The alarm went off and I jumped out of bed to get showered and ready to go. We had tea and muffins for the last time in the room. Kat's rash was pretty bad today so she was happy that was the last night on that bed. We think she was allergic to the detergent they used on the sheets. We finished packing our bags, checked out and said good-bye to the apartment at 6:45 in the morning.
We lugged our stuff to Earl's Court station for the last time and caught the Piccadilly Line Westbound to Heathrow terminal 4. There weren't any seats available on the train even that early in the morning. There were a few other travelers with luggage getting on the train and they stood with us near the doors. When we were one stop away from the airport, the train hit a bump in the track and one gal’s bag fell over. The metal handle struck Kat on the side of her knee. It seemed that throughout this whole trip Kat attracted chaos to her, and this was just one more example of it.
We left the train at terminal 4. Our Oyster cards worked fine thanks to Paul, our favorite tube attendant. I had printed off our boarding passes at the apartment the previous evening. They were fancy eliteAccess First Class tickets and got us into the fast track check-in lines. We checked our bags and then went through the priority line at security. We were able to use the Sky Team lounge at Heathrow, where we sat and had some juice and I had a banana and some breakfast sausages. Kat used her computer while I read my book. I was getting close to finishing it. I was still on my first one for this trip; Kat was on her third. I definitely packed too many books.
Our flight from London to Newark was nice. We had the sleeping pods again for that segment of the journey home. Our flight attendant was a bit surly, however. We thought she was having a bad day because she was short with everyone around us. Kat and I were both sort of grossed out by the guy across the aisle and in front of us who had taken off his shoes and socks and was using his toes to change the channel and make selections on his entertainment console. He had his naked feet propped up on the seat back in front of him. I was surprised our flight attendant didn't lay the smack down on him. When we arrived in the states, they passed out customs forms for us to fill out and the announcement said that everyone needed to fill one out, but only one per family. When Kat tried to clarify with our surly attendant she said we didn't count as a family because Kat didn’t change her name when we got married. That put us in a bad mood.
Since we apparently weren't a family, we went through immigration separately. The gal at the immigration desk asked Kat if she was traveling alone and she said, “No, I'm with my new husband,” and she pointed at me. Kat explained what the flight attendant told us about her not changing her name, but the gal said that was a load of hooey. When I came through she said next time just fill out one and don't let anyone say we're not a family.
At Newark airport we went to use the President's Lounge, but got held up by the desk clerk checking credentials. He said we needed to be on an international flight to qualify for the lounge. I tried to explain that we were on an international flight and that we had just got off of the trans-Atlantic portion. He asked to see the boarding pass that I luckily still had on hand and then begrudgingly let us in after a passing comment about showing the international boarding pass first next time. After we found a seat I double-checked the boarding passes and noticed that both had the “INTL” stamp on them, so he was just being an incompetent boob. We had a 3-hour layover until our final flight, so we got comfortable. I worked on my blog while Kat read her book and we drank some wine until it was time to go.
Our last flight was less than impressive after our goo-filled pods. I broke two of the complimentary earphones before they gave me a pair that worked. We spent our flight watching stuff on our tiny tvs, reading, and sleeping. The food wasn't quite as good as our previous in-flight meals. Kat made me eat her lobster. We landed in Seattle at 8:10 pm, after more than 20 hours of travel time. We collected our bags and called for a shuttle back to the Clarion Hotel. It took them awhile to pick us up, and we finally got back to Kat's car around 9:30. From there we plotted our path to the cabin out at Grapeview using TomTom. It took us another hour and a half to get there. When we did, Mom & Dad were there to welcome us home from our trip. We stayed up chatting with them for a bit until we got too tired to stay up. Travel had worn us out.
We spent the next couple days at Grapeview recovering from our trip. We were both pretty jet-lagged and had problems sleeping through the night. I would wake up at 4am and then have trouble getting back to sleep, then my energy levels would take a nose dive around 2pm the following day. We didn't do much on Saturday other than read our books and relax. Sunday we had a bunch of friends and family from the area come out to celebrate our return with us. It was very nice to see everyone and have such a warm welcome. After the party had died down and we had had our fill of food and drink we packed up the car and made the long drive home to Eugene. We arrived around 11pm to a nicely cleaned house, thanks to Heidi, and our two silly kitties that had missed us very much. Despite our fantastic vacation, it was still nice to finally be home.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Thursday, Our Last Full Day in London
We slept in on our last day in London, being exhausted from our Paris day trip. When we finally got up, we had tea and muffins in our room again. I uploaded Paris pictures and set about planning our day. I still had a pretty long list of activities on my checklist before we went home. I had hoped to catch the inspection or changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace that happens every day at 11:00 am, but it was already getting a bit too late for that. Rick Steves let me down again when I attempted to locate a good place for high tea in my guidebooks. Instead, I went online and put together a list of places offering tea service in our price range and located conveniently near one of our tube stops. The best fit turned out to be tea at the Kensington Palace Orangery, something I vaguely remembered from my first trip to London. We decided to try hit the Orangery around 4:00 for tea.
Other items on my list included seeing Westminster Abby's crypts, tour the Apsley House, visiting the Tate British Art Museum and the Tate Modern Art Museum, locating Speakers' Corner and the Marble Arch near Hyde Park, finding a wine bar near the Waterloo Bridge, and riding the London Eye at night. We also had two more meals to consume in London, and I wanted them to be remarkable so I listed out some options from the guidebooks and the internet to check out as we walked around. It was already nearing lunch time, so I scribbled down a couple options in my journal that were on the way into town.
We got off the tube at South Kensington station and wandered down Thurloe St. to find Cafe Daquise, which Rick Steves had described as a casual Polish eatery where you could get a kielbasa for lunch. When we found the address we were surprised to see a fancier Polish restaurant in its place, Gessler at Daquise. We gave it a try and had a unique fine dining experience. The chefs brought the food out in their pots and pans to deliver, arrange, and garnish directly on our plates. We felt very special and we were glad we had put on nicer clothes for our last day.
I ordered a Zywiec Polish beer for us to share and we each had the barley soup as a starter. Kat had the stuffed cabbage rolls with dumplings and I had pierogis filled with fresh strawberries and covered in cream sauce. Everything was delicious, and I helped Kat eat her cabbage rolls.
After lunch we got back on the tube and took it to Victoria station. We wandered past Buckingham palace, where there was still a crowd of tourists despite it being 2 o'clock in the afternoon. We saw some fearlessly foolish guy climbing all over the Queen Victoria Monument in the middle of the roundabout in order to pose for a picture. After taking some pictures of our own, we left the crowds behind and wandered through Green Park toward Apsley House and Hyde Park. We decided against paying to go in Apsley House and continued on our way toward Speakers' Corner and the Marble Arch. Kat said she wasn't that interested in either of the Tate museums so I crossed those off the list.
Kat had gotten an email overnight about a potential job opportunity starting very soon after we would be getting home. Her mind was preoccupied with financial issues and the stresses of applying for the job sooner than later. She was anxious to get back to the apartment and spend some time updating her resume and writing a cover letter. I figured we should cut our walk short and head back to the apartment soon. It was getting close to tea time, and the Orangery was sort of on the way back there so we agreed to do that before returning home.
First we stopped by Speakers' Corner and the Marble Arch. There wasn't anything of note going on at the moment. I had read that things really get interesting on Sunday here, but there was nothing worth seeing today. We took the tube from the Marble Arch to Queensway station. Queensway is probably the worst station we visited. It was very deep underground and the trains were only accessible via large elevators or a set of spiral stairs 121 steps long. One of the elevators was broken, so we stood in a long queue just waiting to get out of the station and then packed into the lift car when it arrived. Definitely try to avoid Queensway when you visit London.
Once we left the station we wandered down Bayswater Road toward Notting Hill and Kensington Palace and the Orangery. We took some pictures in the gardens, which were beautiful, and of some of the local fauna. Kat liked the strange looking birds and the squirrels and pigeons who seemed very tame from being fed bread scraps by visitors.
Our high tea at the Orangery was very decadent. We ordered the Enchanted Palace menu, which included finger sandwiches, a scone, sweets and tea for each of us. Kat was really excited about the finger sandwiches: the cucumber one in particular. She gave me her salmon sandwich. The scones were delicious and had a hint of orange in them, with no chunks of fruit (for which Kat was grateful). The sweets included a shortbread cookie stuffed with cream and raspberries as well as a miniature chocolate cake with a woman's face imprinted on the icing. They were both tasty and I enjoyed eating the woman's face. We were very pleased with our high tea experience and the day was a nice one to be outside.
After tea, we took the tube home from High Street Kensington station. Once we were back at the apartment I sat down to take notes in my journal, eat some candy, and drink my last beer while Kat got on the computer and applied for a job. That took her awhile, but when she was done she was much more relaxed and ready to enjoy the rest of our time in London. I tried to book tickets online for us to ride the London Eye after sundown, but I was unsuccessful. Apparently you need to make reservations a good deal ahead of time for that. Something to keep in mind if you ever want to try it. I crossed that off my list as well as the wine bar at Waterloo bridge since I wasn't able to find anything like that on Google maps. I didn't want to spend our last night searching for something that might not exist anymore. We had missed our opportunity to see Westminster crypts, so the only thing left to do was find a place to eat dinner.
Rick Steves recommended dinner at Maggie Jones for a unique experience. I called ahead and put in reservations for the two of us at 9:00. We took the Piccadilly line to High Street Kensington and found our way there. The nearby St. Mary Abbots church was ringing its bells maniacally as we passed by. We were fascinated by Maggie Jones when we went inside. It felt like a living piece of history. Our table was up in a cramped attic space. The narrow wooden stairway had a thick rope for a railing. The tables and chairs were all mismatched wooden antiques and the space was lit by candle light and low trimmed lanterns. It was enchanting. The attic was warm that evening, but we didn't mind. The menu had many items we had never seen before, including pigeon, and we had to get recommendations from the waiters. One of our waiters was a very soft-spoken, odd, but charming young man who gave us his honest opinions on the dishes. Kat ordered the rabbit stew and I had a roasted half chicken with stuffing. We ordered peas with bacon and sautéed potatoes as sides. We had a magnum of house red wine that we shared and paid for only what we drank. That reminded me of my London trip with my parents where we had found a great Greek restaurant that served wine in the same way. You drink a lot of wine that way. Our meals were delicious and the bill ended up being just enough to use up my remaining pounds. We headed home full and happy. It was a great place to end our trip.
At home we popped open the champagne our flight attendant had given us on our trip over and mixed it with the rest of our “exotic” juice. We drank our pseudo-mimosas while we packed our bags for our flight home the next morning. Kat had to help me finish my champagne. I set the alarm for 6am and went to bed around 1am. Kat wasn't feeling tired yet so she stayed up to look at the pictures I had uploaded and correct my grammar on the blog.
Other items on my list included seeing Westminster Abby's crypts, tour the Apsley House, visiting the Tate British Art Museum and the Tate Modern Art Museum, locating Speakers' Corner and the Marble Arch near Hyde Park, finding a wine bar near the Waterloo Bridge, and riding the London Eye at night. We also had two more meals to consume in London, and I wanted them to be remarkable so I listed out some options from the guidebooks and the internet to check out as we walked around. It was already nearing lunch time, so I scribbled down a couple options in my journal that were on the way into town.
We got off the tube at South Kensington station and wandered down Thurloe St. to find Cafe Daquise, which Rick Steves had described as a casual Polish eatery where you could get a kielbasa for lunch. When we found the address we were surprised to see a fancier Polish restaurant in its place, Gessler at Daquise. We gave it a try and had a unique fine dining experience. The chefs brought the food out in their pots and pans to deliver, arrange, and garnish directly on our plates. We felt very special and we were glad we had put on nicer clothes for our last day.
I ordered a Zywiec Polish beer for us to share and we each had the barley soup as a starter. Kat had the stuffed cabbage rolls with dumplings and I had pierogis filled with fresh strawberries and covered in cream sauce. Everything was delicious, and I helped Kat eat her cabbage rolls.
After lunch we got back on the tube and took it to Victoria station. We wandered past Buckingham palace, where there was still a crowd of tourists despite it being 2 o'clock in the afternoon. We saw some fearlessly foolish guy climbing all over the Queen Victoria Monument in the middle of the roundabout in order to pose for a picture. After taking some pictures of our own, we left the crowds behind and wandered through Green Park toward Apsley House and Hyde Park. We decided against paying to go in Apsley House and continued on our way toward Speakers' Corner and the Marble Arch. Kat said she wasn't that interested in either of the Tate museums so I crossed those off the list.
Kat had gotten an email overnight about a potential job opportunity starting very soon after we would be getting home. Her mind was preoccupied with financial issues and the stresses of applying for the job sooner than later. She was anxious to get back to the apartment and spend some time updating her resume and writing a cover letter. I figured we should cut our walk short and head back to the apartment soon. It was getting close to tea time, and the Orangery was sort of on the way back there so we agreed to do that before returning home.
First we stopped by Speakers' Corner and the Marble Arch. There wasn't anything of note going on at the moment. I had read that things really get interesting on Sunday here, but there was nothing worth seeing today. We took the tube from the Marble Arch to Queensway station. Queensway is probably the worst station we visited. It was very deep underground and the trains were only accessible via large elevators or a set of spiral stairs 121 steps long. One of the elevators was broken, so we stood in a long queue just waiting to get out of the station and then packed into the lift car when it arrived. Definitely try to avoid Queensway when you visit London.
Once we left the station we wandered down Bayswater Road toward Notting Hill and Kensington Palace and the Orangery. We took some pictures in the gardens, which were beautiful, and of some of the local fauna. Kat liked the strange looking birds and the squirrels and pigeons who seemed very tame from being fed bread scraps by visitors.
Our high tea at the Orangery was very decadent. We ordered the Enchanted Palace menu, which included finger sandwiches, a scone, sweets and tea for each of us. Kat was really excited about the finger sandwiches: the cucumber one in particular. She gave me her salmon sandwich. The scones were delicious and had a hint of orange in them, with no chunks of fruit (for which Kat was grateful). The sweets included a shortbread cookie stuffed with cream and raspberries as well as a miniature chocolate cake with a woman's face imprinted on the icing. They were both tasty and I enjoyed eating the woman's face. We were very pleased with our high tea experience and the day was a nice one to be outside.
After tea, we took the tube home from High Street Kensington station. Once we were back at the apartment I sat down to take notes in my journal, eat some candy, and drink my last beer while Kat got on the computer and applied for a job. That took her awhile, but when she was done she was much more relaxed and ready to enjoy the rest of our time in London. I tried to book tickets online for us to ride the London Eye after sundown, but I was unsuccessful. Apparently you need to make reservations a good deal ahead of time for that. Something to keep in mind if you ever want to try it. I crossed that off my list as well as the wine bar at Waterloo bridge since I wasn't able to find anything like that on Google maps. I didn't want to spend our last night searching for something that might not exist anymore. We had missed our opportunity to see Westminster crypts, so the only thing left to do was find a place to eat dinner.
Rick Steves recommended dinner at Maggie Jones for a unique experience. I called ahead and put in reservations for the two of us at 9:00. We took the Piccadilly line to High Street Kensington and found our way there. The nearby St. Mary Abbots church was ringing its bells maniacally as we passed by. We were fascinated by Maggie Jones when we went inside. It felt like a living piece of history. Our table was up in a cramped attic space. The narrow wooden stairway had a thick rope for a railing. The tables and chairs were all mismatched wooden antiques and the space was lit by candle light and low trimmed lanterns. It was enchanting. The attic was warm that evening, but we didn't mind. The menu had many items we had never seen before, including pigeon, and we had to get recommendations from the waiters. One of our waiters was a very soft-spoken, odd, but charming young man who gave us his honest opinions on the dishes. Kat ordered the rabbit stew and I had a roasted half chicken with stuffing. We ordered peas with bacon and sautéed potatoes as sides. We had a magnum of house red wine that we shared and paid for only what we drank. That reminded me of my London trip with my parents where we had found a great Greek restaurant that served wine in the same way. You drink a lot of wine that way. Our meals were delicious and the bill ended up being just enough to use up my remaining pounds. We headed home full and happy. It was a great place to end our trip.
At home we popped open the champagne our flight attendant had given us on our trip over and mixed it with the rest of our “exotic” juice. We drank our pseudo-mimosas while we packed our bags for our flight home the next morning. Kat had to help me finish my champagne. I set the alarm for 6am and went to bed around 1am. Kat wasn't feeling tired yet so she stayed up to look at the pictures I had uploaded and correct my grammar on the blog.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Wednesday in Paris
I woke up at 5 a.m. to get showered and ready for our day trip to Paris. We had cereal and juice for breakfast in the room and then got the room ready to be cleaned. Think Apartments clean once every week, and we had been there since last Tuesday. We had used up our toilet paper supply (including the stuff I’d swiped from the Lord Jim hotel), and hoped they would restock our bathroom as well. While I was under the kitchen sink getting the bag out for our recycling, I discovered a leak. The bag sat in a shallow puddle of soapy water; remnants from our washing that morning. I planned on mentioning it as we left.
Kat looked nice in her Francey shirt that was all glittery and colorful. I was wearing my Jagiellionian University t-shirt I had bought in Krakow, Poland, when my bags hadn’t arrived yet and I was out of clothes. I was hoping that I would be mistaken for Polish instead of American while in France. We gathered our stuff for the trip, and it looked like a lot. We were bringing books for the train, my two guidebooks, nice clothes and shoes in case we went to dinner somewhere elegant, candy, water, cameras, and other essentials. Kat offered to bring her bag along to help carry the load, but I stubbornly insisted on carrying it all in my backpack. That was a decision I came to regret by the end of the day.
Downstairs the desk clerk sounded unimpressed when I described our plumbing problems and the lack of toilet paper. He said the room would get cleaned, but we needed to buy our own bathroom supplies. We decided to deal with that on our way back that evening.
We walked down to the tube and took the Piccadilly line to St. Pancras station. We got to the station with plenty of time before our departure time. Kat was in the mood for a chai latte, so we cruised the station looking for a café that would serve one. Oddly enough, the only place that had it was Starbucks. We felt a bit funny going there. Kat ordered the biggest size, thinking she’d have time to sip it on the train. I got a small Americano for myself. With drinks in hand, we went in search of our platform. That’s when it dawned on us that this was an international trip and we would have to go through a security checkpoint. We could see another couple on the other side of the ticketing barriers finishing their drinks before getting going through security and determined that we would have to do the same. Poor Kat. She had to guzzle an entire 20oz hot drink before we could go on. She broke into a sweat near the end.
I was glad Kat had reminded me to bring my passport before leaving the apartment. We got our entry to France stamps and made it through security just fine. On the other side we found more coffee shops. Oh well. I went ahead and got some euros for our trip and divided them up between the two of us. Rick Steves had me paranoid about being pick-pocketed. We got on the train and found our seats. I had booked Leisure Class tickets that turned out to be pretty swanky. Kat and I sat across from each other alone at a small table. I brought out my guidebooks and our map of Paris and sat down to some serious planning. We had a very pleasant attendant in our coach who brought us tea and breakfast. We couldn’t tell if he was gay, French, or both. He noticed I was hard at work planning our visit and offered to help by recommending some places to stay and some sites to see, but I explained that we were only there for the day and had a pretty tight schedule. I think most people were surprised to hear we were trying to do Paris in just a day. Kat made sure to let people know we were on our honeymoon so we would get the extra special treatment, since it seemed to have worked for us well so far. She got out our French phrasebook and started practicing. She said she was pretty nervous about going somewhere without knowing the language. I finished planning our itinerary and transferring relevant information from the guidebooks to the map. I wasn’t very impressed with Rick Steves’ day trip itinerary. It wasn’t very efficient and it relied too much on the Metro and taxis to get from site to site.
The trip was little over 2 hours. We left the station around 7:30 and arrived just before 11:00 with an hour time change. We arrived well fed, rested and in good humor. I had gotten a little motion sick from doing so much reading along the way, but that feeling had worn off. Due to my paranoia of being robbed, I had planned our trip out without using the Metro. My plan had us taking a taxi from the Gare du Nord (our train station) directly to the Eiffel tower and then continuing our walking tour from there, which would have us gradually work our way back toward the station and end at Notre Dame. I had no idea how long it would take us, but I had a working watch and I knew what time we needed to be back to catch our return train. Our train boarded at 8:45 p.m., so I figured we should look for a taxi back to the station by 8. That gave us 9 hours to wander around Paris and take in the sites. I wasn’t sure if they would feed us dinner on the train home, but I was already doubting that we’d have time to do both lunch and dinner in Paris.
My bag was feeling heavy already and I was done with my guidebooks and the reading books. I thought maybe I could find a locker at the train station to leave things behind, but after looking for a few minutes we gave up on that idea. A desperate looking woman approached us, asked if we spoke English, and then shoved a handwritten letter in our faces. The letter outlined a sob story of how she had been trapped in France for 8 months and probably went on to beg for money. I heartlessly waved her away; suspicious that it was simply a rouse. We followed signs outside to the taxi area and waited in a short line for one. Our driver was surprised we didn’t have any bags other than my backpack and then snorted when we said to take us straight to the Eiffel tower. I followed along as best I could on the map as he drove us there. We caught our first glimpse of the Eiffel tower as we neared the river Seine. That’s how we knew we were in Paris.
The day was sunny and windy. The crowds were huge underneath the Eiffel tower and we weaved through them on our way to the back of the line for tickets and elevators. An army of illegal souvenir salesmen worked the queue and the crowds. They carried their cheap miniature towers and toys threaded through metal rings or in bags. Many of them had special blankets on which to display their crap that would quickly turn into bags by using drawstrings attached to the corners. I got to see how quickly they could pack up and run away when a policeman on a bicycle came riding through. The salesmen scattered like a flock of crows, only to quickly return as soon as the police were out of sight. I was amazed when I saw people actually buying the stuff. We were approached yet again by more desperate looking women with letters in English describing the same sob story we heard back at the train station. I imagined a network of these women and men, all recent immigrants, being put to work fleecing the tourist crowds in return for food and shelter until they found permanent lodging and work. It seemed like a grim existence, and it was highly annoying. Random people kept cutting through the line around us and I would spin my body around to keep my backpack away from imagined pickpockets, but I only succeeded in clobbering Kat several times with it. She stood behind me to keep an eye on things and when she got bored waiting in line she started to mess with the buckles and straps on my backpack. That freaked me out, because I kept thinking someone was trying to get in it.
After about an hour in line, we finally got our tickets and moved on to wait for the elevators. A monitor above the ticket counter kept warning that the summit was intermittently closed due to crowding. They charged more than double the price of getting to the mid-point platform to get to the summit. Seeing as how we had already spent a precious hour of our time to get a ticket and that longer waits were guaranteed to get to the top, I opted for the cheaper tickets. We packed into the double-decker elevator and rode it to the middle platform.
We took time enough to shoot pictures from the four sides of the tower and look out over the city for a bit before we decided to move on. We took time to use the bathroom on the tower. There was a line, and a pushy family shoved their child in front of everyone because she was going to pee her pants. The bathroom attendant wouldn’t let her in right away, though.
We didn’t wait for the elevators down; instead we ran down the stairs. We headed to our next stop, Palais de Chaillot, across the river where I was informed the best views of the Eiffel tower could be found. We crossed the Pont d’Iena, the first of many bridges we crossed over the Seine. My planned route had us crisscrossing the river at 5 different points. We got to the Palais and turned around to get our shots of the tower. We took turns setting up our classic eating points of interest shots and then got a nearby woman to take our picture after Kat took hers. It was already 1:00, and we were both getting hungry for lunch. We discussed heading straight for food and skipping the Arc de Triomphe, but Kat said she could hold out a little longer.
We walked down Avenue Kleber toward the Arc de Triomphe. Due to the trees lining the avenue, we couldn’t see the Arc until we were almost on top of it. Along the way I took pictures of food in the shop windows. I think my stomach was trying to tell me something. Once we reached the massive roundabout in which the Arc stood, we turned down the Avenue des Champs Elysees and headed toward the Musee du Louvre. I made sure to run out into the street to get some unobstructed pictures of the Arc de Triomphe first.
We had a nice long stroll down the Champs Elysees, which was busy with foot traffic and lined with shops and cafes that just made us hungrier. We had made up our minds that we would eat somewhere near Napoleon’s tomb on the other side of the river. It took us until 2:00 to get to the next bridge, Pont des Invalides. Along the way we passed another museum, the Grand Palais, which appeared to be housing a dinosaur exhibit.
Once across the second bridge, we went in search of food. I had written down some suggestions from my books that were in this area near Rue Cler. We looked at each in turn, trying to decipher the menus and not being able to make up our minds. We were both tired and hungry. We eventually found a sidewalk café near the Ecole Militaire called Comptier du Sept and sat down. We ordered a pot of wine to share and then looked at the menu. Luckily, the menu had English descriptions next to the items. We wanted to eat a fairly large lunch because it was looking like we wouldn’t have time for a nice dinner as well. Kat chose the duck and I ordered chicken in cream and mushroom sauce. They were both good choices, but I think Kat liked mine better because she kept stealing sauce from my plate. Our experience was great, and better than some of our neighbors who had a river of water dumped on them from the awning overhead. Kat was excited to use some of her French she had learned. She practiced her phrases out loud until she got self-conscious that the other customers might think she was strange repeating the same things over and over again. With some wine in her she boldly asked for the check and thanked them for a delicious meal. She’s so great.
We finished lunch around 3:30 had a short walk to the Hotel des Invalides and Napoleon’s Tomb. Napoleon’s tomb was inside a beautiful building right in the center of the site. The inside had wonderful painted ceilings and sculptures in side chapels. The center of the room was open to the lower floor with the actual tomb you could look down on. We looked all around and took plenty of pictures. By the time we left it was close to 4:30 and the sewer tour was closing at 5. We opted to pass it by and headed back across the river.
This time we crossed at the Pont de la Concorde that led to a similarly named square containing the Obelisque. I got a neat look back down the Champs Elysees all the way back to the Arc de Triomphe. I was impressed by the long staged views in Paris that obviously only came about by careful planning. It differed greatly from the limited views and chaotic layout of London. It was now 5 o’clock and we needed to pick up the pace. Kat had marked a place on our map nearby where Angelina’s was supposed to be. She had heard Bob rave about the hot chocolate there, so we thought it would be nice to check it out. We wandered along Rue de Rivoli until we found it. There was a line out the door when we got there. We stood in line until we could see in the door. I noticed that they all appeared to be waiting for a table and that the confections counter wasn’t busy at all so I left Kat to stand in line while I pushed my way up to the counter and ordered a hot chocolate to go. Kat saw that I got through the line so came up to join me. She looked around the shop and found some hot chocolate mix to take home with us. We paid for our items and then continued on our way to the Louvre through the Jardin des Tuileries.
It was already 5:30 by the time we got to the Louvre. We needed to get in, see as much as we could in an hour and then move on to see Notre Dame and old town Paris before catching a taxi back to the station. We waited in a fast moving line to get inside the glass pyramid and go through the security check. We noticed a number of signs saying “no cameras” on the way in. We bought our tickets from a machine once we got inside and then picked up a map. We decided to head for Mona Lisa straight away and plotted out a course. It turned out we really didn’t need to because there were signs at every intersection pointing to the most popular works of art. Along the way we started to notice that no one seemed to pay heed to the “no photos” rule. We saw flashes going off everywhere. People were taking pictures with their phones, cameras, and camcorders. We were appalled. It was even worse in the room with Mona Lisa. A huge crowd was gathered in front of her and the camera flashes were almost constant. It was hard to appreciate the artwork with so many irresponsible jerks around us. There were museum employees around, but they seemed unable or unwilling to do anything about it. It made me sick to my stomach to see people so brazenly disrespectful. I love taking pictures of my travels, but when it comes to the preservation of artwork, I respect the curators’ wishes. The least these folks could do is turn off the flash on their cameras, but I suspect that most of them don’t know how to operate their cameras. Kat said she even saw parents handing their kids the camera to go up and take pictures.
We headed out of the Italian art exhibit hall and headed downstairs to the ancient Greek displays. This area wasn’t as crowded so we got a bit of a respite from the insanity upstairs. People were still using their cameras despite the signs forbidding it, but I wasn’t as bothered since these were sculptures and not as sensitive to light. Still, I felt like it was rude and unnecessary. We saw the iconic statue of Aphrodite and we were both surprised and impressed by the sculpture of Hermaphrodite reclining on a bed made of stone.
It was already 6:30 and we had only done one wing of the Louvre. We had to cut our visit short if we were to see Notre Dame and old town. We felt okay about it since we were frustrated with the crowds, and we’d determined that we really weren’t museum people. We stopped by the bathrooms on the way out. The men’s bathroom was disgusting. Kat’s experience wasn’t much better.
We were glad to leave the Louvre and continue our exploration. I was getting a bit hungry, but I didn’t want to stop for dinner so I kept my eyes open for a street vendor. Kat was thirsty too, so we stopped at a food cart that offered crepes and juice. I ordered a crepe with nutella that was pretty good and a Panini sandwich for later. Kat had a smoothie of some sort. Then we crossed the Seine again on the Pont Neu to reach the tiny island on which Ste. Chapelle and Notre Dame both sit.
Kat and I made a quick tour of the small island and took pictures of Notre Dame. I was excited to see the iconic flying buttresses. We continued past it to the other bank and found art sellers packing up for the day. On a whim, we took a look at one booth and finally found a painting we both liked. It was an impressionistic piece of Notre Dame and we liked the colors. We bought it along with a tube to pack it in. Kat felt better armed with a tube in hand to keep people from walking into her. It seemed to work pretty well.
It was 7:00 and we still had some time before we had to catch a taxi. My shoulders were killing me and I was out of energy. I could have grabbed a taxi then, but I let Kat drag me around the old town markets for a while longer. I’m glad we did it. The narrow markets were packed with interesting shops, cafes, and bars. Kat bought a crepe with nutella, coconut, and Grand Marnier. I was jealous because hers looked so much better than mine. There were some women just standing there watching the guy make crepes. They didn’t want one; they just really liked watching. Somewhere along the way Kat found a great little game store packed with board games. I’d never seen so many in such a small space before. They were mostly in French, and I didn’t want to carry anything more home, so we didn’t buy any. It was still neat to look through them all. Gaming is a much more respected hobby in Europe.
I told Kat it was time to go so we went in search of a taxi to take us back to the station. Kat spotted a line of them parked at a square where earlier some break-dancers had drawn a large crowd. Now there were police gathering to break things up. We just hopped in the first taxi in line and told him to take us to the Gare du Nord. I counted our remaining euros and hoped we had enough to pay the driver when we got there. It was enough, and we still had some left over.
In the station we found a seat in a café and ordered a couple 1664s to drink and relax for a bit and reflect on our day trip. We felt exhausted and accomplished. We were both very drained. We hoped that we would get dinner on the train. I ate my soggy sandwich anyway. The train arrived and we worked our way back through immigration and customs. There were two separate passport checkpoints on this end, one for leaving France and another one 10 feet away for entering England. At the England booth you needed to show a customs form that we hadn’t filled out yet. We got out of line to fill out our forms and I started to panic about getting to our train on time. Kat kept her cool and told me everything would be fine. I kept making mistakes on my form in my haste to fill it out. She was right; everything turned out fine. We got through and on our coach with no problems. They fed us on the ride home and I even caught a few minutes of sleep.
We arrived in St. Pancras station around 11:00. We both used the bathroom and came out with a stolen roll of toilet paper apiece for our apartment; that saved us a trip to Tesco. We jumped on the tube and got home around 11:45. The room was cleaned and we had fresh towels and bed sheets. We took showers and went to bed. Everything was great except for our neighbors and their crying baby.
Kat looked nice in her Francey shirt that was all glittery and colorful. I was wearing my Jagiellionian University t-shirt I had bought in Krakow, Poland, when my bags hadn’t arrived yet and I was out of clothes. I was hoping that I would be mistaken for Polish instead of American while in France. We gathered our stuff for the trip, and it looked like a lot. We were bringing books for the train, my two guidebooks, nice clothes and shoes in case we went to dinner somewhere elegant, candy, water, cameras, and other essentials. Kat offered to bring her bag along to help carry the load, but I stubbornly insisted on carrying it all in my backpack. That was a decision I came to regret by the end of the day.
Downstairs the desk clerk sounded unimpressed when I described our plumbing problems and the lack of toilet paper. He said the room would get cleaned, but we needed to buy our own bathroom supplies. We decided to deal with that on our way back that evening.
We walked down to the tube and took the Piccadilly line to St. Pancras station. We got to the station with plenty of time before our departure time. Kat was in the mood for a chai latte, so we cruised the station looking for a café that would serve one. Oddly enough, the only place that had it was Starbucks. We felt a bit funny going there. Kat ordered the biggest size, thinking she’d have time to sip it on the train. I got a small Americano for myself. With drinks in hand, we went in search of our platform. That’s when it dawned on us that this was an international trip and we would have to go through a security checkpoint. We could see another couple on the other side of the ticketing barriers finishing their drinks before getting going through security and determined that we would have to do the same. Poor Kat. She had to guzzle an entire 20oz hot drink before we could go on. She broke into a sweat near the end.
I was glad Kat had reminded me to bring my passport before leaving the apartment. We got our entry to France stamps and made it through security just fine. On the other side we found more coffee shops. Oh well. I went ahead and got some euros for our trip and divided them up between the two of us. Rick Steves had me paranoid about being pick-pocketed. We got on the train and found our seats. I had booked Leisure Class tickets that turned out to be pretty swanky. Kat and I sat across from each other alone at a small table. I brought out my guidebooks and our map of Paris and sat down to some serious planning. We had a very pleasant attendant in our coach who brought us tea and breakfast. We couldn’t tell if he was gay, French, or both. He noticed I was hard at work planning our visit and offered to help by recommending some places to stay and some sites to see, but I explained that we were only there for the day and had a pretty tight schedule. I think most people were surprised to hear we were trying to do Paris in just a day. Kat made sure to let people know we were on our honeymoon so we would get the extra special treatment, since it seemed to have worked for us well so far. She got out our French phrasebook and started practicing. She said she was pretty nervous about going somewhere without knowing the language. I finished planning our itinerary and transferring relevant information from the guidebooks to the map. I wasn’t very impressed with Rick Steves’ day trip itinerary. It wasn’t very efficient and it relied too much on the Metro and taxis to get from site to site.
The trip was little over 2 hours. We left the station around 7:30 and arrived just before 11:00 with an hour time change. We arrived well fed, rested and in good humor. I had gotten a little motion sick from doing so much reading along the way, but that feeling had worn off. Due to my paranoia of being robbed, I had planned our trip out without using the Metro. My plan had us taking a taxi from the Gare du Nord (our train station) directly to the Eiffel tower and then continuing our walking tour from there, which would have us gradually work our way back toward the station and end at Notre Dame. I had no idea how long it would take us, but I had a working watch and I knew what time we needed to be back to catch our return train. Our train boarded at 8:45 p.m., so I figured we should look for a taxi back to the station by 8. That gave us 9 hours to wander around Paris and take in the sites. I wasn’t sure if they would feed us dinner on the train home, but I was already doubting that we’d have time to do both lunch and dinner in Paris.
My bag was feeling heavy already and I was done with my guidebooks and the reading books. I thought maybe I could find a locker at the train station to leave things behind, but after looking for a few minutes we gave up on that idea. A desperate looking woman approached us, asked if we spoke English, and then shoved a handwritten letter in our faces. The letter outlined a sob story of how she had been trapped in France for 8 months and probably went on to beg for money. I heartlessly waved her away; suspicious that it was simply a rouse. We followed signs outside to the taxi area and waited in a short line for one. Our driver was surprised we didn’t have any bags other than my backpack and then snorted when we said to take us straight to the Eiffel tower. I followed along as best I could on the map as he drove us there. We caught our first glimpse of the Eiffel tower as we neared the river Seine. That’s how we knew we were in Paris.
The day was sunny and windy. The crowds were huge underneath the Eiffel tower and we weaved through them on our way to the back of the line for tickets and elevators. An army of illegal souvenir salesmen worked the queue and the crowds. They carried their cheap miniature towers and toys threaded through metal rings or in bags. Many of them had special blankets on which to display their crap that would quickly turn into bags by using drawstrings attached to the corners. I got to see how quickly they could pack up and run away when a policeman on a bicycle came riding through. The salesmen scattered like a flock of crows, only to quickly return as soon as the police were out of sight. I was amazed when I saw people actually buying the stuff. We were approached yet again by more desperate looking women with letters in English describing the same sob story we heard back at the train station. I imagined a network of these women and men, all recent immigrants, being put to work fleecing the tourist crowds in return for food and shelter until they found permanent lodging and work. It seemed like a grim existence, and it was highly annoying. Random people kept cutting through the line around us and I would spin my body around to keep my backpack away from imagined pickpockets, but I only succeeded in clobbering Kat several times with it. She stood behind me to keep an eye on things and when she got bored waiting in line she started to mess with the buckles and straps on my backpack. That freaked me out, because I kept thinking someone was trying to get in it.
After about an hour in line, we finally got our tickets and moved on to wait for the elevators. A monitor above the ticket counter kept warning that the summit was intermittently closed due to crowding. They charged more than double the price of getting to the mid-point platform to get to the summit. Seeing as how we had already spent a precious hour of our time to get a ticket and that longer waits were guaranteed to get to the top, I opted for the cheaper tickets. We packed into the double-decker elevator and rode it to the middle platform.
We took time enough to shoot pictures from the four sides of the tower and look out over the city for a bit before we decided to move on. We took time to use the bathroom on the tower. There was a line, and a pushy family shoved their child in front of everyone because she was going to pee her pants. The bathroom attendant wouldn’t let her in right away, though.
We didn’t wait for the elevators down; instead we ran down the stairs. We headed to our next stop, Palais de Chaillot, across the river where I was informed the best views of the Eiffel tower could be found. We crossed the Pont d’Iena, the first of many bridges we crossed over the Seine. My planned route had us crisscrossing the river at 5 different points. We got to the Palais and turned around to get our shots of the tower. We took turns setting up our classic eating points of interest shots and then got a nearby woman to take our picture after Kat took hers. It was already 1:00, and we were both getting hungry for lunch. We discussed heading straight for food and skipping the Arc de Triomphe, but Kat said she could hold out a little longer.
We walked down Avenue Kleber toward the Arc de Triomphe. Due to the trees lining the avenue, we couldn’t see the Arc until we were almost on top of it. Along the way I took pictures of food in the shop windows. I think my stomach was trying to tell me something. Once we reached the massive roundabout in which the Arc stood, we turned down the Avenue des Champs Elysees and headed toward the Musee du Louvre. I made sure to run out into the street to get some unobstructed pictures of the Arc de Triomphe first.
We had a nice long stroll down the Champs Elysees, which was busy with foot traffic and lined with shops and cafes that just made us hungrier. We had made up our minds that we would eat somewhere near Napoleon’s tomb on the other side of the river. It took us until 2:00 to get to the next bridge, Pont des Invalides. Along the way we passed another museum, the Grand Palais, which appeared to be housing a dinosaur exhibit.
Once across the second bridge, we went in search of food. I had written down some suggestions from my books that were in this area near Rue Cler. We looked at each in turn, trying to decipher the menus and not being able to make up our minds. We were both tired and hungry. We eventually found a sidewalk café near the Ecole Militaire called Comptier du Sept and sat down. We ordered a pot of wine to share and then looked at the menu. Luckily, the menu had English descriptions next to the items. We wanted to eat a fairly large lunch because it was looking like we wouldn’t have time for a nice dinner as well. Kat chose the duck and I ordered chicken in cream and mushroom sauce. They were both good choices, but I think Kat liked mine better because she kept stealing sauce from my plate. Our experience was great, and better than some of our neighbors who had a river of water dumped on them from the awning overhead. Kat was excited to use some of her French she had learned. She practiced her phrases out loud until she got self-conscious that the other customers might think she was strange repeating the same things over and over again. With some wine in her she boldly asked for the check and thanked them for a delicious meal. She’s so great.
We finished lunch around 3:30 had a short walk to the Hotel des Invalides and Napoleon’s Tomb. Napoleon’s tomb was inside a beautiful building right in the center of the site. The inside had wonderful painted ceilings and sculptures in side chapels. The center of the room was open to the lower floor with the actual tomb you could look down on. We looked all around and took plenty of pictures. By the time we left it was close to 4:30 and the sewer tour was closing at 5. We opted to pass it by and headed back across the river.
This time we crossed at the Pont de la Concorde that led to a similarly named square containing the Obelisque. I got a neat look back down the Champs Elysees all the way back to the Arc de Triomphe. I was impressed by the long staged views in Paris that obviously only came about by careful planning. It differed greatly from the limited views and chaotic layout of London. It was now 5 o’clock and we needed to pick up the pace. Kat had marked a place on our map nearby where Angelina’s was supposed to be. She had heard Bob rave about the hot chocolate there, so we thought it would be nice to check it out. We wandered along Rue de Rivoli until we found it. There was a line out the door when we got there. We stood in line until we could see in the door. I noticed that they all appeared to be waiting for a table and that the confections counter wasn’t busy at all so I left Kat to stand in line while I pushed my way up to the counter and ordered a hot chocolate to go. Kat saw that I got through the line so came up to join me. She looked around the shop and found some hot chocolate mix to take home with us. We paid for our items and then continued on our way to the Louvre through the Jardin des Tuileries.
It was already 5:30 by the time we got to the Louvre. We needed to get in, see as much as we could in an hour and then move on to see Notre Dame and old town Paris before catching a taxi back to the station. We waited in a fast moving line to get inside the glass pyramid and go through the security check. We noticed a number of signs saying “no cameras” on the way in. We bought our tickets from a machine once we got inside and then picked up a map. We decided to head for Mona Lisa straight away and plotted out a course. It turned out we really didn’t need to because there were signs at every intersection pointing to the most popular works of art. Along the way we started to notice that no one seemed to pay heed to the “no photos” rule. We saw flashes going off everywhere. People were taking pictures with their phones, cameras, and camcorders. We were appalled. It was even worse in the room with Mona Lisa. A huge crowd was gathered in front of her and the camera flashes were almost constant. It was hard to appreciate the artwork with so many irresponsible jerks around us. There were museum employees around, but they seemed unable or unwilling to do anything about it. It made me sick to my stomach to see people so brazenly disrespectful. I love taking pictures of my travels, but when it comes to the preservation of artwork, I respect the curators’ wishes. The least these folks could do is turn off the flash on their cameras, but I suspect that most of them don’t know how to operate their cameras. Kat said she even saw parents handing their kids the camera to go up and take pictures.
We headed out of the Italian art exhibit hall and headed downstairs to the ancient Greek displays. This area wasn’t as crowded so we got a bit of a respite from the insanity upstairs. People were still using their cameras despite the signs forbidding it, but I wasn’t as bothered since these were sculptures and not as sensitive to light. Still, I felt like it was rude and unnecessary. We saw the iconic statue of Aphrodite and we were both surprised and impressed by the sculpture of Hermaphrodite reclining on a bed made of stone.
It was already 6:30 and we had only done one wing of the Louvre. We had to cut our visit short if we were to see Notre Dame and old town. We felt okay about it since we were frustrated with the crowds, and we’d determined that we really weren’t museum people. We stopped by the bathrooms on the way out. The men’s bathroom was disgusting. Kat’s experience wasn’t much better.
We were glad to leave the Louvre and continue our exploration. I was getting a bit hungry, but I didn’t want to stop for dinner so I kept my eyes open for a street vendor. Kat was thirsty too, so we stopped at a food cart that offered crepes and juice. I ordered a crepe with nutella that was pretty good and a Panini sandwich for later. Kat had a smoothie of some sort. Then we crossed the Seine again on the Pont Neu to reach the tiny island on which Ste. Chapelle and Notre Dame both sit.
Kat and I made a quick tour of the small island and took pictures of Notre Dame. I was excited to see the iconic flying buttresses. We continued past it to the other bank and found art sellers packing up for the day. On a whim, we took a look at one booth and finally found a painting we both liked. It was an impressionistic piece of Notre Dame and we liked the colors. We bought it along with a tube to pack it in. Kat felt better armed with a tube in hand to keep people from walking into her. It seemed to work pretty well.
It was 7:00 and we still had some time before we had to catch a taxi. My shoulders were killing me and I was out of energy. I could have grabbed a taxi then, but I let Kat drag me around the old town markets for a while longer. I’m glad we did it. The narrow markets were packed with interesting shops, cafes, and bars. Kat bought a crepe with nutella, coconut, and Grand Marnier. I was jealous because hers looked so much better than mine. There were some women just standing there watching the guy make crepes. They didn’t want one; they just really liked watching. Somewhere along the way Kat found a great little game store packed with board games. I’d never seen so many in such a small space before. They were mostly in French, and I didn’t want to carry anything more home, so we didn’t buy any. It was still neat to look through them all. Gaming is a much more respected hobby in Europe.
I told Kat it was time to go so we went in search of a taxi to take us back to the station. Kat spotted a line of them parked at a square where earlier some break-dancers had drawn a large crowd. Now there were police gathering to break things up. We just hopped in the first taxi in line and told him to take us to the Gare du Nord. I counted our remaining euros and hoped we had enough to pay the driver when we got there. It was enough, and we still had some left over.
In the station we found a seat in a café and ordered a couple 1664s to drink and relax for a bit and reflect on our day trip. We felt exhausted and accomplished. We were both very drained. We hoped that we would get dinner on the train. I ate my soggy sandwich anyway. The train arrived and we worked our way back through immigration and customs. There were two separate passport checkpoints on this end, one for leaving France and another one 10 feet away for entering England. At the England booth you needed to show a customs form that we hadn’t filled out yet. We got out of line to fill out our forms and I started to panic about getting to our train on time. Kat kept her cool and told me everything would be fine. I kept making mistakes on my form in my haste to fill it out. She was right; everything turned out fine. We got through and on our coach with no problems. They fed us on the ride home and I even caught a few minutes of sleep.
We arrived in St. Pancras station around 11:00. We both used the bathroom and came out with a stolen roll of toilet paper apiece for our apartment; that saved us a trip to Tesco. We jumped on the tube and got home around 11:45. The room was cleaned and we had fresh towels and bed sheets. We took showers and went to bed. Everything was great except for our neighbors and their crying baby.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Tuesday, St. Paul's and Free Musuems
I got up at 8:30 on Tuesday morning to catch up on my blog. When Kat woke up later I made tea and eggs for breakfast, as had become our usual ritual. Over breakfast we discussed our options. Tomorrow would be a big day in Paris so we both wanted to keep our activities to a reasonable level for the day. I wanted to go inside St. Paul's and climb to the top as our big activity, but after that we didn't really have a plan. Kat wanted to find some nail polish to fix her chipped nails at some point. We knew our tube passes would expire today as well. I wanted to go see some of the free museums, but didn't want to drag Kat through them if she didn't want to go. Kat knew I didn't want to hang around and watch her painting her nails and smell the fumes and didn't want to keep me from my museums.
We decided that after dealing with our tube passes, climbing St. Paul's and then getting some lunch we would split up. Kat would get some nail polish, look for some art and a watch, and then go back to the apartment to relax, drink a beer, watch a movie and paint her nails. I would go off and explore on my own and maybe go do the museums I wanted to see. Kat was a little nervous about being on her own, but wanted to try it out. I was excited for the chance to cruise on my own again, hoping to recapture that feeling I had wandering unfamiliar cities on my own.
At the tube stop our passes didn't work, as we had expected. Unfortunately, the attendants at the station were too busy with some equipment failures to help us sort out our problem. Adrian waved us through the turn-stiles regardless and told us to talk to someone else at our end-point. That's one thing about the Tube; it's always being worked on and stuff is always breaking, but they just muddle on through and always have a way around the issues.
We hopped on the District line and got off at Mansion House, a stop we'd visited many times before. We got to the exit point, but our cards wouldn't let us out; again as we expected. Luckily, there was a much more helpful attendant on duty there to help us. His name was Paul and he was cheerful and friendly. He sorted us out with calm efficiency and saved us some money, too. I was just going to get another week long pass for both of us, just to avoid any hassles of figuring out how much to prepay. Paul, however, quizzed us on our travel plans for the rest of our stay, did some quick arithmetic, and then recommended that we buy a simple paper ticket for the day and then put £10 each on our cards for the rest of the week. He ended up being spot on and saving us around £36. Thanks Paul!
With our newly charged Oyster cards and paper tickets in hand, we left the station and wandered over to St. Paul's. I was able to use our 20% discount code we had found on our map on tickets at the door. Inside, we wandered the nave and the side chapels and spent some time at the back where the monument to the United States' help during World War II was. My guide book said that all 50 states were represented on it somewhere. We looked for Oregon and Kat thought that the little wagon train in the stained glass window represented us, but we weren't sure about it. We finished the main floor and headed down to the crypt. As far as crypts go it was rather cheery, well lit, and spacious. Plaques lining the walls and floor of varying shape, size, style, and materials marked the burial sites of many important people from British history. We didn't linger long and headed back up to climb the stairs to the top of the dome.
After doing the Scott Monument in Edinburgh, these stairs seemed roomy by comparison. The ways up and down are clearly marked and separated for most of the ascent/descent to avoid bottlenecks and squeezing. We only paused briefly at the whispering hall to look back down at the nave before continuing our climb. There was one very narrow spot near the top that I remembered from my first visit almost 20 years ago where my mom had had a moment of claustrophobic panic. It was close and I had to duck low and squeeze sideways to get through, but it widened almost immediately afterward. At the top we got shuffled around with the crowd, but stopped long enough to take some shots. We made the circuit and headed right back down. At the bottom we felt like we had gotten our excercise for the day.
It was lunch time so we went in search of food. I had read about a cafeteria in the crypts below St. Martin-in-the-Fields near Trafalgar Square and thought we should check it out. St. Paul's had a cafeteria in their crypts as well, but it was busy and the menu didn't look like anything special. We hopped on the tube again (with our paper tickets) and got off at Charring Cross. Along the way to lunch, Kat spotted a drug store stocked with cosmetics. She dragged me inside with her in search of a French manicure kit. She scoured the store and finally found what she needed, along with some English chocolate bars to try out. We bought the stuff and then found the Crypt cafeteria just down the street. I was disappointed. I had imagined a moldering medieval crypt, but it looked like any other brick lined basement. We decided against eating there.
We were near Covent Garden yet again and my map said that Porter's was nearby and would honor my 20% discount code, so we decided to go there. It was nice. Kat's sweet corn & chicken pie had a huge puff pastry on top of it and my shepherd's pie was delicious. Kat had a fruit beer she really liked and I had another Guinness. We were highly satisfied, especially eating for a discount.
After lunch it was time to part ways. We said our loving good-byes and I made sure Kat knew how to find the closest tube station before we set off on our separate adventures together. Kat disappeared into the crowd of the Covent Garden markets and I headed back to Trafalgar square to start my free museum tours. First I hit the National Portrait Gallery, then the National Gallery. I flew through the rooms. I really didn't want to study any of the paintings or read about the subjects, I just wanted to walk through the rooms, to be surrounded by the artwork and catch glimpses of the past. Plus I was on a mission - I had to check these off my list and keep going; no time to appreciate it.
After the galleries, I headed back to the British Museum. We had done a short walk-through on our first day and been driven off by the crowds. I felt like I had missed some things and wanted to get it done. I powered through the exhibits, taking my time only when I got to the Greek pottery. For some reason, the relics of ancient Greece held my attention more than even the Egyptian mummies.
I looked at the time. We had planned to meet up again by 7pm at the apartment and then do dinner together. We had split up around 2pm and it was not closing in on 5pm. I figured I had about one more museum I could visit before I needed to head back. I looked at my list: Tate, Tate Modern, British Library. I was only a couple of stops away from the British Library and I had read that it held the Magna Carta in its treasure room, so I went that direction. The closest stop was King's Cross/St. Pancras. I got to walk around the front of St. Pancras station and take some pictures. It really is a beautiful old building. When I got to the library, you could still see the train station towering above it from the courtyard. I took some shots, being sure to get the statue of Isaac Newton sitting on the toilet in them, before I headed inside to see some cool old books and writings.
I found the treasure room without much trouble. The British Library is still a functioning public library, but it also contains a few museum quality exhibit spaces. The treasure room held their most precious books on display. Something about these objects, the written word, captivated me in a way that the paintings and other works of art held in the other museums did not. I looked on reverently at Beowulf, letters from Charles Darwin, writings of Shakespeare, illuminated manuscripts, and of course the Magna Carta and its copies. It was stunning. It made me want to go to Washington D.C. and gaze on the Constitution.
I also spent some time in the maps room in the neighboring exhibit room. I've always had a love of maps. There were huge hand-drawn maps lining the walls of the exhibit. You could see how people of early times viewed the world and how their misconceptions and prejudices skewed that view and how that view changed over time. I was very glad I went to see it.
I found Kat back home. She had finished doing her nails and was watching Notting Hill for the umpteenth time. We finished watching it together as we chatted about our day and wrote a few Thank You cards. Kat said that she had looked at more art but decided against buying any and then missed the tube station when she went looking for it. She told me that she suddenly felt weird being alone in an unfamiliar city and that she was uncomfortable so she just wanted to go home rather than do anything else. She navigated her way to Leicester square and took the tube home from there. I felt bad that she didn't have a good time in the city on her own, but she seemed to have enjoyed her time alone at the apartment just fine. Her nails looked pretty, but she was unimpressed with most of the chocolates.
I called and made reservations for dinner at PJ's Bar & Grill, something both my guide book and our friend Jared had recommended. It turned out to be a fancy place despite its bar-like atmosphere. We had some strange cocktails, a bowl of delicious tomato soup, and split a huge plate of steak with three kinds of sauces. We were stuffed with meat by the end of the meal. We waddled home full and happy and packed for our trip to Paris the next morning before going to bed.
We decided that after dealing with our tube passes, climbing St. Paul's and then getting some lunch we would split up. Kat would get some nail polish, look for some art and a watch, and then go back to the apartment to relax, drink a beer, watch a movie and paint her nails. I would go off and explore on my own and maybe go do the museums I wanted to see. Kat was a little nervous about being on her own, but wanted to try it out. I was excited for the chance to cruise on my own again, hoping to recapture that feeling I had wandering unfamiliar cities on my own.
At the tube stop our passes didn't work, as we had expected. Unfortunately, the attendants at the station were too busy with some equipment failures to help us sort out our problem. Adrian waved us through the turn-stiles regardless and told us to talk to someone else at our end-point. That's one thing about the Tube; it's always being worked on and stuff is always breaking, but they just muddle on through and always have a way around the issues.
We hopped on the District line and got off at Mansion House, a stop we'd visited many times before. We got to the exit point, but our cards wouldn't let us out; again as we expected. Luckily, there was a much more helpful attendant on duty there to help us. His name was Paul and he was cheerful and friendly. He sorted us out with calm efficiency and saved us some money, too. I was just going to get another week long pass for both of us, just to avoid any hassles of figuring out how much to prepay. Paul, however, quizzed us on our travel plans for the rest of our stay, did some quick arithmetic, and then recommended that we buy a simple paper ticket for the day and then put £10 each on our cards for the rest of the week. He ended up being spot on and saving us around £36. Thanks Paul!
With our newly charged Oyster cards and paper tickets in hand, we left the station and wandered over to St. Paul's. I was able to use our 20% discount code we had found on our map on tickets at the door. Inside, we wandered the nave and the side chapels and spent some time at the back where the monument to the United States' help during World War II was. My guide book said that all 50 states were represented on it somewhere. We looked for Oregon and Kat thought that the little wagon train in the stained glass window represented us, but we weren't sure about it. We finished the main floor and headed down to the crypt. As far as crypts go it was rather cheery, well lit, and spacious. Plaques lining the walls and floor of varying shape, size, style, and materials marked the burial sites of many important people from British history. We didn't linger long and headed back up to climb the stairs to the top of the dome.
After doing the Scott Monument in Edinburgh, these stairs seemed roomy by comparison. The ways up and down are clearly marked and separated for most of the ascent/descent to avoid bottlenecks and squeezing. We only paused briefly at the whispering hall to look back down at the nave before continuing our climb. There was one very narrow spot near the top that I remembered from my first visit almost 20 years ago where my mom had had a moment of claustrophobic panic. It was close and I had to duck low and squeeze sideways to get through, but it widened almost immediately afterward. At the top we got shuffled around with the crowd, but stopped long enough to take some shots. We made the circuit and headed right back down. At the bottom we felt like we had gotten our excercise for the day.
It was lunch time so we went in search of food. I had read about a cafeteria in the crypts below St. Martin-in-the-Fields near Trafalgar Square and thought we should check it out. St. Paul's had a cafeteria in their crypts as well, but it was busy and the menu didn't look like anything special. We hopped on the tube again (with our paper tickets) and got off at Charring Cross. Along the way to lunch, Kat spotted a drug store stocked with cosmetics. She dragged me inside with her in search of a French manicure kit. She scoured the store and finally found what she needed, along with some English chocolate bars to try out. We bought the stuff and then found the Crypt cafeteria just down the street. I was disappointed. I had imagined a moldering medieval crypt, but it looked like any other brick lined basement. We decided against eating there.
We were near Covent Garden yet again and my map said that Porter's was nearby and would honor my 20% discount code, so we decided to go there. It was nice. Kat's sweet corn & chicken pie had a huge puff pastry on top of it and my shepherd's pie was delicious. Kat had a fruit beer she really liked and I had another Guinness. We were highly satisfied, especially eating for a discount.
After lunch it was time to part ways. We said our loving good-byes and I made sure Kat knew how to find the closest tube station before we set off on our separate adventures together. Kat disappeared into the crowd of the Covent Garden markets and I headed back to Trafalgar square to start my free museum tours. First I hit the National Portrait Gallery, then the National Gallery. I flew through the rooms. I really didn't want to study any of the paintings or read about the subjects, I just wanted to walk through the rooms, to be surrounded by the artwork and catch glimpses of the past. Plus I was on a mission - I had to check these off my list and keep going; no time to appreciate it.
After the galleries, I headed back to the British Museum. We had done a short walk-through on our first day and been driven off by the crowds. I felt like I had missed some things and wanted to get it done. I powered through the exhibits, taking my time only when I got to the Greek pottery. For some reason, the relics of ancient Greece held my attention more than even the Egyptian mummies.
I looked at the time. We had planned to meet up again by 7pm at the apartment and then do dinner together. We had split up around 2pm and it was not closing in on 5pm. I figured I had about one more museum I could visit before I needed to head back. I looked at my list: Tate, Tate Modern, British Library. I was only a couple of stops away from the British Library and I had read that it held the Magna Carta in its treasure room, so I went that direction. The closest stop was King's Cross/St. Pancras. I got to walk around the front of St. Pancras station and take some pictures. It really is a beautiful old building. When I got to the library, you could still see the train station towering above it from the courtyard. I took some shots, being sure to get the statue of Isaac Newton sitting on the toilet in them, before I headed inside to see some cool old books and writings.
I found the treasure room without much trouble. The British Library is still a functioning public library, but it also contains a few museum quality exhibit spaces. The treasure room held their most precious books on display. Something about these objects, the written word, captivated me in a way that the paintings and other works of art held in the other museums did not. I looked on reverently at Beowulf, letters from Charles Darwin, writings of Shakespeare, illuminated manuscripts, and of course the Magna Carta and its copies. It was stunning. It made me want to go to Washington D.C. and gaze on the Constitution.
I also spent some time in the maps room in the neighboring exhibit room. I've always had a love of maps. There were huge hand-drawn maps lining the walls of the exhibit. You could see how people of early times viewed the world and how their misconceptions and prejudices skewed that view and how that view changed over time. I was very glad I went to see it.
I found Kat back home. She had finished doing her nails and was watching Notting Hill for the umpteenth time. We finished watching it together as we chatted about our day and wrote a few Thank You cards. Kat said that she had looked at more art but decided against buying any and then missed the tube station when she went looking for it. She told me that she suddenly felt weird being alone in an unfamiliar city and that she was uncomfortable so she just wanted to go home rather than do anything else. She navigated her way to Leicester square and took the tube home from there. I felt bad that she didn't have a good time in the city on her own, but she seemed to have enjoyed her time alone at the apartment just fine. Her nails looked pretty, but she was unimpressed with most of the chocolates.
I called and made reservations for dinner at PJ's Bar & Grill, something both my guide book and our friend Jared had recommended. It turned out to be a fancy place despite its bar-like atmosphere. We had some strange cocktails, a bowl of delicious tomato soup, and split a huge plate of steak with three kinds of sauces. We were stuffed with meat by the end of the meal. We waddled home full and happy and packed for our trip to Paris the next morning before going to bed.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Monday in London, Shopping and Shakespeare
I felt very rested in the morning after having a long night's sleep. I got up and made us tea and fried eggs over crumpets with cheese and sauteed peppers. Kat is lucky to have such a good cook for a husband.
Monday we planned on more shopping and doing a tour of the Globe theatre before seeing our show that evening. We planned out route and headed out, back to Mansion House station and across the Millennium Bridge to the Globe. We got there in time for the 11:00 tour. Our guide was nice and knowledgeable. We could see them tearing down the old set and getting ready for our show while we were there. I failed to find the picture Chris said he was in. At the gift shop I picked up a postcard. On our way out we were stopped by a market researcher, Glenda. She asked us a few questions about our visit and I politely answered her.
Our plan to walk along the bank ran into a problem when we hit construction and had to detour around it. The south bank area seemed to be fairly modern and trendy. There were joggers and lots of cafes and shops. It reminded me of Portland. Rick Steves doesn't say much about it. I think he tends to be a bit stuffy and ignores modern attractions.
We eventually found Waterloo station and took the Tube back to Piccadilly Circus. We were on the hunt for Indian food at Chowki. We had discovered that our map had a 20% discount code for many restaurants and attractions that we had failed to take advantage of. Chowki was one of these. After I led Kat around in a circle a few times we finally found Chowki in the Soho district. We were very happy with it. The food was great and the price was very reasonable, even though our discount didn't work for lunch. After Amaya, anything could be considered reasonable, though.
Satisfied, we continued our search for toe rings and watches. Across the street we wandered into a touristy shop and I found a cheap watch that I could stomach so I bought it just so we would have something else to rely on other than her foggy watch. We still couldn't find a feminine digital watch.
We walked along Piccadilly Street and stopped in Waterstone's Bookstore and climbed the stairs to the 5th floor for a couple cocktails and great views of the city. Next we wandered down various shopping arcades, lined with expensive luxury items, none of them digital watches or toe rings. We ended at Oxford Circus and jumped back on the Tube to go to King's Cross and St. Pancras.
At the train station we wanted to find a tourist map of Paris to help us plan our day trip. We also wanted to look for the Harry Potter platform again. We never did find the platform, but we did buy a map from the bookstore in the station. From there we headed up to Camden Town.
Camden Market was the polar opposite of the Piccadilly arcade area. This area was packed with cheap crap. Still, with all the touristy wares we couldn't find anything that Kat wanted. Time was getting away from us and we needed to get home to change clothes and have some dinner before our show. Getting home from Camden Town turned out to be a bit tricky. This was the first time we couldn't go straight back to Earl's Court and had to make some transfers. We eventually figured it out, but we were running late at this point.
We got home and changed and headed back out again. We had decided to eat at Wodka, a fancy Polish restaurant nearby that was also on our 20% discount list. I was very excited to share it with Kat. I recognized some of the things on the menu we saw online. Kat was wearing high heels, so it took us a little while to get there. When we arrived we only had an hour and a half before our show started so we let them know we were in a hurry.
I ordered a few dishes that seemed familiar to me from my time in Poland for us to share: Zurek (sour soup), Chlodnik (chilled beet soup), Pierogis filled with cheese, potato and onion, and beef and sausage goulash. We each had a specialty martini made with Polish vodka. Everything was fantastic, but we had to eat it very quickly. We finished paying up with about a half hour before our show and we were a bit away from the station we needed.
Kat took off her heels and we ran to the tube station together. We were sweating by the time we got there, but we caught the train. We arrived at Mansion House station with five minutes before our show, but we still had to cross the river via Millennium Bridge. Kat kept her shoes on and we sauntered over the bridge, just hoping that things were running late and that they would still seat us.
We got there ten minutes late and picked up our tickets and cushions. They were polite and were still seating people. Our seats were in the very top balcony, at one extreme end, almost behind the stage with a limited view, but they were still amazing seats. The play had started already by the time we sat down, but we didn't feel like we had missed much. Falstaff was just explaining his plan of wooing two women at the same time to a pair of drinking buddies.
They play was fabulously entertaining. The actors really got into the spirit of the theatre in the round. From our vantage point we could see the musicians clearly and it was fun to watch them play their period instruments. There were only a few times that we couldn't see the action on the main stage, but we could hear them perfectly, even without the use of amplification.
After the show we walked back across the Millennium Bridge. I think this was our first real night out on the town. St. Paul's looked even more amazing lit up at night. The city lights were stunning from out in the middle of the Thames. This has really been a very romantic honeymoon.
We came back to Earl's Court via Mansion House, hit Tesco on the walk home for ice cream and wine, and sat down to have them when we got inside before going to bed.
Monday we planned on more shopping and doing a tour of the Globe theatre before seeing our show that evening. We planned out route and headed out, back to Mansion House station and across the Millennium Bridge to the Globe. We got there in time for the 11:00 tour. Our guide was nice and knowledgeable. We could see them tearing down the old set and getting ready for our show while we were there. I failed to find the picture Chris said he was in. At the gift shop I picked up a postcard. On our way out we were stopped by a market researcher, Glenda. She asked us a few questions about our visit and I politely answered her.
Our plan to walk along the bank ran into a problem when we hit construction and had to detour around it. The south bank area seemed to be fairly modern and trendy. There were joggers and lots of cafes and shops. It reminded me of Portland. Rick Steves doesn't say much about it. I think he tends to be a bit stuffy and ignores modern attractions.
We eventually found Waterloo station and took the Tube back to Piccadilly Circus. We were on the hunt for Indian food at Chowki. We had discovered that our map had a 20% discount code for many restaurants and attractions that we had failed to take advantage of. Chowki was one of these. After I led Kat around in a circle a few times we finally found Chowki in the Soho district. We were very happy with it. The food was great and the price was very reasonable, even though our discount didn't work for lunch. After Amaya, anything could be considered reasonable, though.
Satisfied, we continued our search for toe rings and watches. Across the street we wandered into a touristy shop and I found a cheap watch that I could stomach so I bought it just so we would have something else to rely on other than her foggy watch. We still couldn't find a feminine digital watch.
We walked along Piccadilly Street and stopped in Waterstone's Bookstore and climbed the stairs to the 5th floor for a couple cocktails and great views of the city. Next we wandered down various shopping arcades, lined with expensive luxury items, none of them digital watches or toe rings. We ended at Oxford Circus and jumped back on the Tube to go to King's Cross and St. Pancras.
At the train station we wanted to find a tourist map of Paris to help us plan our day trip. We also wanted to look for the Harry Potter platform again. We never did find the platform, but we did buy a map from the bookstore in the station. From there we headed up to Camden Town.
Camden Market was the polar opposite of the Piccadilly arcade area. This area was packed with cheap crap. Still, with all the touristy wares we couldn't find anything that Kat wanted. Time was getting away from us and we needed to get home to change clothes and have some dinner before our show. Getting home from Camden Town turned out to be a bit tricky. This was the first time we couldn't go straight back to Earl's Court and had to make some transfers. We eventually figured it out, but we were running late at this point.
We got home and changed and headed back out again. We had decided to eat at Wodka, a fancy Polish restaurant nearby that was also on our 20% discount list. I was very excited to share it with Kat. I recognized some of the things on the menu we saw online. Kat was wearing high heels, so it took us a little while to get there. When we arrived we only had an hour and a half before our show started so we let them know we were in a hurry.
I ordered a few dishes that seemed familiar to me from my time in Poland for us to share: Zurek (sour soup), Chlodnik (chilled beet soup), Pierogis filled with cheese, potato and onion, and beef and sausage goulash. We each had a specialty martini made with Polish vodka. Everything was fantastic, but we had to eat it very quickly. We finished paying up with about a half hour before our show and we were a bit away from the station we needed.
Kat took off her heels and we ran to the tube station together. We were sweating by the time we got there, but we caught the train. We arrived at Mansion House station with five minutes before our show, but we still had to cross the river via Millennium Bridge. Kat kept her shoes on and we sauntered over the bridge, just hoping that things were running late and that they would still seat us.
We got there ten minutes late and picked up our tickets and cushions. They were polite and were still seating people. Our seats were in the very top balcony, at one extreme end, almost behind the stage with a limited view, but they were still amazing seats. The play had started already by the time we sat down, but we didn't feel like we had missed much. Falstaff was just explaining his plan of wooing two women at the same time to a pair of drinking buddies.
They play was fabulously entertaining. The actors really got into the spirit of the theatre in the round. From our vantage point we could see the musicians clearly and it was fun to watch them play their period instruments. There were only a few times that we couldn't see the action on the main stage, but we could hear them perfectly, even without the use of amplification.
After the show we walked back across the Millennium Bridge. I think this was our first real night out on the town. St. Paul's looked even more amazing lit up at night. The city lights were stunning from out in the middle of the Thames. This has really been a very romantic honeymoon.
We came back to Earl's Court via Mansion House, hit Tesco on the walk home for ice cream and wine, and sat down to have them when we got inside before going to bed.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Sunday on the Thames
I got up early again to blog and upload pictures on Sunday. When Kat woke up I made tea, muffins, and scrambled eggs and we had a nice breakfast together. We didn't have much planned other than maybe trying to get Lion King tickets again. We headed out around 9:30am.
We've since given up on Lion King. Tkts was closed and the box office at the Lyceum theatre said they had standing room only. We're fine with not seeing it here, but it was worth a try.
Kat had started to notice a rash developing in random spots on her body. It seemed to move around from day to day and spring up and fade in unpredictable patterns. We haven't been able to determine if it's the soap, her clothes, the coach, or something in the air.
Not much is open on Sunday, but at least the crowds are manageable. We hit Covent Garden again, and this time we could actually see things without pushing past people or getting knocked about ourselves. Kat found a couple photographs she liked that satisfied her need for art in the short term. We plan to make some sort of composition out of our four purchased photos and some of our ticket stubs for one of our blank walls at home.
We bought a snack from a surly street vendor while we were there. I got my first scone, but it was overpriced and underwhelming. I should have just waited for high tea somewhere else. Kat's other quests are to find a replacement toe ring and a replacement digital watch. Apparently now there is condensation in the watch, making it hard to read anymore.
We decided to walk down the Strand, Fleet Street, and East Cheapside to the Tower of London. Along the way we stopped by Somerset House and some of the other sites to take pictures. Kat likes to torment the pigeons. She chases them around until they fly off. She's compelled to catch one and hold it upside down to watch its feet go. She hasn't managed to do that yet, but she keeps trying.
We bought our tickets to the Tower of London at Tower Hill Station and then went across the way to get in. The line to get in wasn't bad, but the crowds were growing. I should have taken Rick Steves' advice and gone straight for the Crown Jewels. By the time we had seen a few of the side exhibits the line for the Jewels was around the side of the White Tower. It moved along at a decent pace, but we were still in it for at least a half-hour before we saw the jewels. We had fun mocking the videos along the way though.
The Beefeaters were there of course. It was funny how people would come up and try to put their arms around them or grab them in some way to get pictures. The Beefeaters weren't having any of it. They have a very strict "no touching" policy. Still, a nice bunch of fellows and very personable. We overheard one of them giving a dramatic account of an execution. He had the crowd gasping and laughing at all the right parts.
After the long wait for the jewels Kat and I were pretty much done with the Tower and headed out. It was time to eat by then so we wandered across the London Bridge toward the South bank looking for a place to eat. We found a pub called the "Bunch of Grapes" not far from the other side. We each had a beer and shared a platter of mini-burgers and chips. It was just what we needed.
Across the street was the old Operating Theatre Museum. This funky museum is housed completely in the attic of an old church. The only way to get there is up a rickety set of wooden spiral stairs and then you have to jump across them to a tiny door. Inside was a cozy book shop attended by a cheerful young woman who sells you your tickets and the attic is up another set of stairs. In the attic another pleasant woman was giving a presentation on herbal remedies, while we slunk around and looked at the various nick-nacks crammed into narrow spaces between wooden beams. It was really very neat.
The operating theatre itself was fascinating. Kat read that the floor was a false one, built above a layer of sawdust and the real floor in order to absorb the blood and gore. There were many illustrations of some of the procedures performed in the space. I took some pictures of some of the surgical instruments on display. Overall the museum reminded us of a similar one we visited in New Orleans, during one of our other most favorite vacations together. We wandered around for awhile until we felt we had gotten our pounds' worth and then headed back outside.
We continued on our self-guided bankside tour and found a replica of Sir Francis Drake's famous Galleon, the Golden Hinde. Next we went in search of the Globe theatre and found it without much difficulty. The millennium bridge was right near there so we walked back across the Thames on it, planning to take the same route for our play on Monday. We were treated to stunning views of the city and St. Paul's Cathedral from the bridge.
Our feet were pretty tired at that point so we walked to the nearby Mansion House tube station and took the District (Green) line straight back to Earl's Court. We had a quiet night back at the apartment. Kat worked on some "thank you" cards while I worked on the computer and planned some things for the next day. I went to bed to take a nap, but that turned into full blown sleep. We both ended up skipping dinner and just sleeping the rest of the night away.
We've since given up on Lion King. Tkts was closed and the box office at the Lyceum theatre said they had standing room only. We're fine with not seeing it here, but it was worth a try.
Kat had started to notice a rash developing in random spots on her body. It seemed to move around from day to day and spring up and fade in unpredictable patterns. We haven't been able to determine if it's the soap, her clothes, the coach, or something in the air.
Not much is open on Sunday, but at least the crowds are manageable. We hit Covent Garden again, and this time we could actually see things without pushing past people or getting knocked about ourselves. Kat found a couple photographs she liked that satisfied her need for art in the short term. We plan to make some sort of composition out of our four purchased photos and some of our ticket stubs for one of our blank walls at home.
We bought a snack from a surly street vendor while we were there. I got my first scone, but it was overpriced and underwhelming. I should have just waited for high tea somewhere else. Kat's other quests are to find a replacement toe ring and a replacement digital watch. Apparently now there is condensation in the watch, making it hard to read anymore.
We decided to walk down the Strand, Fleet Street, and East Cheapside to the Tower of London. Along the way we stopped by Somerset House and some of the other sites to take pictures. Kat likes to torment the pigeons. She chases them around until they fly off. She's compelled to catch one and hold it upside down to watch its feet go. She hasn't managed to do that yet, but she keeps trying.
We bought our tickets to the Tower of London at Tower Hill Station and then went across the way to get in. The line to get in wasn't bad, but the crowds were growing. I should have taken Rick Steves' advice and gone straight for the Crown Jewels. By the time we had seen a few of the side exhibits the line for the Jewels was around the side of the White Tower. It moved along at a decent pace, but we were still in it for at least a half-hour before we saw the jewels. We had fun mocking the videos along the way though.
The Beefeaters were there of course. It was funny how people would come up and try to put their arms around them or grab them in some way to get pictures. The Beefeaters weren't having any of it. They have a very strict "no touching" policy. Still, a nice bunch of fellows and very personable. We overheard one of them giving a dramatic account of an execution. He had the crowd gasping and laughing at all the right parts.
After the long wait for the jewels Kat and I were pretty much done with the Tower and headed out. It was time to eat by then so we wandered across the London Bridge toward the South bank looking for a place to eat. We found a pub called the "Bunch of Grapes" not far from the other side. We each had a beer and shared a platter of mini-burgers and chips. It was just what we needed.
Across the street was the old Operating Theatre Museum. This funky museum is housed completely in the attic of an old church. The only way to get there is up a rickety set of wooden spiral stairs and then you have to jump across them to a tiny door. Inside was a cozy book shop attended by a cheerful young woman who sells you your tickets and the attic is up another set of stairs. In the attic another pleasant woman was giving a presentation on herbal remedies, while we slunk around and looked at the various nick-nacks crammed into narrow spaces between wooden beams. It was really very neat.
The operating theatre itself was fascinating. Kat read that the floor was a false one, built above a layer of sawdust and the real floor in order to absorb the blood and gore. There were many illustrations of some of the procedures performed in the space. I took some pictures of some of the surgical instruments on display. Overall the museum reminded us of a similar one we visited in New Orleans, during one of our other most favorite vacations together. We wandered around for awhile until we felt we had gotten our pounds' worth and then headed back outside.
We continued on our self-guided bankside tour and found a replica of Sir Francis Drake's famous Galleon, the Golden Hinde. Next we went in search of the Globe theatre and found it without much difficulty. The millennium bridge was right near there so we walked back across the Thames on it, planning to take the same route for our play on Monday. We were treated to stunning views of the city and St. Paul's Cathedral from the bridge.
Our feet were pretty tired at that point so we walked to the nearby Mansion House tube station and took the District (Green) line straight back to Earl's Court. We had a quiet night back at the apartment. Kat worked on some "thank you" cards while I worked on the computer and planned some things for the next day. I went to bed to take a nap, but that turned into full blown sleep. We both ended up skipping dinner and just sleeping the rest of the night away.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Lazy Saturday in London
On Saturday the 14th we slept in late, around 10am, before getting up and having tea, muffins, and grapefruit for breakfast. The previous night had been rough and with the thin walls and the temperamental thermostat we had a restless night. The weather report said it would be rainy so we thought about indoor activities that we might do. We could catch a Lion King matinee if we scored tickets, or we could visit the Tower of London and St. Paul's.
We headed outside and the weather wasn't that bad. We went to Leicester Square again, checked the Tkts stand, but Lion King was sold out already. We located the Lyceum Theatre near Covent Garden, where Lion King was playing, and stood in line at the box office for awhile hoping to score last minute tickets, but gave up when the line hadn't moved in 10 minutes and the show was starting in half an hour.
Instead of heading to the Tower or St. Pauls we visited Covent Garden again, this time it was really packed with people. Kat started to get irritated with the crowds very quickly. It seems like people run into her more often than they do me. I found a couple small photographs of London that I wanted and picked them up for £5 each. Kat wasn't able to find any artwork she liked and got a bit frustrated.
I had a hankering for some fish & chips, and we were both ready to get off the streets for awhile so we wandered into the Sussex for lunch. I had a Guinness and some fish and chips and Kat had a burger with bacon and BBQ sauce and a Stella Artois. After that we headed home.
At home we took turns taking naps and using the computer. I blogged and uploaded pictures from the previous days and caught up on my notes before I went to sleep. We didn't end up going out again for dinner, we just ate cereal, crumpets, and candy and drank beer in the apartment. We failed to find any decent tours to Stonehenge and gave up. Another early day trip wasn't sounding as fun anymore after our long Edinburgh experience. Besides, we had Paris coming up on Wednesday to rest up for and the day trips were getting expensive.
I went to bed fairly early and read for awhile.
We headed outside and the weather wasn't that bad. We went to Leicester Square again, checked the Tkts stand, but Lion King was sold out already. We located the Lyceum Theatre near Covent Garden, where Lion King was playing, and stood in line at the box office for awhile hoping to score last minute tickets, but gave up when the line hadn't moved in 10 minutes and the show was starting in half an hour.
Instead of heading to the Tower or St. Pauls we visited Covent Garden again, this time it was really packed with people. Kat started to get irritated with the crowds very quickly. It seems like people run into her more often than they do me. I found a couple small photographs of London that I wanted and picked them up for £5 each. Kat wasn't able to find any artwork she liked and got a bit frustrated.
I had a hankering for some fish & chips, and we were both ready to get off the streets for awhile so we wandered into the Sussex for lunch. I had a Guinness and some fish and chips and Kat had a burger with bacon and BBQ sauce and a Stella Artois. After that we headed home.
At home we took turns taking naps and using the computer. I blogged and uploaded pictures from the previous days and caught up on my notes before I went to sleep. We didn't end up going out again for dinner, we just ate cereal, crumpets, and candy and drank beer in the apartment. We failed to find any decent tours to Stonehenge and gave up. Another early day trip wasn't sounding as fun anymore after our long Edinburgh experience. Besides, we had Paris coming up on Wednesday to rest up for and the day trips were getting expensive.
I went to bed fairly early and read for awhile.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Day Trip to Edinburgh
We awoke at 5am to start getting ready to go on our day trip to Edinburgh. We had tea, juice, and museli with milk for a quick breakfast before finishing packing up and heading down to the tube station once again. The weather in London was threatening to rain again so we were glad to be on our way.
By this point in our trip Kat and I were speaking in English accents to each other all the time. I even found my self using an affected English accent when I talked to locals, especially when asking questions. Now since we were headed to Scotland we started working on our Scottish accents. We were really excited to get there so we ran and skipped along the way.
We were still getting used to traffic staying on the left, you have to look right first when crossing the street, but there seems to be no rhyme or reason to which side of the sidewalk to stay on. We typically stay to the right in the US, but that doesn't always work here. Neither do they consistently stay to the left. We've tried both, in many situations, but have yet to find a pattern. It seems people here just like to play chicken and head directly at you hoping you'll move around them. In big crowds there seems to be 3 distinct currents, the edges moving in one direction and the center in the reverse. Staircases seem to follow the stay to the left rule, but not always. Tube station turn-stiles are often stay on the left, but sometimes it's reversed. Escalators to and from lower platforms are most of the time stay to the left, but we've seen them right-handed as well. The inconsistencies are driving me crazy!
While on the tube to King's Cross station decided to look for platform 9 and 3/4 that Harry Potter made famous if we had the time. Got to the train station with about half an hour to spare. I went up to the self-serve ticket booth and plugged in my confirmation number, but it wouldn't spit them out. I had apparently written down the wrong number in my travel book. Later I learned that "3B" had simply become "B" in my handwriting. No problem though, there wasn't a line at the ticket counter and the attendant was able to print off our round-trip tickets when I handed him the card I bought them with.
We still had some time and they hadn't even listed what platform our train would be on so we went in search of 9 and 3/4. Kings Cross didn't look like the station in Harry Potter, it was too modern, but we followed the signs anyway. The signs pointed us outside and then through a set of tube station turn-stiles back underground, but we followed them dutifully. Just as we passed by a group of socializing train station employees one of them called out to us "Hey, where are you going?". Apparently we had walked into a closed off or restricted section. We both laughed because we were a bit embarrassed to say where we were headed, but before I could explain she said, "Are you looking for the Harry Potter? It's across the street to the left". Relieved, we thanked her and headed back the way we came.
Apparently, Harry Potter scenes were filmed in St. Pancras (or as I call it Saint Pancreas) across the street from King's Cross. As we approached the building I could tell it was more like it, the exterior was all red brick and Victorian. We got inside the more modern lobby area of the building and saw that 9 3/4 was a ways away yet. I got worried about the time so we made plans to come back here when we had more of it. In fact our trip to Paris next week would be leaving from St. Pancras, so we decided to do it then.
We got back to King's Cross and saw that our train was boarding on platform 4. We ran to our coach, coach B was apparently the "Quiet" coach, with rules against cellphones, loud electronics, and loud talking. We found our seats and then got excited about our trip together, quietly.
This was Kat's first train trip. We had a good time reading, taking turns playing on the DS, planning our activities for the day, and looking through brochures about Stonehenge at sunrise tours for another day. We were glad we didn't have any luggage with us because we noticed someone's getting crushed in the rack beside us. I got hungry and went in search of the buffet car in coach H. Along the way I got stuck behind the snack cart, which didn't offer the hot food I was after. I was stuck along with a very angry and impatient man for awhile. He pushed past eventually while I waited. The cart jockey didn't seem to care either way.
When I got back to my seat, with an instant coffee, tubes of milk, and a hot ham & cheese panini in hand, I could see that it was raining outside. The country-side is very green and the weather reminds me a lot of Oregon. Along the way we kept our eyes open for a glimpse of Hadrian's wall near Newcastle upon Tyne, but we didn't spot it.
We arrived in Edinburgh on time at 11:32am. Even from the station we could tell that it was a beautiful city, with picturesque old stone buildings all crowded together. The weather was much better here, it was quite warm in fact and we were wearing jeans. The crowds were thick and we struggled past them up to the main street. The first thing on our itinerary was to climb the Scott monument, which was conveniently close to Waverly station. We spotted it and headed that way. It was £3 each for us to climb the narrow spiraling stairs to the top. Things went well until we reached the center spire. There were no attendants making sure there weren't log jams of people getting stuck on the stairs. We had to back up several times to let groups come down, or squeeze past us. Kat made it to the very top, but could not get out of the stairs because it was packed and no one was coming down. I didn't quite make it. We turned around, sending people back and telling them to wait for others to come down before going up. We hurried back to the bottom shouting "Coming down!" the whole time and then set about finding something to eat.
My guide book had suggested "The Old Bell" pub for lunch, but we needed a better map to find the street it was on. We pushed through the festival crowds to the visitor information center and Kat got someone to hand her a map. We located Causewayside street and mapped out a path there. It appeared that we would end up near Black Lion games as well, which was a game store Kat had found online ahead of time. Off we went along the cobblestone medieval streets, oohing and aahing along the way at the amazing buildings.
It took us awhile, but we eventually found the Old Bell. We were free of the festival crowds down here so we didn't have any trouble getting a seat. When I asked for a Rob Roy the bartender said "No". I had to explain it to her, and what I got was close, but not a Rob Roy. Oh well. We ordered steak, Guinness and mushroom pie, which was good and filling. I was tempted by the local tourist favorite, haggis with neeps and tatties, but passed on it.
After lunch we headed back the way we came and kept an eye out for Black Lion games. We had walked past it once before without realizing it. This time we located the unobtrusive sign and door. Inside was a crammed but cozy gamers haven, pretty much like every other game store I've been to, except it was Scottish! The folks were friendly and inclusive, as gamers tend to be, and we bought some small things to take home: two sets of carcassone expansion tiles, a booster pack of Munchkin cards, and a set of tiny blue D&D dice for me. We asked about any games we should be sure to get while here and the guy turned us on to Snow Tails, a dog sled racing game, and said it was locally designed. The box was big and it was slightly out of our range however so we passed on it.
We headed back toward the city center and thought we'd try to climb Arthur's Seat to get a better look at the city. When we found the base of the hill however I was concerned about how long it would take us to get to the top and back, given that it was already almost 2pm and we had to leave again at 7pm. With a disappointed sigh we turned and went in search of Holyrood Palace.
The Queen's palace is at the lower end of the Royal Mile walk. We started there and walked up the mile toward the castle. Along the way we stopped inside the Scottish Parliament building and looked at a photography exhibit with graphic but powerful images. We stopped for some ice cream after that to cleanse our palates. The Royal Mile was the center of the Fringe Festival and was packed with people. We pushed our way through, stopping briefly at another game store, Games Workshop, and then finally reached Edinburgh Castle. We grabbed our tickets and then took a self-guided tour.
The castle was neat. We went immediately through the Scottish Crown Jewels exhibit. Dioramas with creepy looking life-sized mannequins told the story of the infant Queen Mary and the crown jewels. Outside of the vault room they had replicas of the crown jewels in bronze for people to touch, I think mostly for the blind, but it was still fun to poke them. Inside was a small chamber with the jewels on display. We gaped at them for a few minutes and then moved on. Some of the tourists blatantly ignored the "no cameras" rule and took flash pictures. I think they didn't speak the language.
Next we descended into the old prisons below the jewels, where prisoners of war were kept up until the 1800s. This was a very effective exhibit, with shadow puppets cast on the walls and snippets of conversations between prisoners playing on hidden speakers as you moved through the rooms. I liked it much better than the creepy mannequins upstairs. They had a couple preserved wooden doors from the original prisons on display where you could make out names, dates, and ships carved and drawn into the wood. That was really moving.
Next we popped over to the more modern military prisons, used in the mid-1800s and on. These looked almost livable, with early indoor plumbing fixtures. In fact, they were more spacious than the internet hole at the Lord Jim. They also reminded me of the hostel I stayed at in Prague, which was a prison that had been converted.
We stopped by the great hall before leaving. Kat recognized the large painting of Napoleon on the wall that she had used as an example to teach Western civilization. After that we were done and found our way down the hill toward New Town. Are legs and feet were very tired, it was about 5pm and we needed to find some food before making our way back to the station. We were looking for a light dinner and maybe some wine. We wandered around New Town, down pedestrian malls and stopped to look at artwork. We've been wanting to add to our collection from the places we visit. We didn't find anything we had to have though.
Our meanderings led us to Cafe Andaluz, a Tapas restaurant which fit our needs just right. Kat even got to practice her Spanish while ordering. We shared some small plates of excellent food. The wasabi and ginger beef was very spicy. We each had a generous glass of wine. The price was even reasonable because we had arrived early.
We still had time before our train left so we decided to walk up Calton Hill for a picture opportunity. Along the way we stopped in a tourist shop and Kat tried on some cute pleated plaid skirts, but they were way too short. We climbed to the top of Calton Hill and took a few shots of the city. It really is a beautiful place.
We arrived at Waverly station with some time to spare and bought a couple pastries. Mine was filled with cheese, tomato, and basil. Kat's had cheese and onion. She was inspired by one of her books that mentioned eating meat pies like these. We were on the "quiet" coach again for our trip home. The ride would take about 5 hours and we'd get back around midnight. We were both very tired and wanted to get some sleep on the train. That would not be how it turned out, however.
Although it was good to be off our feet, we didn't get any rest. For the first 2 hours of the trip there was a mother with two kids on the quiet coach. The youngest was shout-talking the whole time and even started arguing with the oldest and cried at one point. We weren't the only ones shooting them dirty looks, so after I didn't think I could bear it any longer I walked over and politely asked if she could try to be quieter and that we had had a long day. The mom apologized and I returned to my seat. Now whenever the child shouted something we heard the mother issue a short "Shhh!" but that was about it. I handed a pair of earplugs to Kat and used some myself, but it didn't do enough to block it out. Kat was tired and very cranky.
After another hour of this I walked back over and offered to buy them a snack from the bar if they would move to another coach. The woman thanked me for being polite but then began to tell me that there was nothing she could do, and then trying to explain to me that the quiet coach only meant cellphone users and not talking, and she would be getting off at the next stop. I didn't argue with her about her interpretation of "quiet", but I backed off and went back to my seat and waited for the next stop. Thankfully she got off.
I put on my sleeping mask and tried to sleep the rest of the way. Another woman across from us used her cellphone twice and her husband had some sort of foot rot. He had taken off his shoes and socks, propped his feet up, and had commenced to alternately scratch them for the next few stops. I would have hated to have the seat
across from him next. A little later a couple got on with a stroller with a toddler in it. I was preparing for the worst, but the child stayed asleep the whole time.
At 12:05 we finally rolled into King's Cross and got off the train. We stumbled back to the tube and rode in exhausted silence back to Earl's Court. We were both too tired for anything else when we got home so we went right to bed.
By this point in our trip Kat and I were speaking in English accents to each other all the time. I even found my self using an affected English accent when I talked to locals, especially when asking questions. Now since we were headed to Scotland we started working on our Scottish accents. We were really excited to get there so we ran and skipped along the way.
We were still getting used to traffic staying on the left, you have to look right first when crossing the street, but there seems to be no rhyme or reason to which side of the sidewalk to stay on. We typically stay to the right in the US, but that doesn't always work here. Neither do they consistently stay to the left. We've tried both, in many situations, but have yet to find a pattern. It seems people here just like to play chicken and head directly at you hoping you'll move around them. In big crowds there seems to be 3 distinct currents, the edges moving in one direction and the center in the reverse. Staircases seem to follow the stay to the left rule, but not always. Tube station turn-stiles are often stay on the left, but sometimes it's reversed. Escalators to and from lower platforms are most of the time stay to the left, but we've seen them right-handed as well. The inconsistencies are driving me crazy!
While on the tube to King's Cross station decided to look for platform 9 and 3/4 that Harry Potter made famous if we had the time. Got to the train station with about half an hour to spare. I went up to the self-serve ticket booth and plugged in my confirmation number, but it wouldn't spit them out. I had apparently written down the wrong number in my travel book. Later I learned that "3B" had simply become "B" in my handwriting. No problem though, there wasn't a line at the ticket counter and the attendant was able to print off our round-trip tickets when I handed him the card I bought them with.
We still had some time and they hadn't even listed what platform our train would be on so we went in search of 9 and 3/4. Kings Cross didn't look like the station in Harry Potter, it was too modern, but we followed the signs anyway. The signs pointed us outside and then through a set of tube station turn-stiles back underground, but we followed them dutifully. Just as we passed by a group of socializing train station employees one of them called out to us "Hey, where are you going?". Apparently we had walked into a closed off or restricted section. We both laughed because we were a bit embarrassed to say where we were headed, but before I could explain she said, "Are you looking for the Harry Potter? It's across the street to the left". Relieved, we thanked her and headed back the way we came.
Apparently, Harry Potter scenes were filmed in St. Pancras (or as I call it Saint Pancreas) across the street from King's Cross. As we approached the building I could tell it was more like it, the exterior was all red brick and Victorian. We got inside the more modern lobby area of the building and saw that 9 3/4 was a ways away yet. I got worried about the time so we made plans to come back here when we had more of it. In fact our trip to Paris next week would be leaving from St. Pancras, so we decided to do it then.
We got back to King's Cross and saw that our train was boarding on platform 4. We ran to our coach, coach B was apparently the "Quiet" coach, with rules against cellphones, loud electronics, and loud talking. We found our seats and then got excited about our trip together, quietly.
This was Kat's first train trip. We had a good time reading, taking turns playing on the DS, planning our activities for the day, and looking through brochures about Stonehenge at sunrise tours for another day. We were glad we didn't have any luggage with us because we noticed someone's getting crushed in the rack beside us. I got hungry and went in search of the buffet car in coach H. Along the way I got stuck behind the snack cart, which didn't offer the hot food I was after. I was stuck along with a very angry and impatient man for awhile. He pushed past eventually while I waited. The cart jockey didn't seem to care either way.
When I got back to my seat, with an instant coffee, tubes of milk, and a hot ham & cheese panini in hand, I could see that it was raining outside. The country-side is very green and the weather reminds me a lot of Oregon. Along the way we kept our eyes open for a glimpse of Hadrian's wall near Newcastle upon Tyne, but we didn't spot it.
We arrived in Edinburgh on time at 11:32am. Even from the station we could tell that it was a beautiful city, with picturesque old stone buildings all crowded together. The weather was much better here, it was quite warm in fact and we were wearing jeans. The crowds were thick and we struggled past them up to the main street. The first thing on our itinerary was to climb the Scott monument, which was conveniently close to Waverly station. We spotted it and headed that way. It was £3 each for us to climb the narrow spiraling stairs to the top. Things went well until we reached the center spire. There were no attendants making sure there weren't log jams of people getting stuck on the stairs. We had to back up several times to let groups come down, or squeeze past us. Kat made it to the very top, but could not get out of the stairs because it was packed and no one was coming down. I didn't quite make it. We turned around, sending people back and telling them to wait for others to come down before going up. We hurried back to the bottom shouting "Coming down!" the whole time and then set about finding something to eat.
My guide book had suggested "The Old Bell" pub for lunch, but we needed a better map to find the street it was on. We pushed through the festival crowds to the visitor information center and Kat got someone to hand her a map. We located Causewayside street and mapped out a path there. It appeared that we would end up near Black Lion games as well, which was a game store Kat had found online ahead of time. Off we went along the cobblestone medieval streets, oohing and aahing along the way at the amazing buildings.
It took us awhile, but we eventually found the Old Bell. We were free of the festival crowds down here so we didn't have any trouble getting a seat. When I asked for a Rob Roy the bartender said "No". I had to explain it to her, and what I got was close, but not a Rob Roy. Oh well. We ordered steak, Guinness and mushroom pie, which was good and filling. I was tempted by the local tourist favorite, haggis with neeps and tatties, but passed on it.
After lunch we headed back the way we came and kept an eye out for Black Lion games. We had walked past it once before without realizing it. This time we located the unobtrusive sign and door. Inside was a crammed but cozy gamers haven, pretty much like every other game store I've been to, except it was Scottish! The folks were friendly and inclusive, as gamers tend to be, and we bought some small things to take home: two sets of carcassone expansion tiles, a booster pack of Munchkin cards, and a set of tiny blue D&D dice for me. We asked about any games we should be sure to get while here and the guy turned us on to Snow Tails, a dog sled racing game, and said it was locally designed. The box was big and it was slightly out of our range however so we passed on it.
We headed back toward the city center and thought we'd try to climb Arthur's Seat to get a better look at the city. When we found the base of the hill however I was concerned about how long it would take us to get to the top and back, given that it was already almost 2pm and we had to leave again at 7pm. With a disappointed sigh we turned and went in search of Holyrood Palace.
The Queen's palace is at the lower end of the Royal Mile walk. We started there and walked up the mile toward the castle. Along the way we stopped inside the Scottish Parliament building and looked at a photography exhibit with graphic but powerful images. We stopped for some ice cream after that to cleanse our palates. The Royal Mile was the center of the Fringe Festival and was packed with people. We pushed our way through, stopping briefly at another game store, Games Workshop, and then finally reached Edinburgh Castle. We grabbed our tickets and then took a self-guided tour.
The castle was neat. We went immediately through the Scottish Crown Jewels exhibit. Dioramas with creepy looking life-sized mannequins told the story of the infant Queen Mary and the crown jewels. Outside of the vault room they had replicas of the crown jewels in bronze for people to touch, I think mostly for the blind, but it was still fun to poke them. Inside was a small chamber with the jewels on display. We gaped at them for a few minutes and then moved on. Some of the tourists blatantly ignored the "no cameras" rule and took flash pictures. I think they didn't speak the language.
Next we descended into the old prisons below the jewels, where prisoners of war were kept up until the 1800s. This was a very effective exhibit, with shadow puppets cast on the walls and snippets of conversations between prisoners playing on hidden speakers as you moved through the rooms. I liked it much better than the creepy mannequins upstairs. They had a couple preserved wooden doors from the original prisons on display where you could make out names, dates, and ships carved and drawn into the wood. That was really moving.
Next we popped over to the more modern military prisons, used in the mid-1800s and on. These looked almost livable, with early indoor plumbing fixtures. In fact, they were more spacious than the internet hole at the Lord Jim. They also reminded me of the hostel I stayed at in Prague, which was a prison that had been converted.
We stopped by the great hall before leaving. Kat recognized the large painting of Napoleon on the wall that she had used as an example to teach Western civilization. After that we were done and found our way down the hill toward New Town. Are legs and feet were very tired, it was about 5pm and we needed to find some food before making our way back to the station. We were looking for a light dinner and maybe some wine. We wandered around New Town, down pedestrian malls and stopped to look at artwork. We've been wanting to add to our collection from the places we visit. We didn't find anything we had to have though.
Our meanderings led us to Cafe Andaluz, a Tapas restaurant which fit our needs just right. Kat even got to practice her Spanish while ordering. We shared some small plates of excellent food. The wasabi and ginger beef was very spicy. We each had a generous glass of wine. The price was even reasonable because we had arrived early.
We still had time before our train left so we decided to walk up Calton Hill for a picture opportunity. Along the way we stopped in a tourist shop and Kat tried on some cute pleated plaid skirts, but they were way too short. We climbed to the top of Calton Hill and took a few shots of the city. It really is a beautiful place.
We arrived at Waverly station with some time to spare and bought a couple pastries. Mine was filled with cheese, tomato, and basil. Kat's had cheese and onion. She was inspired by one of her books that mentioned eating meat pies like these. We were on the "quiet" coach again for our trip home. The ride would take about 5 hours and we'd get back around midnight. We were both very tired and wanted to get some sleep on the train. That would not be how it turned out, however.
Although it was good to be off our feet, we didn't get any rest. For the first 2 hours of the trip there was a mother with two kids on the quiet coach. The youngest was shout-talking the whole time and even started arguing with the oldest and cried at one point. We weren't the only ones shooting them dirty looks, so after I didn't think I could bear it any longer I walked over and politely asked if she could try to be quieter and that we had had a long day. The mom apologized and I returned to my seat. Now whenever the child shouted something we heard the mother issue a short "Shhh!" but that was about it. I handed a pair of earplugs to Kat and used some myself, but it didn't do enough to block it out. Kat was tired and very cranky.
After another hour of this I walked back over and offered to buy them a snack from the bar if they would move to another coach. The woman thanked me for being polite but then began to tell me that there was nothing she could do, and then trying to explain to me that the quiet coach only meant cellphone users and not talking, and she would be getting off at the next stop. I didn't argue with her about her interpretation of "quiet", but I backed off and went back to my seat and waited for the next stop. Thankfully she got off.
I put on my sleeping mask and tried to sleep the rest of the way. Another woman across from us used her cellphone twice and her husband had some sort of foot rot. He had taken off his shoes and socks, propped his feet up, and had commenced to alternately scratch them for the next few stops. I would have hated to have the seat
across from him next. A little later a couple got on with a stroller with a toddler in it. I was preparing for the worst, but the child stayed asleep the whole time.
At 12:05 we finally rolled into King's Cross and got off the train. We stumbled back to the tube and rode in exhausted silence back to Earl's Court. We were both too tired for anything else when we got home so we went right to bed.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Notting Hill, Hyde Park, & a Broken Watch
Today we woke up early and had tea in the room while Kat cooked eggs and I worked on the computer. I double-checked out flight home and noticed that we'd been downgraded from sleeping pods to regular business class for our cross-Atlantic portion. The plane they had us on was smaller. Kat urged me to talk them into getting us back on a larger plane so we could have the "goo-filled pods" again.
I found flights with larger planes and pods available for that day so I had some ammunition for the call. I got in contact with a customer service rep and only had to argue with her for a little while to get the flight and seats we wanted. Now we are back on our original flight plan for the first leg of the trip, but we still come back on a later flight from Newark. After that I uploaded some pictures and did some blogging. Kat finished reading a book. I think it's the second one so far on this trip.
We sat down to plan our next couple days together. First we made reservations for dinner at the finest Indian restaurant in town, Amaya, for the evening. After that we checked the weather and noticed it would be thundering in London tomorrow. It would be a perfect day to get out of town so we looked into a train trip to Scotland. Kat wanted to see Hadrian's Wall, but we didn't see anything decent for that. We did find many suggestions to spend time in Edinburgh. After looking into it we got very excited about the idea, even though there was supposed to be a very big festival in town this month. We booked our train tickets for early the next morning and then moved on to planning the rest of our day.
Kat wanted to see Notting Hill, because she likes that movie so much, so we headed out there. We wandered around and ate lunch at Bella Italia, a chain of restaurants a little bit like Olive Garden that we see all over. It was good, but we had to move inside after a couple sat right next to us and started smoking. After lunch we wandered around Notting Hill and took a couple pictures of what we thought were scenes from the movie.
We ended up near Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. We took a stroll down the main boulevard and jumped on the carousel for fun. We walked all around the park until we started to get tired from our last couple of long days so we decided to head back to our apartment for a nap. We ended up at Hyde Park Corner across from Asley House and found a tube station there.
Back at the apartment, Kat went to sleep while I uploaded pictures and worked on the blog. I had part of one of my beers until I got too tired and took a short nap. Kat's alarm went off and she noticed that her watch battery was dying. We needed her watch for the train trip tomorrow so we added batteries to the shopping list. We got changed into nicer clothes and took the tube to Knightbridge. From there we walked to Amaya.
The restaurant was very nice and we felt a little under-dressed. Overall we've noticed that Londonites tend to dress a little sharper than most. You don't see many jeans and t-shirt except for tourists like us. Amaya was even nicer, with many men wearing ties or jackets. I brought a jacket with me, but I hadn't thought to wear it this evening. They had a strict policy against cameras in the dining room, so I was not able to get pictures of us inside. The food was good and arrived in eight small courses. Kat filled up quickly and I put forth a heroic attempt. We were both stuffed by the end of it. As we ate we discussed options for our costumes this coming Halloween. The bill was extravagant, but it was too late to complain.
After dinner we tried to find a watch battery, but Harrod's was closed as were the other nearby shops. We took the tube back to Earl's Court and went to our trusty Tesco. We found a battery, but didn't have a screwdriver small enough to open Kat's watch and make sure it was the right kind. A checker called the team leader and Shahidul came to our rescue. He had the perfect screwdriver for the job, but he sort of took over. I got the impression he didn't think very highly of women. He took the watch from Kat and set to work. He got the back off easily enough but almost broke it trying to wrench the old battery out of place. Kat tried to point out the additional screws holding it in place, but he didn't seem to listen. Once he got all the screws off and tore an important looking piece of plastic out he got the new battery in place and then promptly dropped a screw. I was holding the others. The small screw hit the floor and bounced out of sight.
Now we had Shahidul, Kat, and a nearby stranger trying to find a tiny screw on a dirty grocery store floor. Kat finally just pressed her hand flat on the floor in the hopes of getting it to stick to her, and it worked. The checker lady congratulated her and said, "Wow, that was smart," and then I overheard Shahidul mutter, "Not smart, lucky" under his breath. This guy was really getting on my nerves, but he was the wielder of the magic screwdriver and I did not want to offend him. We had both tried to get him to leave the tool with us, but he refused. The operation continued to go awry. Shahidul couldn't get the tiny screws back into place until Kat finally used her long and narrow fingernails to act as a guide. Together they got everything screwed back into place and we were able to pay up and leave. The watch worked, but now it had no sound. We couldn't use it as an alarm clock anymore.
We returned home and got our stuff ready for another early morning before our day trip to Edinburgh. We set the room's alarm clock and my DS as a backup and went to sleep.
I found flights with larger planes and pods available for that day so I had some ammunition for the call. I got in contact with a customer service rep and only had to argue with her for a little while to get the flight and seats we wanted. Now we are back on our original flight plan for the first leg of the trip, but we still come back on a later flight from Newark. After that I uploaded some pictures and did some blogging. Kat finished reading a book. I think it's the second one so far on this trip.
We sat down to plan our next couple days together. First we made reservations for dinner at the finest Indian restaurant in town, Amaya, for the evening. After that we checked the weather and noticed it would be thundering in London tomorrow. It would be a perfect day to get out of town so we looked into a train trip to Scotland. Kat wanted to see Hadrian's Wall, but we didn't see anything decent for that. We did find many suggestions to spend time in Edinburgh. After looking into it we got very excited about the idea, even though there was supposed to be a very big festival in town this month. We booked our train tickets for early the next morning and then moved on to planning the rest of our day.
Kat wanted to see Notting Hill, because she likes that movie so much, so we headed out there. We wandered around and ate lunch at Bella Italia, a chain of restaurants a little bit like Olive Garden that we see all over. It was good, but we had to move inside after a couple sat right next to us and started smoking. After lunch we wandered around Notting Hill and took a couple pictures of what we thought were scenes from the movie.
We ended up near Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. We took a stroll down the main boulevard and jumped on the carousel for fun. We walked all around the park until we started to get tired from our last couple of long days so we decided to head back to our apartment for a nap. We ended up at Hyde Park Corner across from Asley House and found a tube station there.
Back at the apartment, Kat went to sleep while I uploaded pictures and worked on the blog. I had part of one of my beers until I got too tired and took a short nap. Kat's alarm went off and she noticed that her watch battery was dying. We needed her watch for the train trip tomorrow so we added batteries to the shopping list. We got changed into nicer clothes and took the tube to Knightbridge. From there we walked to Amaya.
The restaurant was very nice and we felt a little under-dressed. Overall we've noticed that Londonites tend to dress a little sharper than most. You don't see many jeans and t-shirt except for tourists like us. Amaya was even nicer, with many men wearing ties or jackets. I brought a jacket with me, but I hadn't thought to wear it this evening. They had a strict policy against cameras in the dining room, so I was not able to get pictures of us inside. The food was good and arrived in eight small courses. Kat filled up quickly and I put forth a heroic attempt. We were both stuffed by the end of it. As we ate we discussed options for our costumes this coming Halloween. The bill was extravagant, but it was too late to complain.
After dinner we tried to find a watch battery, but Harrod's was closed as were the other nearby shops. We took the tube back to Earl's Court and went to our trusty Tesco. We found a battery, but didn't have a screwdriver small enough to open Kat's watch and make sure it was the right kind. A checker called the team leader and Shahidul came to our rescue. He had the perfect screwdriver for the job, but he sort of took over. I got the impression he didn't think very highly of women. He took the watch from Kat and set to work. He got the back off easily enough but almost broke it trying to wrench the old battery out of place. Kat tried to point out the additional screws holding it in place, but he didn't seem to listen. Once he got all the screws off and tore an important looking piece of plastic out he got the new battery in place and then promptly dropped a screw. I was holding the others. The small screw hit the floor and bounced out of sight.
Now we had Shahidul, Kat, and a nearby stranger trying to find a tiny screw on a dirty grocery store floor. Kat finally just pressed her hand flat on the floor in the hopes of getting it to stick to her, and it worked. The checker lady congratulated her and said, "Wow, that was smart," and then I overheard Shahidul mutter, "Not smart, lucky" under his breath. This guy was really getting on my nerves, but he was the wielder of the magic screwdriver and I did not want to offend him. We had both tried to get him to leave the tool with us, but he refused. The operation continued to go awry. Shahidul couldn't get the tiny screws back into place until Kat finally used her long and narrow fingernails to act as a guide. Together they got everything screwed back into place and we were able to pay up and leave. The watch worked, but now it had no sound. We couldn't use it as an alarm clock anymore.
We returned home and got our stuff ready for another early morning before our day trip to Edinburgh. We set the room's alarm clock and my DS as a backup and went to sleep.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Our First Real Day of the Honeymoon
We like our little Think Apartment despite its little problems. It is in the right location, near a supermarket and a very convenient tube station and in a quiet and clean neighborhood. The rate Kat got us was very reasonable, given the last minute nature of it all and that it's a full suite with free internet.
The futon is comfortable and big enough for us both. The internet works as long as you use a cable to plug directly in. It's nice to have tea and breakfast in the room in the morning. We've got plenty of space to spread out in. There's even a phone in the room that works.
The problems we've found haven't ruined it for us. The door to the bathroom squeals horribly, but we don't need to close it. All of the closets, drawers, and cabinets use those stupid magnetic pop-out latches and one of them is broken in the kitchen, but we just stuck a garbage can in front of it to keep it closed. The cabinet door in front of the refrigerator is the worst. It opens toward the kitchen, meaning you have to enter the hallway to get around it before you can open get in the refrigerator. The placement of all the light switches defy common sense. It seems like the designers went for the ultra-modern look and fancy space saving appliances, but failed on making the room efficient. The wireless signal is weak up here on the 5th floor, but at least they provided a LAN cable. We've needed to buy some basic supplies to effectively use the kitchen, but it hasn't been that unreasonable. There really isn't enough space in the bedroom closet for us to completely unpack so we've found ways of getting around it. The tap water here tastes kind of funky so we opted to get a jug of bottled water for our stay. The walls are pretty thin and you can hear other people moving around quite a bit. There's a room right off the elevator that smells like smoke, but at least it doesn't get back to our room. Oh, and all the outlets have on/off switches which caused us some confusion at first when nothing we plugged in seemed to work.
Our first night here was good. We went to bed after we had checked our email and made sure people knew we were alive, safe, and settled for the rest of the trip. I checked on my PayPal issue and it turned out that the scammer had reversed my payment and I was credited the whole amount that I had prepaid them. I was very relieved, but also curious as to what happened. Did they get spooked by my emails? Were they using a stolen account to funnel money through and did the owner get access back and reverse all transactions? I never found out, although I did report the activity to PayPal and the FTC.
We got a decent nights sleep that first night and then got up to unpack on Tuesday morning. The day was sunny outside so we put on shorts and t-shirts. Downstairs I confirmed our stay for the rest of the trip and made sure that we didn't have to change rooms. I told the clerk about a few of the problems in the room, but they didn't seem too concerned. When we asked about breakfast they mentioned the Pembroke Cafe just across the street.
The cafe was great. We had a full English breakfast and a couple rounds of tea. It was delicious. This day was already starting off great. After breakfast we went over to the Tesco supermarket to get things for the apartment: water, tea, an assortment of beers, sugar, milk, eggs, clotted cream, muselix, muffins, crumpets, veggies, preserves, fruit, chocolate, olive oil, cleaning supplies, and soap. We returned with our purchases to the room and sat down to plan our next activity.
We were able to reserve tickets and a pair of cushions at the Globe theatre for next Monday night to see "The Merry Wives of Windsor". My guide book suggested we try the cheap last minute tickets at the "Tkts" stand in Leicester Square if we wanted to see a musical. We saw that Les Miserables was playing that night so we figured we'd give it a try. Leicester Square near the Westminster walking tour in my guide book. We packed some nice clothes along in my backpack just in case we got in to see the show that evening.
The tube zoomed us away to the Westminster bridge. Outside the station we got to see Big Ben and the houses of Parliament. I brought out my guide book and we followed along taking in the sites. We'll have to return to that area and check out Westminster Abby closer. We stopped at a pub called the Red Lion and had a half-pint each of Stella. Kat sampled a brew called Honeydew and thought it was delicious. We continued on our way down Whitehall and toward Trafalgar Square, taking a detour to see old Scotland Yard and the Sherlock Holmes pub.
Behind the National Gallery is Leicester Square and the cheap Tkts booth. We got lucky, the booth wasn't busy on a Wednesday and we scored good seats to the evening show of Les Mis. We were excited it had all worked out and the tickets were cheaper than any deal we had found online. Kat had not yet seen it and I was looking forward to seeing it again with her.
We wandered around Piccadilly Square again, this time without our bags and in much better moods, and then checked out the Soho entertainment district and spotted the Queen Theatre, where our show would be that evening.
Next we wandered through China Town and planned on returning there to eat dinner before the play. We checked out a few shops and Kat bought a small purse. After that we headed North and found the British Museum. It was fairly busy, but we braved the crowds. We rushed through history, going from Medieval Europe, back to Egypt and Greece. I was very impressed with the Ancient Egypt and Greece displays. This was something I wasn't able to do on my last trip. Kat was starting to get irritated by the large and pushy crowds so we wrapped it up quickly and left.
Next we wandered down Neal Street toward Covent Garden. We both wanted a little snack so we stopped at Cafe Eterno for tea and a brownie. It was a nice break away from the crowds. Then we checked out the Covent Garden market. There seem to always be street performers in the square. We looked at some artwork and almost bought some. It was getting time for dinner so we headed back to China Town.
My guide book helped us find Y Ming restaurant. It was a nice place and they looked at us funny in our shorts and t-shirts. After we got seated we ran to the bathroom to change into our nice clothes for the show. We ate hot & sour soup and split an order of shredded ginger duck and a couple of fancy drinks. It was all very good.
When dinner was over it was time to walk to the show. We arrived with plenty of time to spare, so we wandered around Soho again and found ourselves outside of the imaginary flat. We had a good laugh about it before heading back to the theatre. When they let us in I ordered a couple of glasses of wine for the intermission and stored my bag before we found our seats. The theatre was small and intimate and we were very close to the stage. They were great seats.
The show was great, despite the pit orchestra being a bit off. Kat enjoyed it and said it was a really good play. I loved it. I think it will be the most memorable performance I've seen since I was so close and could actually make out all the actors' faces and emotions.
After the show we went straight home via the tube and went to bed. It was a great day.
The futon is comfortable and big enough for us both. The internet works as long as you use a cable to plug directly in. It's nice to have tea and breakfast in the room in the morning. We've got plenty of space to spread out in. There's even a phone in the room that works.
The problems we've found haven't ruined it for us. The door to the bathroom squeals horribly, but we don't need to close it. All of the closets, drawers, and cabinets use those stupid magnetic pop-out latches and one of them is broken in the kitchen, but we just stuck a garbage can in front of it to keep it closed. The cabinet door in front of the refrigerator is the worst. It opens toward the kitchen, meaning you have to enter the hallway to get around it before you can open get in the refrigerator. The placement of all the light switches defy common sense. It seems like the designers went for the ultra-modern look and fancy space saving appliances, but failed on making the room efficient. The wireless signal is weak up here on the 5th floor, but at least they provided a LAN cable. We've needed to buy some basic supplies to effectively use the kitchen, but it hasn't been that unreasonable. There really isn't enough space in the bedroom closet for us to completely unpack so we've found ways of getting around it. The tap water here tastes kind of funky so we opted to get a jug of bottled water for our stay. The walls are pretty thin and you can hear other people moving around quite a bit. There's a room right off the elevator that smells like smoke, but at least it doesn't get back to our room. Oh, and all the outlets have on/off switches which caused us some confusion at first when nothing we plugged in seemed to work.
Our first night here was good. We went to bed after we had checked our email and made sure people knew we were alive, safe, and settled for the rest of the trip. I checked on my PayPal issue and it turned out that the scammer had reversed my payment and I was credited the whole amount that I had prepaid them. I was very relieved, but also curious as to what happened. Did they get spooked by my emails? Were they using a stolen account to funnel money through and did the owner get access back and reverse all transactions? I never found out, although I did report the activity to PayPal and the FTC.
We got a decent nights sleep that first night and then got up to unpack on Tuesday morning. The day was sunny outside so we put on shorts and t-shirts. Downstairs I confirmed our stay for the rest of the trip and made sure that we didn't have to change rooms. I told the clerk about a few of the problems in the room, but they didn't seem too concerned. When we asked about breakfast they mentioned the Pembroke Cafe just across the street.
The cafe was great. We had a full English breakfast and a couple rounds of tea. It was delicious. This day was already starting off great. After breakfast we went over to the Tesco supermarket to get things for the apartment: water, tea, an assortment of beers, sugar, milk, eggs, clotted cream, muselix, muffins, crumpets, veggies, preserves, fruit, chocolate, olive oil, cleaning supplies, and soap. We returned with our purchases to the room and sat down to plan our next activity.
We were able to reserve tickets and a pair of cushions at the Globe theatre for next Monday night to see "The Merry Wives of Windsor". My guide book suggested we try the cheap last minute tickets at the "Tkts" stand in Leicester Square if we wanted to see a musical. We saw that Les Miserables was playing that night so we figured we'd give it a try. Leicester Square near the Westminster walking tour in my guide book. We packed some nice clothes along in my backpack just in case we got in to see the show that evening.
The tube zoomed us away to the Westminster bridge. Outside the station we got to see Big Ben and the houses of Parliament. I brought out my guide book and we followed along taking in the sites. We'll have to return to that area and check out Westminster Abby closer. We stopped at a pub called the Red Lion and had a half-pint each of Stella. Kat sampled a brew called Honeydew and thought it was delicious. We continued on our way down Whitehall and toward Trafalgar Square, taking a detour to see old Scotland Yard and the Sherlock Holmes pub.
Behind the National Gallery is Leicester Square and the cheap Tkts booth. We got lucky, the booth wasn't busy on a Wednesday and we scored good seats to the evening show of Les Mis. We were excited it had all worked out and the tickets were cheaper than any deal we had found online. Kat had not yet seen it and I was looking forward to seeing it again with her.
We wandered around Piccadilly Square again, this time without our bags and in much better moods, and then checked out the Soho entertainment district and spotted the Queen Theatre, where our show would be that evening.
Next we wandered through China Town and planned on returning there to eat dinner before the play. We checked out a few shops and Kat bought a small purse. After that we headed North and found the British Museum. It was fairly busy, but we braved the crowds. We rushed through history, going from Medieval Europe, back to Egypt and Greece. I was very impressed with the Ancient Egypt and Greece displays. This was something I wasn't able to do on my last trip. Kat was starting to get irritated by the large and pushy crowds so we wrapped it up quickly and left.
Next we wandered down Neal Street toward Covent Garden. We both wanted a little snack so we stopped at Cafe Eterno for tea and a brownie. It was a nice break away from the crowds. Then we checked out the Covent Garden market. There seem to always be street performers in the square. We looked at some artwork and almost bought some. It was getting time for dinner so we headed back to China Town.
My guide book helped us find Y Ming restaurant. It was a nice place and they looked at us funny in our shorts and t-shirts. After we got seated we ran to the bathroom to change into our nice clothes for the show. We ate hot & sour soup and split an order of shredded ginger duck and a couple of fancy drinks. It was all very good.
When dinner was over it was time to walk to the show. We arrived with plenty of time to spare, so we wandered around Soho again and found ourselves outside of the imaginary flat. We had a good laugh about it before heading back to the theatre. When they let us in I ordered a couple of glasses of wine for the intermission and stored my bag before we found our seats. The theatre was small and intimate and we were very close to the stage. They were great seats.
The show was great, despite the pit orchestra being a bit off. Kat enjoyed it and said it was a really good play. I loved it. I think it will be the most memorable performance I've seen since I was so close and could actually make out all the actors' faces and emotions.
After the show we went straight home via the tube and went to bed. It was a great day.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Finding a Place to Live
Kat handled the news like a trooper, a simple "Oh no" and then a confident, "I can fix it". We began to formulate a plan, but the plan required the internet. Luckily, the Caffe Nero advertised wi-fi access. It wasn't free, but it would do in a pinch. We grabbed a seat at tightly packed table in the corner with our bags and got out her laptop. The cafe attendants weren't very friendly or much help about getting access to the web. Kat found the log-in screen and the rates, £6 for 90 minutes, and then tried to use her card. That's when we learned it was blocked. I got mine out and it worked. We were online.
Since we had limited time on the internet we decided to find a cheapest place nearby that offered free internet for one night. We figured we'd crash there with our stuff, take a shower, and then use the internet to find a better place for the rest of our stay. I assumed I had lost the deposit I had put down on the imaginary flat already, but was taking it in stride. We also knew we needed to contact Kat's credit company to get her card issue fixed and I would need to go online to complain to the FTC and PayPal about the scam and see what could be done.
I flipped through my guide book and tried to locate cheap places to stay with internet access. This is where I learned having a used guidebook from 2004 doesn't help. Many of the web-sites didn't exist anymore. The first couple we searched for didn't pan out, so Kat decided to just use her stand-by of Orbitz. Right away we found the "Lord Jim Hotel" located at Earl's Court district, just a couple stops away on the Piccadilly line. We booked it for the night, got directions, packed up, and heading back down to the tube station.
The prospect of a shower and a nap kept us going. We climbed onto the tube and headed back in the direction we had come. We got off at Earl's court and climbed to the surface. Little did we know, Earl's Court would become our favorite station. Just a couple blocks away and down a side-street we located the Lord Jim, or as we came to call it, "The internet hole". It seemed cute enough from the outside. It was in a townhouse sandwiched between virtually identical townhouses on either side stretching the full length of the street. A crowd of young travelers were gathered out in front, the first sign that this was barely more than a flop-house. Inside things look very cramped. As we waited to check-in at the lobby, kids were constantly pushing past us. I spotted a sign behind a potted plant. I brushed aside a leaf and read "This is a 2 star establishment".
When the gal at the counter finally got to us she wasn't aware of our reservation. She double-checked the printer and her email, but nothing had come through from Orbitz yet. Regardless, she was willing to give us a key and for the night. A little concerned, but too tired to care, we headed for the lift. The lift was tiny. We could barely fit the two of us with our bags in and get the door closed. I couldn't turn around with my backpack on. Kat thought the lady had said our room would be on the 3rd floor, but I stubbornly said number 26 would be on the second floor and pushed the 2 button. The ride was claustrophobic, but it wasn't much better when we got off the lift. The hallways were narrow and crowded with extra mattresses stacked standing along the walls. There wasn't enough room to walk two abreast. We searched to floor but did not find anything higher than 21.
Once again admitting my failure we returned to the tiny lift and headed up to floor 3. We found our room there. Rooms in London run on the small side, especially at hostels, B&Bs, and any other older establishments. A double is roughly the same size as a queen bed, and it is rare indeed to find a king-sized bed and suite. At B&Bs you have to make sure to get a room with a private bath, otherwise you may be using a shared one down the hall. We had booked a double with a private bath here at the Lord Jim.
When we opened the door we were very disappointed. The room was barely bigger than the bed that occupied it. The only other furniture in the room was a shelf overhanging the bed in one corner that held a cheap plastic coffee maker. Around the corner was a tall narrow door leading to what looked like a closet. The door did not open all the way, hitting the side of the bed, and led to the bathroom. It had all the necessary components: shower, sink, toilet; but it was difficult to turn around in. It was definitely not something two people could occupy at the same time. Everything appeared to be clean enough, but it was definitely lower than our expectations. They were working hard to earn those 2 stars.
We stuffed our baggage between the wall and the foot of the bed, and in front of the hall door. Kat barely got wi-fi reception from our room, but it was enough. Now we were getting hungry, but first things first Kat and I needed a shower and to find a place to live. After we took turns using the bathroom (add poor plumbing to "Lord" Jim's list of crimes) we both laid on the bed, because there was nowhere else to sit, and started looking through the list of places to sleep in my guide book and on the internet. We threw out anything that wasn't non-smoking or didn't have internet access. Our list grew smaller. We included only those that had availability for the next night and the following 9 days. Our list grew even smaller. We paired down those that cost over £150 a night. Our list became a small handful.
Rather than take a chance on getting another tiny room we decided to take our list of possibilities and visit them before deciding. Now that we had showered and had somewhere to leave our bags we felt better about exploring the city. We were also very hungry and needed to find something to eat soon. We wrote down directions to each of the places we planned to visit and headed out again. A couple of the options were near the Lord Jim in the Earl's Court district so we started there. First order of business however was to get to a pay phone and fix Kat's card problem. We found one at the end of the street, called collect to the number on the back of the card and Kat straightened everything out after a few minutes on the phone. Feeling accomplished, we moved on.
The first option looked similar to the Lord Jim from outside and we had no way to contact the owners, their offices were located elsewhere. We decided against pursuing it further and went to find "Think Apartments". Online they looked pretty modern and swanky and claimed to have a stocked kitchenette and other amenities. We were a bit skeptical, having already been burned by a similar pitch. They turned out to actually exist and the front desk clerk was very nice and walked us up to see a sample room. We were pleasantly surprised by them.
The rooms seemed to be straight out of an Ikea catalog. Everything had a slick ultra-modern look to it. There was plenty of room, and it seemed like it would do the trick very nicely. Our only concerns were that the bed was a futon and might not be the most comfortable, there seemed to be a lack of storage space, and it was a bit on the expensive side of things. We thanked the clerk and moved on to the next stop.
Next was the Copthorne Terra Hotel. We discovered that the Earl's Court station was actually a crossing point between 3 major Tube lines; Piccadilly, Circle, and District. We could easily get anywhere we wanted to go from there. That made the Think Apartments option even more tempting. We took the District line to the Copthorne Terra Hotel. This place we even more expensive, but was a full luxury hotel. It was busy with travelers so it took them awhile to get us up to see a room, but the attendant was very nice. The room we were interested in was nice and had plenty of storage space, but did not have a kitchenette and we would have to pay extra for broadband access. We asked the attendant for a suggestion on dinner nearby, because we were both starving at this point, and he pointed us down the road to the Devonshire Arms pub.
We found the pub and sat down to have dinner. We ordered bangers and mash and a beer each and discussed our options. We only had one other place we wanted to check out before deciding, but we were already heavily leaning toward the Think Apartments. Kat was exhausted, and I had twisted my ankle on a low curb just a few meters up the street and was starting to worry that I'd messed it up for the rest of the trip. The food and drink helped rejuvenate us a bit however and we decompressed over the events of the day. I apologized again for the situation and Kat graciously said it could have happened to her as well.
After dinner we went in search of the Comfort Inn at the end of the District Line near Edgware Road. This area was the seediest we had seen yet and it had begun to rain in earnest on us. We found the place on a retail strip squeezed in between what looked like a hardware store and a pharmacy. The lobby reminded me of my days working the counter at the 66 Motel. Cheap, no frills, no questions. We asked if we could see a room and the clerk told us they were all booked up for the night. I was kind of relieved as we left.
We returned to "the internet hole" and sat on the bed together to make our arrangements. We'd decided by that point to go with the Think Apartments, and I had had enough of the hole and wanted to go ahead and book for tonight as well, even if it did mean paying two places for the same night. Kat said she would be up for that, but wanted to look for deals first. Kat began to use her powers of internet deal searching. I watched in amazement as she worked. By the end she had scored us 30% off the basic rate for the next 9 nights and 10% off the rate for the current night. All told it was going to be cheaper than what I had planned to spend on the flat that didn't exist. We made two separate bookings, the best deal through ebookers.com and the single night through Think Apartments' own website just so we could avoid the issue we had at the Lord Jim with reservations not showing up in time. We packed up our belongings, I even took the toilet paper and other bathroom supplies, left a poor review, and headed downstairs to check-out. Our reservation to the Lord Jim had come through by then so they didn't give us any grief about payment.
The walk to Think Apartments was short, but in the dark and the rain. From this direction we passed a Tesco supermarket, right next to the apartments. That made it even more convenient. We checked-in with no problems and went to our room. It was a different layout than the one we had seen, but we were just so happy to not be in the hole anymore that we didn't make a fuss. We got settled in and took stock of our new home for the next few days.
Since we had limited time on the internet we decided to find a cheapest place nearby that offered free internet for one night. We figured we'd crash there with our stuff, take a shower, and then use the internet to find a better place for the rest of our stay. I assumed I had lost the deposit I had put down on the imaginary flat already, but was taking it in stride. We also knew we needed to contact Kat's credit company to get her card issue fixed and I would need to go online to complain to the FTC and PayPal about the scam and see what could be done.
I flipped through my guide book and tried to locate cheap places to stay with internet access. This is where I learned having a used guidebook from 2004 doesn't help. Many of the web-sites didn't exist anymore. The first couple we searched for didn't pan out, so Kat decided to just use her stand-by of Orbitz. Right away we found the "Lord Jim Hotel" located at Earl's Court district, just a couple stops away on the Piccadilly line. We booked it for the night, got directions, packed up, and heading back down to the tube station.
The prospect of a shower and a nap kept us going. We climbed onto the tube and headed back in the direction we had come. We got off at Earl's court and climbed to the surface. Little did we know, Earl's Court would become our favorite station. Just a couple blocks away and down a side-street we located the Lord Jim, or as we came to call it, "The internet hole". It seemed cute enough from the outside. It was in a townhouse sandwiched between virtually identical townhouses on either side stretching the full length of the street. A crowd of young travelers were gathered out in front, the first sign that this was barely more than a flop-house. Inside things look very cramped. As we waited to check-in at the lobby, kids were constantly pushing past us. I spotted a sign behind a potted plant. I brushed aside a leaf and read "This is a 2 star establishment".
When the gal at the counter finally got to us she wasn't aware of our reservation. She double-checked the printer and her email, but nothing had come through from Orbitz yet. Regardless, she was willing to give us a key and for the night. A little concerned, but too tired to care, we headed for the lift. The lift was tiny. We could barely fit the two of us with our bags in and get the door closed. I couldn't turn around with my backpack on. Kat thought the lady had said our room would be on the 3rd floor, but I stubbornly said number 26 would be on the second floor and pushed the 2 button. The ride was claustrophobic, but it wasn't much better when we got off the lift. The hallways were narrow and crowded with extra mattresses stacked standing along the walls. There wasn't enough room to walk two abreast. We searched to floor but did not find anything higher than 21.
Once again admitting my failure we returned to the tiny lift and headed up to floor 3. We found our room there. Rooms in London run on the small side, especially at hostels, B&Bs, and any other older establishments. A double is roughly the same size as a queen bed, and it is rare indeed to find a king-sized bed and suite. At B&Bs you have to make sure to get a room with a private bath, otherwise you may be using a shared one down the hall. We had booked a double with a private bath here at the Lord Jim.
When we opened the door we were very disappointed. The room was barely bigger than the bed that occupied it. The only other furniture in the room was a shelf overhanging the bed in one corner that held a cheap plastic coffee maker. Around the corner was a tall narrow door leading to what looked like a closet. The door did not open all the way, hitting the side of the bed, and led to the bathroom. It had all the necessary components: shower, sink, toilet; but it was difficult to turn around in. It was definitely not something two people could occupy at the same time. Everything appeared to be clean enough, but it was definitely lower than our expectations. They were working hard to earn those 2 stars.
We stuffed our baggage between the wall and the foot of the bed, and in front of the hall door. Kat barely got wi-fi reception from our room, but it was enough. Now we were getting hungry, but first things first Kat and I needed a shower and to find a place to live. After we took turns using the bathroom (add poor plumbing to "Lord" Jim's list of crimes) we both laid on the bed, because there was nowhere else to sit, and started looking through the list of places to sleep in my guide book and on the internet. We threw out anything that wasn't non-smoking or didn't have internet access. Our list grew smaller. We included only those that had availability for the next night and the following 9 days. Our list grew even smaller. We paired down those that cost over £150 a night. Our list became a small handful.
Rather than take a chance on getting another tiny room we decided to take our list of possibilities and visit them before deciding. Now that we had showered and had somewhere to leave our bags we felt better about exploring the city. We were also very hungry and needed to find something to eat soon. We wrote down directions to each of the places we planned to visit and headed out again. A couple of the options were near the Lord Jim in the Earl's Court district so we started there. First order of business however was to get to a pay phone and fix Kat's card problem. We found one at the end of the street, called collect to the number on the back of the card and Kat straightened everything out after a few minutes on the phone. Feeling accomplished, we moved on.
The first option looked similar to the Lord Jim from outside and we had no way to contact the owners, their offices were located elsewhere. We decided against pursuing it further and went to find "Think Apartments". Online they looked pretty modern and swanky and claimed to have a stocked kitchenette and other amenities. We were a bit skeptical, having already been burned by a similar pitch. They turned out to actually exist and the front desk clerk was very nice and walked us up to see a sample room. We were pleasantly surprised by them.
The rooms seemed to be straight out of an Ikea catalog. Everything had a slick ultra-modern look to it. There was plenty of room, and it seemed like it would do the trick very nicely. Our only concerns were that the bed was a futon and might not be the most comfortable, there seemed to be a lack of storage space, and it was a bit on the expensive side of things. We thanked the clerk and moved on to the next stop.
Next was the Copthorne Terra Hotel. We discovered that the Earl's Court station was actually a crossing point between 3 major Tube lines; Piccadilly, Circle, and District. We could easily get anywhere we wanted to go from there. That made the Think Apartments option even more tempting. We took the District line to the Copthorne Terra Hotel. This place we even more expensive, but was a full luxury hotel. It was busy with travelers so it took them awhile to get us up to see a room, but the attendant was very nice. The room we were interested in was nice and had plenty of storage space, but did not have a kitchenette and we would have to pay extra for broadband access. We asked the attendant for a suggestion on dinner nearby, because we were both starving at this point, and he pointed us down the road to the Devonshire Arms pub.
We found the pub and sat down to have dinner. We ordered bangers and mash and a beer each and discussed our options. We only had one other place we wanted to check out before deciding, but we were already heavily leaning toward the Think Apartments. Kat was exhausted, and I had twisted my ankle on a low curb just a few meters up the street and was starting to worry that I'd messed it up for the rest of the trip. The food and drink helped rejuvenate us a bit however and we decompressed over the events of the day. I apologized again for the situation and Kat graciously said it could have happened to her as well.
After dinner we went in search of the Comfort Inn at the end of the District Line near Edgware Road. This area was the seediest we had seen yet and it had begun to rain in earnest on us. We found the place on a retail strip squeezed in between what looked like a hardware store and a pharmacy. The lobby reminded me of my days working the counter at the 66 Motel. Cheap, no frills, no questions. We asked if we could see a room and the clerk told us they were all booked up for the night. I was kind of relieved as we left.
We returned to "the internet hole" and sat on the bed together to make our arrangements. We'd decided by that point to go with the Think Apartments, and I had had enough of the hole and wanted to go ahead and book for tonight as well, even if it did mean paying two places for the same night. Kat said she would be up for that, but wanted to look for deals first. Kat began to use her powers of internet deal searching. I watched in amazement as she worked. By the end she had scored us 30% off the basic rate for the next 9 nights and 10% off the rate for the current night. All told it was going to be cheaper than what I had planned to spend on the flat that didn't exist. We made two separate bookings, the best deal through ebookers.com and the single night through Think Apartments' own website just so we could avoid the issue we had at the Lord Jim with reservations not showing up in time. We packed up our belongings, I even took the toilet paper and other bathroom supplies, left a poor review, and headed downstairs to check-out. Our reservation to the Lord Jim had come through by then so they didn't give us any grief about payment.
The walk to Think Apartments was short, but in the dark and the rain. From this direction we passed a Tesco supermarket, right next to the apartments. That made it even more convenient. We checked-in with no problems and went to our room. It was a different layout than the one we had seen, but we were just so happy to not be in the hole anymore that we didn't make a fuss. We got settled in and took stock of our new home for the next few days.
The Stupids Arrive in London
When we woke up we were over England. They fed us a big breakfast right away, the same thing we had on the flight to Houston. It was 9:35am local time on a Tuesday morning and the airport wasn't very busy at all. We got through customs and immigration with no problem at all. Our bags arrived on time and intact. We had nothing to claim so we headed out of the terminal and down toward the tube stations. We needed to get tickets, and I needed cash to we stopped by the first ATM we saw.
Our first trouble was that I couldn't get enough cash out of the ATM at the airport. My rental agreement had said we needed to bring the remainder of the balance at the time of check-in (around £480). Unfortunately the ATM had a limit of £200 max. After arguing with the inanimate object for awhile I withdrew the smaller sum and decided to hit up the next machine I saw for the remainder. I had already alerted my bank as to my travel plans so I hadn't expected to be stymied by the local bank system. Luckily I had a wad of US cash in my wallet already so I exchanged most of it at the currency counter nearby. Now I had about £400, but still not quite enough.
Underground we stopped by a ticket booth and purchased two Oyster cards, supposedly good for one week of public transit, at the rate of £33 a piece. We popped through the turn-stiles and jumped on our first Tube ride on the Piccadilly line. The address on my information was 10 Sherwood which was supposedly just off of the Piccadilly Circus. We sat down and got comfortable and watched the scenery go by. I got out my journal and started taking notes. I wrote "..both looking forward to a shower, hope it's not a scam...". The prerecorded announcer lady's voice kept repeating that this was the line to "Cockfosters". We had a chuckle.
We got off the tube at Piccadilly Circus and were disappointed to not find a lift to the ground floor. We lugged our big bags up a couple flights of stairs and then up an escalator and through the turn-stiles. I found a row of ATMs and attempted to get more money. These all also refused to give me cash. Either they were out of money or there was something wrong with my card. Kat was tired and starting to get frustrated. I was getting nervous. What if I couldn't get all the cash I needed? Why do I need to bring so much cash anyway? I started to get a really bad feeling about the whole setup.
With limited cash in hand and our big bags, we climbed up into the daylight and set about trying to find our rental. Piccadilly Circus was packed with people, mostly tourists. I thought I had a rough idea of where to go, but immediately set off in the wrong direction. I asked a few people if they knew the way to 10 Sherwood and they looked at me confused and couldn't help me. Along the way we tried more ATMs, none of them worked. Kat tried to draw using her credit card, but it required a PIN. She didn't think she had a PIN setup, but guessed and tried anyway. That turned out to be a bad idea. It got flagged as suspicious activity and her card became blocked from further transactions. I finally got a message on one ATM that said "maximum daily amount reached". I guess there's a limit to how much cash you can draw in a day. Who knew?
We stopped in an American Express currency exchange and tourist information center to ask directions. The guy didn't know where 10 Sherwood was, but he directed me to the street. We got there and I started to recognize the area from my Google Maps street view search. There was the theatre showing Grease, and there was the pub at ground floor. There appeared to be apartments above the pub, but I couldn't find a way up anywhere. I expected to meet someone around here to show us the flat, but no one was there. I stopped in a restaurant to ask about number 10 and if there were any flats upstairs. The host was nice enough, but said that this was number 6 and that there was a University upstairs, but no flats. He even tried to call the number on my rental agreement, but he said it looked malformed. We tried guessing at it anyway and it was a wrong number.
Now alarm bells were going off in my head. This was definitely feeling like a scam. Kat was outside looking even more tired and frustrated. My plans for a relaxing honeymoon were imploding. I hadn't completely given up though. I headed outside and we continued our search for 10 Sherwood. We passed by the theatre and a backpacking hostel, who said their address was 12 Sherwood. We got to the next corner in front of a Caffe Nero, a coffee chain we've since seen everywhere, and I parked Kat on the curb, left her with the bags and said I'd go find the place and come back to get her. She was tired of lugging her baggage around so agreed.
I ran back to the theatre, which should have been 10 Sherwood and talked to the folks at the box office. When I explained the situation they were familiar with the scam. They told me that they get people in there all the time looking for flats, and although they were 10 Sherwood, there were no flats above them.
My heart sank. I looked at my documents and now things started to jump out at me as obviously fake. The spelling errors, the bad formatting, the bad grammar, the "googlemail.com" email address, as opposed to "gmail.com", the contact information that looked like a personal email address instead of a business. My mind flashed back to the poorly worded email exchanges, that they wanted to be paid with Western Union, always a red flag, and that I had insisted on PayPal, their lack of response when I emailed them questions about details and directions. I had fallen victim to a rental scam, someone who prides himself on being skeptical had been taken in by such an obvious con. I felt terrible. It would have been one thing if it were just me, I would have accepted the defeat and moved on, but now I had let down Kat as well, my new wife, and this was our honeymoon. I had had one major job during the wedding planning, plan the honeymoon, and now I had apparently screwed that up. Dejectedly, I walked back to the Nero Cafe, to tell Kat the bad news.
Our first trouble was that I couldn't get enough cash out of the ATM at the airport. My rental agreement had said we needed to bring the remainder of the balance at the time of check-in (around £480). Unfortunately the ATM had a limit of £200 max. After arguing with the inanimate object for awhile I withdrew the smaller sum and decided to hit up the next machine I saw for the remainder. I had already alerted my bank as to my travel plans so I hadn't expected to be stymied by the local bank system. Luckily I had a wad of US cash in my wallet already so I exchanged most of it at the currency counter nearby. Now I had about £400, but still not quite enough.
Underground we stopped by a ticket booth and purchased two Oyster cards, supposedly good for one week of public transit, at the rate of £33 a piece. We popped through the turn-stiles and jumped on our first Tube ride on the Piccadilly line. The address on my information was 10 Sherwood which was supposedly just off of the Piccadilly Circus. We sat down and got comfortable and watched the scenery go by. I got out my journal and started taking notes. I wrote "..both looking forward to a shower, hope it's not a scam...". The prerecorded announcer lady's voice kept repeating that this was the line to "Cockfosters". We had a chuckle.
We got off the tube at Piccadilly Circus and were disappointed to not find a lift to the ground floor. We lugged our big bags up a couple flights of stairs and then up an escalator and through the turn-stiles. I found a row of ATMs and attempted to get more money. These all also refused to give me cash. Either they were out of money or there was something wrong with my card. Kat was tired and starting to get frustrated. I was getting nervous. What if I couldn't get all the cash I needed? Why do I need to bring so much cash anyway? I started to get a really bad feeling about the whole setup.
With limited cash in hand and our big bags, we climbed up into the daylight and set about trying to find our rental. Piccadilly Circus was packed with people, mostly tourists. I thought I had a rough idea of where to go, but immediately set off in the wrong direction. I asked a few people if they knew the way to 10 Sherwood and they looked at me confused and couldn't help me. Along the way we tried more ATMs, none of them worked. Kat tried to draw using her credit card, but it required a PIN. She didn't think she had a PIN setup, but guessed and tried anyway. That turned out to be a bad idea. It got flagged as suspicious activity and her card became blocked from further transactions. I finally got a message on one ATM that said "maximum daily amount reached". I guess there's a limit to how much cash you can draw in a day. Who knew?
We stopped in an American Express currency exchange and tourist information center to ask directions. The guy didn't know where 10 Sherwood was, but he directed me to the street. We got there and I started to recognize the area from my Google Maps street view search. There was the theatre showing Grease, and there was the pub at ground floor. There appeared to be apartments above the pub, but I couldn't find a way up anywhere. I expected to meet someone around here to show us the flat, but no one was there. I stopped in a restaurant to ask about number 10 and if there were any flats upstairs. The host was nice enough, but said that this was number 6 and that there was a University upstairs, but no flats. He even tried to call the number on my rental agreement, but he said it looked malformed. We tried guessing at it anyway and it was a wrong number.
Now alarm bells were going off in my head. This was definitely feeling like a scam. Kat was outside looking even more tired and frustrated. My plans for a relaxing honeymoon were imploding. I hadn't completely given up though. I headed outside and we continued our search for 10 Sherwood. We passed by the theatre and a backpacking hostel, who said their address was 12 Sherwood. We got to the next corner in front of a Caffe Nero, a coffee chain we've since seen everywhere, and I parked Kat on the curb, left her with the bags and said I'd go find the place and come back to get her. She was tired of lugging her baggage around so agreed.
I ran back to the theatre, which should have been 10 Sherwood and talked to the folks at the box office. When I explained the situation they were familiar with the scam. They told me that they get people in there all the time looking for flats, and although they were 10 Sherwood, there were no flats above them.
My heart sank. I looked at my documents and now things started to jump out at me as obviously fake. The spelling errors, the bad formatting, the bad grammar, the "googlemail.com" email address, as opposed to "gmail.com", the contact information that looked like a personal email address instead of a business. My mind flashed back to the poorly worded email exchanges, that they wanted to be paid with Western Union, always a red flag, and that I had insisted on PayPal, their lack of response when I emailed them questions about details and directions. I had fallen victim to a rental scam, someone who prides himself on being skeptical had been taken in by such an obvious con. I felt terrible. It would have been one thing if it were just me, I would have accepted the defeat and moved on, but now I had let down Kat as well, my new wife, and this was our honeymoon. I had had one major job during the wedding planning, plan the honeymoon, and now I had apparently screwed that up. Dejectedly, I walked back to the Nero Cafe, to tell Kat the bad news.
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