before ending up on the grounds of the College itself.
After our tour there, we went across the street to a café for lunch, which seemed amazingly cheap after paying London meal prices, and then a brief side trip to Pembroke College. Pembroke proved to be remarkably difficult to find an entrance to (we managed to walk around nearly the entire outside before we found an entrance), but is a fairly overlooked college. Still, it is the alma mater to a few famous personages and has a nice humble quality to it that comes from not being a major tourist site. There were only a few homeless exchange students and physical plant staff wandering about and we were left pretty much left on our own.
After that, we had accomplished most of what Kriss wanted to accomplish so we headed back to Granta to pick up our punt. We were, of course, early, but business there was quite slow (unlike the other punt operators, Granta is located away from the center and thus doesn't pick up as much of the impulse crowd) and the owner was perfectly happy to send his idle help out to earn his keep.
Punting was relaxing, but I can certainly say that I was glad that someone who knew what they were doing was at the helm. We passed many other folks who were trying to maneuver the boats on their own and they were more than a menace to the good boaters. The other advantage to not having to do the work was that he was a decent guide with a good amount of requisite college knowledge. And Kriss got to enjoy her fantasy about having a handsome punt boy sail her up the Cam and back.
The really odd thing about punting for me is that the people on the punts take pictures of the people on the shore and in the other punts. The people on the shore, though, are also tourists and they take pictures of the people on the punts. In other words, the tourists amuse themselves taking pictures of each other! No native need bother to show up, the show is basically self-sustaining!
After our hour was up, we walked up to the Clare College gardens, which are quite lovely, being extremely well tended. I tried to imagine what it would be like to go to school at a place with such a fancy garden. I suppose that the kids pretty much ignore it, and it becomes a place that only tourists really bother with.
After that, there wasn't much more to see. Many of the colleges (like Trinity) stay closed and we were there on break anyway, so there were not many people about beyond the tourists. We just took a stroll along the Cam and ended up at the lock by Jesus park, a bit north of the colleges. We found a shady spot and just hung out at the park for an hour or so, looking at the people and the boats along the river.
Our guidebook had a recommendation for a good place to eat, but when we found where it was supposed to be, it had apparently been taken over by an Italian restaurant chain. So, we ended up back at Granta, which doubles as a pub, and a busy one at that. The problem with pubs for me is that I really don't quite get the ordering thing down. The menus are all lying about but you have to go ask the bartender if you want anything, yet it always seems like the last thing in the world on their minds. I suppose that the whole ad hoc quality of the thing is it charm. But one has to eat, so you just wing your way through it.
After two pints and a hefty meal of sausage and mashed potatoes, we slithered back to the train station and caught the train back to London. Unlike our speedy express in the morning that made no stops along the way, our return trip stopped at some 15 stations along its 2 hour trip. Who knew there were so many places worthy of a train stop between Cambridge and London?
Our last full day I the UK was also the hottest day, with the temperature rising up to 82 degrees (pretty toasty when you keep in mind that England doesn't do air conditioning in many places.
One of the places that I really wanted to go to while we were in London was the Memories shop in London. The store is owned by the people who run the Bloomsbury Postcard Show (a monthly card show) in London (which, after all, was the reason we had originally made these plans to come to London in the first place). We might not be able to go to the show, but at least we could go to their shop.
However, the shop was way out in Hendon, in the far northwest part of town and an area that I knew nothing about, but armed with our 1-2-3 fare card, we trekked out there, starting with a double decker bus ride from Victoria to Camden Town station and then picking up the tube to Hendon (see how fast we've become seasoned experts at traveling on London mass transit!).
Hendon is a very Jewish part of London (a fact that is probably well known to the natives of the area, but a surprise to us – Jews being fairly invisible in most of the places we had been to on this trip). From kosher delis to travel agencies promoting trips to Israel, this was basically a British Brighton Beach.
As for the shop, I didn't know what to expect. I couldn't imagine that a place could survive on selling antique photos (particularly so far outside of the center and away from the traditional antique places) so it didn't surprise me that Memories turned out to be a frame shop. And like most frame shops, it had a lot of unframed art for sale, but in their case, they specialize in repros of famous photographs. And, at first, I was afraid that that was all that they sold, which would have made our entire journey out to the shop a complete waste. But when I bravely asked the lady at the counter if they had any originals for sale, she gathered together several albums which I perused. Kriss, seeing that I was now happily occupied, wandered off to explore the neighborhood, leaving me for a good hour or so while I selected my loot. And I had a nice chat with the lady, who turned out to be one of the owners.
After I finished up and Kriss came back, we went back to the tube and went back to Chalk Farm (one of those odd stops with an elevator instead of steps to get back to the surface) and took one of Kriss's walking tours to Primrose Hill, going slightly off course down the wrong street for several blocks and stopping for lunch. Our lunch, at a cute little Greek place called Lemonia, was one of the culinary highlights of the trip. Their signature touch was that every dish (and a whole lot else) has a lemon on it (usually a quarter lemon, if not a half). They certainly must go through a lot of fruit! The food was amazing and not so expensive by London standards (probably around 40 pounds for the two of us). The dining room was sunny and full of plants and the service (while occasionally maddeningly absent) was quick to anticipate needs. We also apparently had a brush with fame while we were there as one of the customers was apparently someone quite famous, causing the paparazzi to make an appearance and swarm around a table. Most of the clientele looked pretty posh, so who knows who it was, although Kriss suspected it might be a minor member of the Royal Family. Not bad for luncheon company!
Now stuffed (and well watered – we downed two liter bottles of still water), we climbed up Primrose Hill and took in its excellent vistas of London. The peak was crowded, which made it less fun, but we went a bit downhill and found a shady bench to sit on for a bit. After that, we bypassed what would have taken at least two underground trains, and instead took the bus over the Alfies (another of my favorite antique places from my 2003 trip). While Alfies remains one of the larger antique centers in London, it has become mostly focused on furniture (most of it hardly antique) and the little stall packed with snapshots and the Jamaican gentleman were gone. So, what I had hoped would be my second fun-filled shopping stop turned out to be another bust. Unfortunately, the age of the photo shopping in London appears at an end!
Since I didn't do any shopping, we had a few hours to kill and ended up at Kensington Park (also packed on such a sunny hot day), where we had a surprisingly hard time finding a concessions stand (haven't the British heard of the joys of making gobs of money off of thirsty park-goers?). 
We did some walking around and ended up at the Albert Memorial, where we laid under the trees for an hour or so.
After that, we went back to Victoria, walked over to the park and finally had dinner at Inn the Park, which we were only able to swing because we promised to be in and out of there in under an hour. It turned out to be a bit of an overpriced disappointment as Kriss ended up with a stringy steak and they were out of my first choice for an entrée. We made up for it by dropping by Bag O Nails where I had a pint and Kriss had her beloved Chocolate Fondant. And after that, a drop in at a souvenir shop to buy postcards and we had pretty much wrapped up our visit!
Our last morning, we did our best to sleep in as late as we could, but still be downstairs in time for breakfast. From there, a quick hop to Victoria and the Gatwick Express out to the airport, and then weaving and dodging through the crazy set-up out there (I can't imagine how Heathrow could be worse than this, but I guess I'll find out in August!).
With NWA basically abandoning Gatwick, they no longer have a Club there, but they gave us passes for the US Airways Club where we spent the two hours or so before boarding.
The trip home was slightly better than the trip there. I still had a big guy sitting next to me, but he wasn't as oversized and we even managed to keep the arm rest down, so I wasn't terribly scrunched into Kriss on the trip. Detroit customs rivaled Gatwick for chaos and disorganization, with a series of pointless lines where nothing was accomplished except making folks late for flights. The one neat thing I noticed is that they had the new air scanners (where you climb into a capsule and they blow air on you for dust – it looked pretty cool). After that, we were up the escalator and into the main terminal and back to the States. We had a badly delayed flight home (late incoming flight plus weather) and were exhausted by the time we finally got home!
So, I mentioned at the beginning that one of the highlights for me with this trip was how much it taught me about Kriss. It's probably not so strange that traveling to a foreign country brings out some of our true character. When I went with Jenn, she wanted to go to Harrod's. With Kriss, it was Sunday Mass at St Paul's. What does that mean? It would be easy to conclude that Jenn was materialistic while Kriss is spiritual, but that would be a simplification. But there were other differences as well. This trip went much smoother and was less hectic. We saw more unusual sights (like the Wetlands) yet also did some pretty major touristy things (like Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey). It was basically just different.
Shopping has certainly gone downhill. If it was hard to do antiquing in 2003, it was practically impossible in 2008. London has become so expensive and posh that the old quaint shops and stalls where you could rummage amongst the junk for a great photo are basically gone. Everything is boutiques now. That was starting to be true back in 2003, but it was process that had completed by 2008.
Not seeing much of the family was a bit odd this time around. On my previous trips, I had stayed with Sam (in 1992, 2002, and 2003) and I have always enjoyed that part. It has nothing to do with the cost of lodging that I save from staying with her, but with simply being around someone local. It's very lonely being a tourist and while Kriss makes excellent company, I like seeing Sam and Kjetil (and now James!) as well.
This year, I did something very unusual for me: I went back overseas in the same summer and (more unusually) I returned to the same place. This second trip was much shorter (only four days there) and all business. My goal was the London Picture Postcard Show (a.k.a., BIPEX) -- an international postcard show running from August 28th-30th.
This was not the original plan. Back when Kriss and I were planning our trip, we had intended it to coincide with the Bloomsbury Show (a monthly card show of mostly UK dealers that tends to happen at the end of the month). However, we didn't have the 2008 schedule handy at the time I was making the reservations. By the time I found out that we would miss the June show because it was a weekend earlier, it was too late to change our tickets. However, it wasn't too late to think about coming out again just for a show. On a lark, I checked if there were tcikets available (for miles, of course!) for the weekend of BIPEX and the rest was history...
Going to London just for a postcard show (and flying Business Class to do so) probably sounds very extravagant, but the tickets were paid for with miles and I stayed with Sam, Kjetil, and James for the few days I was there, so the costs were mostly under control. And what a show it was!
With about 100 dealers from the UK, France, and Germany (and a smattering from Denmark, Poland, Russia, and one guy from New York) and three full days to shop, there was tremendous potential. The crowds on the first day were oppressive (at the opening, the line went down one entire city block and turned a corner and went down another half block), but as time went by, it lightened up and you could get a better sense of where it was worth going and where not so much.
The weak dollar was a handicap of course, but I mostly tried to put that issue out of my mind and focus on finding unique pictures. And I certainly found that! Picture of maypoles and girl guides predominated, but there were plenty of really unique pieces with quaint British scenes. As a rule, the British dealers were cheaper, while the French and Germans were not. This was not so much the effects of the strong Euro as it was a different mindset about postcards.
It was an exhausting three days, but I enjoyed myself, made a few friends, and got some great finds. And (stunningly), I've already made plans to return in 2009!