I arrived in London on a Thursday afternoon. My first impression: London is diverse! I might not have noticed this since America is very similar, but since I haven’t been in America these past months, and most other countries are incredibly homogenous, the diversity of the population really jumped out at me. It’s nice to know America isn’t the only country in the world where immigrants are welcomed. I use “welcome” loosely, since American rhetoric is not particularly immigrant friendly of late.
The hostel we’re staying at is in the East End of London, quite a distance from the center, but it’s cheap, by London standards anyway. And it proves to be clean although just as old and un-updated as the hostels I stayed at in The Netherlands. It strikes me as so odd how so many hostels in Taiwan and New Zealand were really quite nice. Simple, but nice. But the quality of hostels in Europe has proved to be less than stellar, especially on the low end of the range.
The World Cup opens today, tonight actually. Like the opening of the Olympics, the World Cup is a worldwide event – although as Americans our interest in soccer is so recent that I’ve only been aware of the World Cup since the previous one four years ago. I’m hoping it will be fun and culturally interesting to be in a country that truly cares about the outcome of the Cup, while it’s in progress!!
Friday
Elizabeth arrived this morning, all fresh-faced and excited. This is her first time out of the US and she is particularly enamored with Britain and its people and culture, so this is a dream come true for her. She might, in fact, be in love with over half of the famous and not-so-famous British actors of film and TV. I think it’s the accent. J I shouldn’t kid about this. She is a very serious Anglophile and I’m sure she will be a great tour guide as we spend the next 12 days wandering about London.
We went out to breakfast at an adorable café near the Tower of London. It was a very sunny day, and this being London I found that surprising, since they say it’s always grey and rainy here. After breakfast we stopped by the park that’s just outside the Underground, Trinity Square Gardens. It was lunchtime by then and the park was filled with working people from nearby come to have their lunch on the grass and get in a bit of sunbathing. The small park was filled to capacity. I imagine a sunny day like this is a pretty rare thing for the people of London, so it seemed a good first day for us and the park was a nice way to experience what the regular Londonite was doing. It wasn’t long though before Liz’s jetlag caught up to her, and we headed back to the hostel so she could have a nap.
For dinner, we stepped down the street from our hostel to a Chinese restaurant. It was surprisingly authentic. Not like our Chinese-American restaurants. The menu and the food were much more in sync with real Chinese cooking. At least what I experienced of it in Taiwan.
Saturday
Today we shall see Westminster Abbey – the cathedral. On our way we passed the Big Ben clock and got our first look at the Thames. It’s cloudy and grey today, and looks like it might rain - so I might have been right that yesterday was special.
Westminster Abbey was quite impressive. The incredible architectural molding and features on the outside was rivaled by all manner of interesting things on the inside. I loved the sculptures everywhere, and the fact that they buried scientists, poets, writers and musicians here. Still marveling that Charles Darwin would be admitted. And the building was really awesome too, especially the Lady Chapel which is incredibly beautiful and remarkable in it's detail. In the Lady Chapel RAF window, it read: we few, we happy few, we band of brothers. A telling reminder. I also liked the aspect that the cathedral was so historical and covered a lot of Britain's history within the cathedral's 1,000 year history. Most churches are just churches built a long time ago, but this one managed to join its past with the present. The choir area was spelled Quire. Could this be right? It's so phonetic. Why does American English spell it Choir? Not phonetic at all. Strange. Where did this other spelling come from I wonder? You’re not allowed to take photos inside though, so the ones we do have were taken on the lowdown. I've added some interior photos to the gallery today. Personally, I loved the inner courtyard and the covered walkway that surrounded it.
Afterwards, we wandered around looking for food, but nothing was open. We thought perhaps it was a business district and since it was Saturday the restaurants weren’t open. But it seemed strange to me that so near to a large tourist attraction there was nowhere around to eat. How has such a business opportunity been thwarted? Even my phone was no help. We ended up wandering through several blocks of a residential neighborhood before we happened upon Pret-A-Manger. Pret, we learned, is a chain that serves coffees and smoothies along with a large variety of ready-made food like sandwiches, salads, yogurts, pastries and fruit. It was quite unexpected and delightful. I found something healthy and Liz found something more to her taste. At rock bottom prices (for London), it soon became our favorite restaurant in London.
To end our day, we rambled down a shopping street in search of Selfridge’s – the department store. You may have heard of it, as I did, from the PBS show of the same name. It was incredible! Also, crowded and insufferable! Just so many people it was hard to enjoy all the lovely things there to look at. And it had the typical department store feel of leaving one disoriented. I have to say, my favorite part was in the basement. They had a chocolate shop or rather department. In addition to bonbons of all shapes sizes and flavors, they had a library of bar chocolate from all over the world. For a former chocolate connoisseur like myself, this was like encountering Eden. I was amazed to discover so many handmade specialty chocolates from around the world that I had never seen or heard of before. It was very special. Perhaps there are occasional chocolate shops in America like this, but I’ve never encountered them. One can only hope they will be coming soon.
So far London is a rambling place. And Liz, well, I think she’s in love.
