London: Day 1
My Grand Tour started with a bang, in other words a crash course in....just figuring it out!
According to Google, there were well over 8 and a half million people living in London in 2019—slightly more than in New York City—and apparently London is the biggest city in Europe, but still quite a bit smaller in population than Tokyo, Delhi, and Shanghai. I did not know or care about those statistics prior to my arrival at Heathrow Airport on the morning of September 5, but if I ever had any doubts about London being a big ass city they were quickly overcome. Honestly, the airport alone made me immediately feel like I had descended into the epicenter of a still-thriving British Empire. I don’t mean the literal British Empire, but the experience of being thrust into the herd (people from all corners of the globe moving in the same direction as me) just gave me an acute sense of London’s historical place as a world capital—the passports and the accents and the outfits all reminding me just how big (how truly awesome) the world is. Of course, human being that I am, I was a bit more irritated than appreciative of this global insanity while I was being pushed along and screamed at (“hurry up! move along! next please!”) by overworked customs officials. The instructions for meeting the driver seemed clear enough as, during my layover in Atlanta, I skimmed the guide provided to me by my Triple A travel agent. However, nothing can prepare you for the chaos of the arrival terminals at Heathrow. And, mind you, I was not a small-town girl on her first rodeo. At 12 years old, I quickly became an expert at riding a plane by myself from Miami to New Orleans, or Baton Rouge; and from the age of 14, air travel from LAX (Los Angeles) back to Louisiana became a summer ritual. Then I joined the Navy and did all sorts of travel, and I attended schools in New York and Boston, and I lived in Ventura, California, and then Los Angeles again, and now I’m back in Louisiana. So anyway, my point was not to give you my life journey in a single run-on sentence, even though that’s what I did, but rather to disavow you of any notion that seasoned travelers might be somehow immune to the havoc at Heathrow. No, no, no! Believe me, nothing compares to, and none of it can prepare you for Heathrow! My instructions were to meet the driver at one of two places: the WHSmith store or the Costa coffee shop. This gave me the impression that my best option was to stop at the one I saw first, and assume that the driver would stop at both and collect whoever was there to meet him or her. Well, luckily I had numbers to call if the driver failed to show up in a timely manner, because that is what happened. I was told that, my flight having arrived a little early, the driver was unaware that he (and he was a he, I quickly learned) ought to be looking for me just then. Oh, and I ought to mention that the phone-number-thing freaked me out at first. I just was not well-practiced in dialing UK numbers, and I was not in a great position to put any of my stuff down, find a pen, yada yada. So I was standing there outside the WHSmith store, opening browser windows on my phone, opening emails, copying and pasting numbers into Notes. I don’t know exactly what I did, but somehow I got the phone number I needed, with the extra, weird digits, into WhatsApp. All that, mind you, with a constant stream of people rushing past me to meet friends and family, to greet strangers, to embark on tours like me or catch limos to fancy hotels….who knows! Anyway, it was Thursday. The sun was coming up. The driver was so friendly. He expertly led me through the terminals, to the elevators, and to the shuttle in the crowded and wet parking garage, where people were bustling around, hollering in Arabic, Hindi, Farsi, and what-who-knows-else. I’m so glad I wrote down the driver’s name in my journal. I would have forgotten it, and knowing that I was bound to forget little details like that (who drove me from the airport) I kept a log of everyday of my trip. I managed to write down a few of my thoughts on the ride to the hotel, but I mostly just watched the scenery change outside the window….while I listened, somewhat, to the chatter of the other tourists behind me. I was in the passenger seat—in the seat that, of course, would have been the driver’s seat in America. The others in the shuttle thought it was hilarious when I attempted to climb into the driver’s seat! “That’s an American right there!” Well, they were all American too, but it was still quite funny—and humbling, to make a silly tourist mistake like that. The speed limit signage also made me feel a little disoriented. 40 miles per hour. Well, no one was going near that because there were too many cars trying to get to London. Even though the highway (“motorway”) looked like any ugly highway in America, I just kept reminding myself, I’m in Britain. I’m in Britain! I’m in Britain! And Chiswick could have been the uglier part of almost any American city. Nathan was impressed when I pronounced Chiswick the right way, and that I even knew we were driving through it. He said I must be really smart, but honestly, I was just looking at the signs. (And as for pronouncing Chiswick properly, credit the writers of Doctor Who.) “Chiz-ick” gave way to Hammersmith, which looked a little more promising, and increasingly I could see the London that I had been visiting for decades via books and movies, and yes, Google Street View. By the time we were driving through “Knightsbridge” I was starting to recognize things. The driver pointed out Harrods. (The others in the shuttle were impressed by it, but I don’t give a shit about Harrods.) I took note of things on my own, and I was thrilled to recognize Hyde Park Corner and the Wellington Arch. I kept hoping he would drive us past the famous front of Buckingham Palace, you know where even Meghan Markle posed with her school buddy long before she married Prince Harry, and past which Lindsay Lohan is driven in a taxi when her character in The Parent Trap first arrives in London. Alas, Nathan was on a tight schedule, so he took us the fastest route, behind the palace, where there is just a not-very-attractive (ok, downright ugly) wall with barbed wire on the top. From that point, the hotel was just a few blocks away.
The Riu Plaza in Pimlico. Right across from Victoria Station. I was way too early to be able to check into my room, but the hotel let me put my bags up, and a staffer called Marius found the one place in the lobby where I could charge my American phone, and while I waited for my phone to get some more juice, I wrote down some more details about the journey from the airport. I used WhatsApp to inform Natalia, the tour guide, that I was in London. She said that, since the group was not scheduled to meet until 5pm, and since it was so rainy out, this might be an ideal time for me to do some of the things I had told her I was interested in doing on my own—like visit the British Museum or the British Library. She told me all I needed to do was catch the 38 bus outside Victoria Station. I was so excited to do this that I gave up on the ideal of a fully-charged phone and set out to catch the bus with only a halfway-charged phone. Well, this is where my story gets a little embarrassing for me. I got on the 36 bus, and I felt sure that I was getting on the right bus, and I was so excited to use my credit card to pay for the ride, and climb the steps to the top level. You betcha, it was a red double decker public transit bus! I was on the 36 bus headed to Queen’s Park. I think I was somewhere around Sussex Gardens when I checked Natalia’s instructions on WhatsApp and realized, to my horror, that I was on the wrong bus. I got off the bus at the next opportunity and bent my steps back toward—well, you know, I figured I could at least put myself in the direction whence I came. I told Natalia what I had done and she replied, Oh boy, or something to that effect. She got me on the 18 bus that took me to Euston Square, from whence I walked to the British Library along Euston Road. So while confusing 36 for 38 and the ordeal of having to change buses, without knowing what bus to change to, was quite alarming, and embarrassing, I did feel in the moment that I was giving my jet-lagged self a crash course in London that was sure to benefit me over the next days. Also, walking along Euston Road, I could feel, in spite of the metropolitan buzz around me, the London of Virginia Woolf. I wondered what Virginia would write about her London as it is today. The people rushing around, some of them coming off holidays, and going to work, or back in the school. Somehow, I felt that this London might not be entirely foreign to her. There were lots of people on laptops in the British Library. My sense of time was all askew. I’m sure my mind and body wanted to be in bed in Baton Rouge, but here I was, getting coffee at the British Library. I had lunch in the library’s cafe. I ate a cucumber and tuna sandwich that made me feel close to Oscar Wilde. I bought some Jane Austen playing cards in the gift shop. By then, I was nearing the time allowable for checking into a room at the hotel, and exhausted as I was, I passed on making a trip to the British Museum. I walked the small distance to King’s Cross/St. Pancras Station. That was amazing! Everything so far was putting me into some kind of literary experience, and this was no exception. Here it was, all around me, the station where Harry Potter caught the train to Hogwarts! Google Maps—or maybe I used Apple Maps, anyway, the internet told me I needed to get to Platform 4 and take the Piccadilly line. But first I had to find the right Platform 4—in other words, the underground Platform 4, not the overground Platform 4. And after the long walk down many flights of stairs, around several corners, I finally got underground deep enough, and stepped on the train just before an older lady and two teenagers, all pulling wheeled luggage, actually looked at me and asked, “Is this the train for Green Park?” A little shocked about being asked for help with directions on my first day in London, I nodded my head and tried to shake off the bewildered feeling. Minding the Gap, I stepped off the train at Green Park. I knew exactly what I was doing, where I was going, just then. I walked through Green Park and came out in front of Buckingham Palace. I had to do what probably every shameless tourist does in London—get a picture of oneself at the iron gates of “Buck House,” once home to the Dukes of Buckingham, and official residence of every monarch after King George III.
There were lots of tourists milling around at the gates, taking group selfies and whatnot. I don’t know if the Royal Standard being up had anything to do with it. It had been raining hours earlier, but by then it was just wet and cloudy, and I walked back to the hotel along the side of the palace, past the King’s Gallery and the Royal Mews, the Buckingham Palace Shop, which is not in the palace but directly across the road. Apple Maps got me back to the hotel. It’s only a ten-minute walk from the palace. I think I stopped at the Sainsbury’s in Victoria Station to buy some water for the room. I wheeled my suitcase into the elevator and went up to the eleventh floor (the top floor) and got into my room. The view wasn’t great. If I had been on the other side, I’d have had a terrific view of Big Ben, but I was on the Victoria Station side, which happens to be the palace side, but the station totally blocks the palace. I didn’t care. I was not in London to sit in a hotel. The hotel had outlets for my phone and iPad, but before any of the utilities would work, I had to learn the hard way (by asking) that unless my room card was inserted in the slot by the door, the lights would not come on. This was an energy saver that would keep the lights off as long as I was not in the room. Go London: score 1 for climate change!
I took a short nap before meeting the tour group in the lobby. Natalia was pretty frazzled. Portuguese but a longtime London resident, she handed out headsets for everybody so we could listen to her on the street. Our group was too large to meet in the lobby of the hotel, and the hotel needed to keep their lobby open and available for other guests, so she herded us into the restaurant across the street. The hotel was still under renovation and restaurant was still located in the old venue across the street. The Riu Plaza is situated at the curious little junction called Neathouse Place, where Wilton Road connects with Vauxhall Bridge Road. The ‘old’ hotel and the ‘new’ hotel are actually the same building with a connector/overpass. Assembling all of us at the back of the closed restaurant seemed to take forever. It was Natalia’s intention to give us a neat rundown of the plan for the evening and a broad overview of the London leg of the tour, but it felt in the moment like we would never make any progress because no one seemed to understand anything. Many of them were old, retired couples—the kind of people who were in London to check off one more item on the bucket list and go back to America, unchanged. There was one old man who was by himself, a retiree from New Jersey, and there was another 40-something like me who was also traveling alone; she had come from Colorado. I think we were the only solo travelers. As I said, most of the group were married couples, but there was two pairs of elder women who were just longtime friends enjoying retirement together—one pair from the Chicago area and another from a suburb of Philadelphia. The pair from Philly were each named Sandra. “The two Sandras,” I called them; same name and firm friends, but very different characters. I’m not going to say too much more about the individuals on the tour. I just want to convey the truth of the situation, that this was a very large, somewhat diverse group that Natalia had to babysit. After dinner that night, I wrote down as many details as I could recall for my travel journal, and in a somewhat foul mood, I wrote about the group: “Most of them are old, some are hard of hearing, and some are just stubborn jackasses who don’t want to listen.” To give you some idea of the agony I had to endure, we “met” at 5 o’clock, and it was nearly 8 o’clock when we got to the restaurant.
Our bus was parked behind the hotel on Vauxhall Bridge Road. I think we drove straight down Vauxhall Bridge Road, all the way to the river. We crossed over the Thames. I remember Natalia pointing out the MI6 complex. We turned onto the Albert Embankment. I remember being very struck by Lambeth Palace.
Here’s another quote from my journal:
“….saw Big Ben & the Houses of Parliament, and green-lit Westminster Bridge, and red-lit Lambeth Bridge. Natalia was at [some pains] to [have us understand] that green is for the color of the seats in the House of Commons and red is for the seats in the Lords chamber. We rode by Lambeth Palace, a gorgeous [Gothic] edifice [from the Tudor times, where the Archbishop of Canterbury lives]….She rattled off lots of interesting trivia about London, all the way up to the bus parking a small distance from the Shard, the tallest edifice in the UK. Instead of going to the Shard, however, we made a detour [on foot] into a part of London called the Borough Market, which strongly reminded me of Faneuil Hall in Boston. “Roast” was our destination—a beautifully decorated first-floor [above ground floor] restaurant serving us a three-course meal specifically planned for our group. We had three options for each course.
I chose for the starter the roasted tomato soup, with raspberry relish and basil, and it was delicious. I think that was my favorite part of the meal. For the main course, I had the grilled cauliflower steak, with mushroom crumble and cashew nut sauce. For dessert, I chose their signature “sticky toffee pudding: mousse topped with caramel ice cream, caramel sauce and maldon salt.” The meal was lovely. I was pleasantly surprised, having often been warned that British cuisine could be a little…er…eccentric. I thought this meal was fantastic, however, and if I had been less jet-lagged, and my feet had been more rested, I might have been in a sunnier mood to make more of the occasion. “Intense,” is how I characterized the evening in my journal, “and extremely challenging to my introverted nature.” The series of annoyances created by the crabby personalities in the group did not help. In the best of circumstances, I’d have still been uncomfortably trapped in a restaurant for several hours with a group of strangers.
The walk after dinner actually helped me a lot. The fresh air and ability to put some space between myself and the group, and Mama’s encouraging text, did wonders. We took a right on Stoney Street. At the Café François, we turned left into what I remember was a little courtyard connecting to an alleyway, which took us along the way past more businesses. A couple more turns and we were back out on Park Street, where we boarded the bus. In my hotel room, I wrote in my journal and tried to focus on the best parts of the day—riding on the Tube, riding on the double-decker bus, King’s Cross, and Green Park and the palace.
Here are some things I learned and took note of in my travel journal:
UK phone charging stations are not (usually) compatible with US phone receptors. The hotel had charging stations that worked fine, thank goodness, but you can’t rely on coffee shops and libraries in London to have what your American phone needs. [This was something I was able to resolve once and for all later on in Paris by breaking down and buying a mobile charger. My Italian-American friend Blake had warned me about this prior to the trip. I wish I had listened!]
WC is bathroom/restroom.
At Starbucks in London you can use your American Starbucks account—not so Paris, as I was to learn. (Score one for London, negative for Paris.)
The London transit system is highly accessible. You can buy an prepaid “Oyster card” for the metro, but you don’t have to. If you have a credit card that doesn’t charge an international fee, as I did (thank you, Blake) you can just swipe it at the turnstile, just like you would an Oyster Card. (This is another point for London, and a minus for Paris, where you must have a designated metro card to use the metro.)
People in London smoke a lot. They just light up right there on the street, and blow it everywhere. (This was also a minus for Paris, but somehow it seemed worse in London.)
The next article will be about my second day in London.