London is a walker's city.
However, this walker must be tremendously fit with a heart like Lance Armstrong's before the most recent Tour and feet as hard as Margaret Thatcher's cold dead heart.
Notice how none of this describes me. Which brings me to my points that A) I've done a lot of walking over the past two days, and B) I never want to walk ten miles in one morning again.
Starting with Day 3, I woke up at nine-ish, had breakfast with my two roommates, and looked about for something to do, being that it was a bank holiday and thus classes were canceled. Everyone else in the group being either hung over or conserving their energy for the Notting Hill Festival later in the day, we had the whole city to ourselves, figuratively speaking. Claire wanted to go to Covent Gardens to see the street performers, so we set out towards the Thames, south of Bedford Place. The morning was crisp, so I slouched down in my leather jacket and jammed my hands as far in the pockets of my jeans as they'd go. My attempt at looking East Berlin-ish and cool promptly derailed as my scarf and my neck purse in which I carry my valuables joined forces in an unholy alliance to strangle me, and so I muttered quiet curses as I trailed after Becca and Claire down narrow streets, struggling with my clothing and looking totally unhinged.
The Covent Gardens district of the administrative city of Westminster, sad to say, didn't meet expectations; there were no street performers, no supposedly-chic boutiques whose self-conscious attempts to appeal to frou-frou women with too much money and not enough sense make me want to vomit, and not really enough to justify the long walk-
Until I caught sight of the sign for Trafalgar Square.
We headed for the square at a brisk clip, Claire leading us with unerring eye through the narrow cobblestone alleys of Westminster, alleys with bright yellow and green and red doors, each with its own little brass number leading to the flats above, the balconies so close you could theoretically jump from one side of the street to another if you were sufficiently inebriated to try. Once in a while taxis would zoom by at unnecessary speeds before squealing around the sharp corner at the end. The taxis confirmed what everyone's been saying about London's status as a theater town; there were ads for Wicked, the Lion King, Les Miserables in Concert, all the Shakespeare performances at the Globe, and Andrew Lloyd Webber's newest attempt to cater to the teenage goths that are his demographic: Phantom of the Opera: Love Never Dies.
For those lucky people uninitiated in this new pile of theatrical ridiculousness, the story goes that Christine and Raoul have kids, and then Christine takes the kids with her to America on vacation. While there they visit an amusement park, where the Phantom, magically teleported across the Atlantic, lurks. Of course, now that the Phantom has spent the last ten years obsessing over a woman who's left him for good, he's lost all sympathy and become nothing more than a deluded stalker, but never mind. How he knows Christine's family is headed to this exact amusement park is never explained, but this is Andrew Lloyd Webber, a guy who wrote a musical about sentient trains; he laughs in the face of plot! So Christine, displaying the incredible good sense that led her to semi-fall in love with a man twenty years her senior who spends his time running about the Opera House and playing pranks like a three-year-old, somehow gets captured again, the Phantom sings about how he loves her and all the teenage goth kids sigh how it's just so romantic, and so on and so forth and it. just. never. ends.
Ahem.
So we got to Trafalgar Square, which is just outside the Victoria and Albert Museum of portraits and the art of the former British Empire. Canada gets a whole building to itself, of course. Trafalgar Square is a lot smaller than all the pictures make it seem, but everything else about it is absolutely humongous. The entire thing is more or less a giant celebration of Horatio Nelson, and while I'm fairly certain that some people might look askance at these massive edifices celebrating a guy who perpetuated the British Empire that inflicted innumerable sufferings on its subjects, on the whole everyone seems to view Horatio Nelson as an alright guy, if the stuff in the square is any evidence. There's a replica of Nelson's ship in a bottle, with the ship at least three feet tall from keel to crow's nest, and the column around which the four lions, sculpted by Edwin Landseer, repose. No photographs can properly convey the sheer scale of these things: they've got to be at least seven feet tall from the bottoms of their paws to the tops of their manes. At the top of the column, a sculpture of Horatio Nelson himself stands, gazing blindly for eternity down the avenue studded with memorials for the men who died to preserve the rotting corpse of the Empire he helped create.
The main one, of course, is the Cenotaph.
It's a surprisingly small and bleak thing, a simple edifice of white stone with a wreath carved into the north and south sides with the words 'The Glorious Dead' carved beneath. The motto was chosen by Rudyard Kipling, whose son Jack died in World War One. Kipling's own attitude towards the war was complicated; Jack was nearsighted and almost ineligible for service, but Kipling managed to get him in regardless, and so blamed himself for his son's death forever after. However, he never grew to despise the war as an empty battlefield for an ideal of Empire that had already died, and believed in its moral righteousness until his dying day. Around the base of the Cenotaph, even over a month before Armistice Day, red wreaths of poppies lay in waiting, a few with small wooden crosses etched with ranks and names laid atop them. I debated the ethics of taking a picture, then settled on taking one of the monument and one of the flowers. Whether or not I post them depends on my feelings at the time, I guess.
We wandered on towards Parliament and Big Ben, past the London Eye, and found ourselves standing beside the memorial for Boadicea, the Anglo-Saxon queen who resisted Roman occupation, beside the Millennium Bridge over the Thames. I took pictures of the memorial for Rachel, especially as Boadicea as portrayed in the memorial is made of absolute stone-cold awesome. I know I'm omitting a lot of detail about the Eye, Big Ben, and Parliament, but it's after midnight here so I'll have to add in the details in a later post. Growing tired and hungry, we bought Cornettos (ice cream) and headed for home, where we rested before joining up with the group and hopping the Tube to Notting Hill Festival.
The Notting Hill Festival remains difficult to describe. Imagine a voodoo ceremony mixed with Mardi Gras, vats of strong English beer, hundreds of thousands of people crammed into the tiny borough of Chelsea and Kensington, and so much smoke from jerk chicken stalls that it nearly blotted out the spires of Saint John's Anglican Church at the borough line, and you'll have some idea of the environment. Britons swirled past in the crowd around us, most possessing that peculiar British deformity of possessing features too small for their heads. Or perhaps they were just squinting from all the marijuana they'd smoked. Six of us decided it wasn't our scene, and so after snapping a few photos headed back to the Tube and home.
As for Day 4, it was boring in the extreme. We had an ACORN orientation (don't bring strange people home, don't set fires, don't stick things to the walls, etc.), a University of London Student Union Orientation (pay us an exorbitant amount of money to use our pool that's not even Olympic-size!), a Senate House Library orientation (there are ten floors to this library you must ask us to get books out of for you, and there's nothing weird about that), our first British Life and Culture class (which was awesome), and finally met up with our British professors at a wine bar called the Truckles of Pied Bull Yard for a pint and a get-to-know-you session. I struck up lovely conversations with our Shakespeare professor and with Dr. King, and enjoyed just sitting and basking in Dr. King's wisdom about British life and politics in general. The man just knows an awful lot about an awful lot, and there's nothing more inspiring than somebody with that breadth of knowledge being happy to share it with you.
So that's the last two days, and now to bed.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Mo' money mo' problems
So in five days I've gone from possessing 360 pounds to 271 pounds and 4o pence. Granted, some of that money I spent on necessary things such as a notebook, pens, groceries, and a copy of Mrs. Dalloway for my British Life and Culture class, and a Tube ticket from Heathrow to Russell Square, but the rest of it has gone to wholly unnecessary things such as a Cornetto while walking by the London Eye (Cornettos are small ice-cream cones, and as I was getting hungry, I suppose that purchase was necessary to preserve the mental health of my walking partners); meals at pubs; and a half-pint of cider. I still have two paychecks from the YMCA coming in, and tomorrow we get a further twenty pounds food stipend from Dr. King, but on the whole I'm rather morose when I look at my shrinking stack of pounds and pence.
I've also booked a flight to Rome on Ryanair on Oct. 7th for the beginning of fall break, so that I'll be bumming around Rome with Erin Ferriman and Nick for a few days. I'm contemplating taking a direct flight out of Rome on the 12th to Dublin, where I'll be by myself for a few days wandering the city, but our British Life and Culture professor assures us that the Irish love Americans. Erin, Nick, and I are having trouble when we look for hostels, because Ryanair, being the most budget of the budget, flies into Ciampino, which is outside the city center. We're thinking of booking a hostel room in Ciampino to stay the night, as our flight gets in at 9:40 at night, and then taking the metro into Rome and booking a cheap hotel for three nights and splitting the cost between us. A hotel is necessary, as there's no hostel that has three nights open consecutively in the female or mixed dorms, and Nick... cannot pull off looking like a woman.
An update for the last two days to follow.
I've also booked a flight to Rome on Ryanair on Oct. 7th for the beginning of fall break, so that I'll be bumming around Rome with Erin Ferriman and Nick for a few days. I'm contemplating taking a direct flight out of Rome on the 12th to Dublin, where I'll be by myself for a few days wandering the city, but our British Life and Culture professor assures us that the Irish love Americans. Erin, Nick, and I are having trouble when we look for hostels, because Ryanair, being the most budget of the budget, flies into Ciampino, which is outside the city center. We're thinking of booking a hostel room in Ciampino to stay the night, as our flight gets in at 9:40 at night, and then taking the metro into Rome and booking a cheap hotel for three nights and splitting the cost between us. A hotel is necessary, as there's no hostel that has three nights open consecutively in the female or mixed dorms, and Nick... cannot pull off looking like a woman.
An update for the last two days to follow.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Day 1 Pictures (Part 2)
A section of Camden Street, with someone's hair taking over the right side of the picture like a horrible amoeba.
One of the largest sections of Camden Market, this one selling clothes.
Mom would love this: pre-packaged glasses of wine at Sainsbury's. They come with a little plastic seal on the top, and when you're ready to drink it, you peel off the seal and there you are.
The delicious game pie I had at the College Arms.
The ubiquitous red buses of London. These were parked at the northern corner of Russell Square, and their drivers, much like cab drivers, see pedestrians as vermin which must be extinguished for the good of the nation. Pretty much I'm saying they all dream of one day committing vehicular homicide.
Day 0+1 Pictures (Part 1)
The view towards the front of the College Arms, with Nick in the foreground. The bartender was obsessed with X-factor, which is more or less the British version of American Idol, and so the York men and we took in the undeniable proof that Britons, just like Americans, enjoy watching people humiliate themselves for entertainment.
The back of the College Arms pub.
Russell Square after an afternoon shower.
The view towards the river from the stoop of Bedford Place.
The luggage I must live out of for three months.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Internet 1, Laura 0 (or, Day 2)
I had planned to get up at 8:00 AM this morning to go with Dr. King on a tour of our classroom building, but when I rolled over to turn off the alarm and realized just how tired I was, I decided to stay in bed instead. So Day 2 proper didn't start until 12:00 PM. I had a shower, although the shower, like everything provided by ACORN, is in shoddy condition, and coughed water as if it cost a hundred dollars for every drop. Still, I persevered.
Breakfast was the second-to-last FiberOne bar provided by my loving mother, and after eating I met up with the girls from my group to go grocery shopping. We walked to a nearby Sainsbury's, which is more or less the British version of a Kroger's, although far less varied in its stock. I acquired a box of Rice Krispies, a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, a jar of raspberry jam, a half-gallon of milk, six apples, a box of Twinings tea, and a communal air freshener for fifteen pounds twenty pence, which is quite a good deal. The British require you to pay for each plastic bag you use, although the fee's nominal: 5 pence. I've noticed that so far the British government seem much more dedicated in their stewardship of the environment than the American, although that's not very hard to do. Schlepping the groceries home was tiring, as it was about a mile walk with three bags apiece, and we groaned en masse when we noticed that the ACORN-provided refrigerator had several cracks in the shelves on the door. ACORN has not endeared itself to me so far. Their website, festooned with pictures of hotel-quality rooms, lies, although I suppose the fact that we're living in the basement doesn't help matters.
After putting everything away, we discussed our plans for the day. Anything further than walking distance remained out of reach, since the Tube was going to be incredibly busy because of the Notting Hill Festival. Notting Hill is the largest festival in Europe, and started as a celebration of London's Caribbean community. It remains so, with a huge parade and hundreds of stalls selling Caribbean goods and food. We decided to go tomorrow, as today is organized primarily for kids. Instead, we decided to go to the Camden Street Market, which is an outdoor market held on Sundays on-surprise- Camden Street by the Camden Lock. It's something of a place for the goth and stoner crowds of London to crawl into the light, as there are innumerable stalls selling kitsch such as leather trenchcoats and pants, spiked bracelets, fedora hats, neon nail polish, bongs, hookah pipes, prints of Banksy artwork, and so on and so forth. There are also stalls selling cheap clothing, like pea coats, military-style jackets, T-shirts with 'witty' puns, jackets made out of lace, et cetera. I mean 'cheap' in both senses of the word; the pea coats weren't even made out of wool. The selling point of the market was the people-watching; I saw a man in a leather vest with a two-foot-tall red mohawk stride through the crowd, and nodded in sage approval when I noticed a patch denoting his hatred of skinheads on the back of the vest. There were also great food stalls; I got a Nutella crepe for three pounds fifty pence, and devoured it with relish. After spending about three hours at the market, we meandered back to the flat, the walk taking well over half an hour, and sank into the couches with relief (especially me, as I've started developing a blister on my ankle).
One of the girls prepared a spaghetti dinner which we shared among us, and after sitting around for a while, we decided to go look for another pub for purposes of comparison with the College Arms. After a walk in the opposite direction past the British Museum, we chanced upon a pub called the Angel with a beautiful sign hanging above. It was like the Arms in that it was small and cozy, seating maybe twenty people at the max, and the prices were surprisingly cheap; I got a half-pint of cider for a pound fifty. I decided quickly that I liked cider; it's bitter, but retains enough of an apple sweetness that I don't mind the bitterness. We sat around talking and drinking for about two hours before half the group left. I elected to wait with the two remaining, and after about half an hour, we left as well and walked through dark, chill streets towards the towering edifice of the University of London library. Until we got turned around momentarily, and experienced a brief but very keen sense of panic and the irony of the universe. After getting ourselves straightened out, we found our way back to Bedford Place and sat around for a bit, until one of our number decided that she wasn't tired, and we must go to the College Arms.
Alas, as it was a Sunday, all the pubs closed at ten-thirty, and so further entertainment remained out of reach. So we returned to the flat once more, and I decided to try and post the pictures from our first day and write this blog post.
But ACORN, clever and terrible like something of an H.P. Lovecraft novel, has stymied me with the spotty nature of their internet connection, and so the pictures go unpublished for now. Tomorrow, after the festival, I will devote myself to finding a better connection so that my touristy snapshots that in no way approach the quality of Rachel's or Dad's may be inflicted upon the unsuspecting readership. And now it is 1:21 AM, with a 9:00 AM meeting tomorrow, so I have to stop babbling and brush my teeth before bed.
Pictures of the Market and the Angel, along with the first day (hopefully) to follow.
Breakfast was the second-to-last FiberOne bar provided by my loving mother, and after eating I met up with the girls from my group to go grocery shopping. We walked to a nearby Sainsbury's, which is more or less the British version of a Kroger's, although far less varied in its stock. I acquired a box of Rice Krispies, a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, a jar of raspberry jam, a half-gallon of milk, six apples, a box of Twinings tea, and a communal air freshener for fifteen pounds twenty pence, which is quite a good deal. The British require you to pay for each plastic bag you use, although the fee's nominal: 5 pence. I've noticed that so far the British government seem much more dedicated in their stewardship of the environment than the American, although that's not very hard to do. Schlepping the groceries home was tiring, as it was about a mile walk with three bags apiece, and we groaned en masse when we noticed that the ACORN-provided refrigerator had several cracks in the shelves on the door. ACORN has not endeared itself to me so far. Their website, festooned with pictures of hotel-quality rooms, lies, although I suppose the fact that we're living in the basement doesn't help matters.
After putting everything away, we discussed our plans for the day. Anything further than walking distance remained out of reach, since the Tube was going to be incredibly busy because of the Notting Hill Festival. Notting Hill is the largest festival in Europe, and started as a celebration of London's Caribbean community. It remains so, with a huge parade and hundreds of stalls selling Caribbean goods and food. We decided to go tomorrow, as today is organized primarily for kids. Instead, we decided to go to the Camden Street Market, which is an outdoor market held on Sundays on-surprise- Camden Street by the Camden Lock. It's something of a place for the goth and stoner crowds of London to crawl into the light, as there are innumerable stalls selling kitsch such as leather trenchcoats and pants, spiked bracelets, fedora hats, neon nail polish, bongs, hookah pipes, prints of Banksy artwork, and so on and so forth. There are also stalls selling cheap clothing, like pea coats, military-style jackets, T-shirts with 'witty' puns, jackets made out of lace, et cetera. I mean 'cheap' in both senses of the word; the pea coats weren't even made out of wool. The selling point of the market was the people-watching; I saw a man in a leather vest with a two-foot-tall red mohawk stride through the crowd, and nodded in sage approval when I noticed a patch denoting his hatred of skinheads on the back of the vest. There were also great food stalls; I got a Nutella crepe for three pounds fifty pence, and devoured it with relish. After spending about three hours at the market, we meandered back to the flat, the walk taking well over half an hour, and sank into the couches with relief (especially me, as I've started developing a blister on my ankle).
One of the girls prepared a spaghetti dinner which we shared among us, and after sitting around for a while, we decided to go look for another pub for purposes of comparison with the College Arms. After a walk in the opposite direction past the British Museum, we chanced upon a pub called the Angel with a beautiful sign hanging above. It was like the Arms in that it was small and cozy, seating maybe twenty people at the max, and the prices were surprisingly cheap; I got a half-pint of cider for a pound fifty. I decided quickly that I liked cider; it's bitter, but retains enough of an apple sweetness that I don't mind the bitterness. We sat around talking and drinking for about two hours before half the group left. I elected to wait with the two remaining, and after about half an hour, we left as well and walked through dark, chill streets towards the towering edifice of the University of London library. Until we got turned around momentarily, and experienced a brief but very keen sense of panic and the irony of the universe. After getting ourselves straightened out, we found our way back to Bedford Place and sat around for a bit, until one of our number decided that she wasn't tired, and we must go to the College Arms.
Alas, as it was a Sunday, all the pubs closed at ten-thirty, and so further entertainment remained out of reach. So we returned to the flat once more, and I decided to try and post the pictures from our first day and write this blog post.
But ACORN, clever and terrible like something of an H.P. Lovecraft novel, has stymied me with the spotty nature of their internet connection, and so the pictures go unpublished for now. Tomorrow, after the festival, I will devote myself to finding a better connection so that my touristy snapshots that in no way approach the quality of Rachel's or Dad's may be inflicted upon the unsuspecting readership. And now it is 1:21 AM, with a 9:00 AM meeting tomorrow, so I have to stop babbling and brush my teeth before bed.
Pictures of the Market and the Angel, along with the first day (hopefully) to follow.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Days 0 + 1
The flight from DFW to Heathrow was just as boring and miserably close-quartered as I expected, although the televisions mounted in the back headrests of even the coach-class seats were a pleasant surprise. I chose not to watch any of the movies they had on offer (no one can ever force me to watch The Devil Wears Prada) and entertained myself instead in listening to Pink Floyd's The Wall for most of the flight. Dinner consisted of some gelatinous imitation pasta encrusted with red cement, cleverly masquerading as pasta with red sauce and chicken. The lovely meal was garnished by a roll that had been scooped from the wastes of Antarctica, judging by its temperature, a salad, and a brownie. The brownie was the only part that could be considered semi-enjoyable, but I ate the rest of the meal regardless. I drifted in and out of sleep, although my rest was better once I discovered that laying my head on the tray table afforded me the best position. However, this so-called best position was rudely destroyed when the woman seated in front of me decided to experience what seemed like epileptic seizures and crush my head between the tray table and the screen mounted in the headrest. After I woke, we were served breakfast, consisting of a croissant and yogurt. Still, all the annoyance of the flight was made worth it when the plane broke through the cloud cover over the UK. Far beneath, emerging as the sun burned off morning fog, villages with neat row houses and church spires lay surrounded by fields, separated by hedgerows, which had grass so green it seemed almost unreal. And as the 777 banked and began its approach to Heathrow, the Thames unfurled below like a thread of flashing light and snaked off into the towers of London below.
Heathrow was like any other airport, although I took a distinct and childish joy in noticing that Britons spelled 'analyze' with an S and 'color' with a U. Stewardesses in red pencil skirts, blazers, and pillbox hats milled through the airport, as did a few nuns in habits. Another student and I met up in the terminal, went the wrong way trying to find the Tube station, then realized it was inside the terminal and so had to backtrack. We found the Tube station, stood in line to purchase tickets from the machine, found out the machine was broken and wouldn't dispense change in pence, went to change our pounds into smaller denominations, and tried another machine, which was also broken. After that, we gave up, stood in line for fifteen minutes, and bought our tickets from a real live human being, which, if less efficient than a machine, at least dispensed tickets.
The Tube ride to Russell Square Underground Station was long, but at least exposed us to a very important element of British society: rugby hooligans. As we progressed into London, half the car became filled with rugby hooligans dressed in blue and yellow, all shouting back and forth and injecting copious 'yeahs?' into their sentences. Most of them bore twelve-packs of beer. They exited before we got to Russell Square, leaving the car quieter but less festive. At Russell Square Station, I got to experience the helpfulness of British teenagers, as one of them helped me haul my suitcase up the flight of stairs to the lifts. That's a very important difference I've noticed: the British lag far behind Americans when it comes to changing their architecture to accommodate the disabled. I've seen no wheelchair lifts on the buses and no escalators or elevators in the lesser-used stations of the Underground.
Upon emerging into the light of Bloomsbury District, we proceeded in the exact opposite direction from our rented apartments and so wandered for twenty minutes lugging our suitcases, purses, and messenger bags into a peaceful, small square that was the exact opposite of Russell Square, our destination. Finally, we stopped to ask a Briton, who provided us with a well-drawn map to Bedford Place. We passed by an amazing brownstone edifice, crenelated with columns and detailed stone cherubs at every window, which turned out to a hotel, and found ourselves at Bedford Place, a row of flats rented out to visiting college students. Check-in was simple, move-in even more so. I met up with some of the other students in the program, and we all agreed that A), we were starving, and B) this must be rectified via copious application of pub food. We wandered past innumerable small electronics and bric-a-brac shops (as well as one expansive Chinese restaurant) before fetching up at the doors of the creatively-named London Pub. I got fish and chips to go with my glass of water. These were real fish and chips, the kind where the breading on the fish crunched when you bit into it and the dish required no more condiments than a slice of lemon squeezed over the plate. All together, the cost came out to about 6 pounds. After that, I solved the problems I was having with finding a transformer for the outlet near my bed when a helpful man at an electronics shop explained that all the appliances I'd brought with me contained transformers in their AC adapters, rendering a transformer useless. I bought an adapter from him and hooked up everything I needed.
Groceries were the next thing we needed, but acquisition of groceries was not to be, as a group of us wandered around the district and found only Tesco's, which carries the bare basics such as bread, cereal, and milk. I didn't end up buying anything at that point, opting to wait until I received my food stipend from Dr. King. After the meeting at which we discussed our schedules with Dr. King and set up our group excursions (to Bath, Stonehenge, Stratford, and possibly one other place), we went out to find another pub to have dinner in, as part of several group members' (including mine) quest to find the best pub in Bloomsbury, so that we could become regulars at it. We ended up at a pub we'd passed by on a walk, this one called the College Arms. It was a small place with a small menu, but it was cozy and the prices good; I was able to get a game pie (a sort of dumpling filled with game meats placed on top of a bed of mashed potatoes and gravy drizzled over the whole thing) for only eight pounds fifty pence.
This was also where we had our first experience with British pub culture. Four thirty-to-fifty-ish men, drunk to the gills because of the tragic loss of their rugby team, wandered in and proceeded to engage in loud and friendly conversation wherein they tried to get our group to go with them to Convent Gardens. All four of them were from York, and so discoursed at length about how we should only trust Britons from the north, as all southerners were rotten. After we talked with them for an hour or so, they left, but only after shaking everyone's hands. I've decided that I like pub culture.
Pictures of all this to follow.
Heathrow was like any other airport, although I took a distinct and childish joy in noticing that Britons spelled 'analyze' with an S and 'color' with a U. Stewardesses in red pencil skirts, blazers, and pillbox hats milled through the airport, as did a few nuns in habits. Another student and I met up in the terminal, went the wrong way trying to find the Tube station, then realized it was inside the terminal and so had to backtrack. We found the Tube station, stood in line to purchase tickets from the machine, found out the machine was broken and wouldn't dispense change in pence, went to change our pounds into smaller denominations, and tried another machine, which was also broken. After that, we gave up, stood in line for fifteen minutes, and bought our tickets from a real live human being, which, if less efficient than a machine, at least dispensed tickets.
The Tube ride to Russell Square Underground Station was long, but at least exposed us to a very important element of British society: rugby hooligans. As we progressed into London, half the car became filled with rugby hooligans dressed in blue and yellow, all shouting back and forth and injecting copious 'yeahs?' into their sentences. Most of them bore twelve-packs of beer. They exited before we got to Russell Square, leaving the car quieter but less festive. At Russell Square Station, I got to experience the helpfulness of British teenagers, as one of them helped me haul my suitcase up the flight of stairs to the lifts. That's a very important difference I've noticed: the British lag far behind Americans when it comes to changing their architecture to accommodate the disabled. I've seen no wheelchair lifts on the buses and no escalators or elevators in the lesser-used stations of the Underground.
Upon emerging into the light of Bloomsbury District, we proceeded in the exact opposite direction from our rented apartments and so wandered for twenty minutes lugging our suitcases, purses, and messenger bags into a peaceful, small square that was the exact opposite of Russell Square, our destination. Finally, we stopped to ask a Briton, who provided us with a well-drawn map to Bedford Place. We passed by an amazing brownstone edifice, crenelated with columns and detailed stone cherubs at every window, which turned out to a hotel, and found ourselves at Bedford Place, a row of flats rented out to visiting college students. Check-in was simple, move-in even more so. I met up with some of the other students in the program, and we all agreed that A), we were starving, and B) this must be rectified via copious application of pub food. We wandered past innumerable small electronics and bric-a-brac shops (as well as one expansive Chinese restaurant) before fetching up at the doors of the creatively-named London Pub. I got fish and chips to go with my glass of water. These were real fish and chips, the kind where the breading on the fish crunched when you bit into it and the dish required no more condiments than a slice of lemon squeezed over the plate. All together, the cost came out to about 6 pounds. After that, I solved the problems I was having with finding a transformer for the outlet near my bed when a helpful man at an electronics shop explained that all the appliances I'd brought with me contained transformers in their AC adapters, rendering a transformer useless. I bought an adapter from him and hooked up everything I needed.
Groceries were the next thing we needed, but acquisition of groceries was not to be, as a group of us wandered around the district and found only Tesco's, which carries the bare basics such as bread, cereal, and milk. I didn't end up buying anything at that point, opting to wait until I received my food stipend from Dr. King. After the meeting at which we discussed our schedules with Dr. King and set up our group excursions (to Bath, Stonehenge, Stratford, and possibly one other place), we went out to find another pub to have dinner in, as part of several group members' (including mine) quest to find the best pub in Bloomsbury, so that we could become regulars at it. We ended up at a pub we'd passed by on a walk, this one called the College Arms. It was a small place with a small menu, but it was cozy and the prices good; I was able to get a game pie (a sort of dumpling filled with game meats placed on top of a bed of mashed potatoes and gravy drizzled over the whole thing) for only eight pounds fifty pence.
This was also where we had our first experience with British pub culture. Four thirty-to-fifty-ish men, drunk to the gills because of the tragic loss of their rugby team, wandered in and proceeded to engage in loud and friendly conversation wherein they tried to get our group to go with them to Convent Gardens. All four of them were from York, and so discoursed at length about how we should only trust Britons from the north, as all southerners were rotten. After we talked with them for an hour or so, they left, but only after shaking everyone's hands. I've decided that I like pub culture.
Pictures of all this to follow.
Friday, August 6, 2010
Ugh.
I decided to spend today whomping up an itinerary and cost estimate for my week-long jaunt to Verdun, the Somme, and Ypres.
Seeing Verdun and the Somme is looking unfeasible at best. Every tour of Verdun and the Somme I've read today says that a car is necessary for a battlefield tour. Getting to Verdun apparently requires taking a slow train from Paris to Verdun with a switch at Chalon. This would get me to the city, but not to the battlefield, and getting a taxi to haul me hither and yon over the place would be prohibitively expensive. Vimy Ridge and the Somme both require cars as well, and I won't be twenty-one by the time of my week off. Ypres is looking like the only battlefield I'm going to be able to see.
I guess I'll have to maybe fly somewhere else, like Rome, on my week off. I'm very disappointed to say the least.
Seeing Verdun and the Somme is looking unfeasible at best. Every tour of Verdun and the Somme I've read today says that a car is necessary for a battlefield tour. Getting to Verdun apparently requires taking a slow train from Paris to Verdun with a switch at Chalon. This would get me to the city, but not to the battlefield, and getting a taxi to haul me hither and yon over the place would be prohibitively expensive. Vimy Ridge and the Somme both require cars as well, and I won't be twenty-one by the time of my week off. Ypres is looking like the only battlefield I'm going to be able to see.
I guess I'll have to maybe fly somewhere else, like Rome, on my week off. I'm very disappointed to say the least.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)