The following events took place on the dates of February 8th and 9th, 2003. No names have been changed because really, who among us is innocent?
Randy drove us out to the airport in Jackie’s Forerunner and dropped us off around 10am for the 2pm flight… a little early, but the general concensus was that it was better to be delayed while running early than running late. We got there a little before Dave and Lori, but not by much. When they showed up, we checked our bags as a group and headed to Concourse C.
Security was easy on the girls (with the exception of Lori’s “which one should we hit?” comment as we walked towards the metal detectors). My line got closed out due to computer errors with the scanner so I had to shift to a new line, and Dave got searched more thouroughly, so it was definitely the guys holding things up at this point.
I have a certain way I prefer to travel — things I want in certain pockets, things I worry about and things I don’t care if I leave behind. It was immediately obvious (and would have been obvious in foresight, actually, if I’d wasted any time thinking about it) that not everyone (or anyone) would be inclined to do things my way. I decided at this point to just acknowledge that everyone had their own thing going on and to just focus on getting my ass through the flight and into London. Antisocial, maybe, but as much as I hate being ‘advised’ on how to do things since we’re all adults, and I didn’t figure I’d really be helping either myself or anyone else. Later, a revised version of this guideline became codified as “Rule Number One” for the trip. When I remembered to follow it, things went swimmingly, when I didn’t, I suspect I was a big opinionated pain in the ass.
We got to terminal C and killed some time playing travel Yatzee and Brawl. Somewhere in here we also stopped in at a restaurant and had margueritas and something to eat… like I said, we got there early, and as I didn’t feature seeing the wheel of a car for at least a week, it seemed like the proper way to start things off.
The flight out to Minneapolis was typical and boring; the layover was unremarkable. On the international flight, Lori continued sleeping (would that I could), Dave continued reading, Jackie was getting the back of her chair kicked by a cranky toddler, and I listened to the several CD’s of music I’d burnt for the trip, or the music channels playing in the cabin. I caught a few Z’s here and there, but largely I think I stayed up later.
The in-flight movie was the regretable Serving Sarah (perhaps meant as some sort of acclimatization to the British accent via the lead actress) which I suppose might be considered a ‘vehicle’ film for either matthew Perry or Elizabeth Hurley, but to be honest it’s only a ‘tricycle’ film at best — perhaps a sort of cinematic Vespa-equivilant.
The in-flight meal was a choice between something posing as lasagna and something posing as chicken curry (might also have been thought of as an attempt at acclimatization to the prevalence of Indian food in England, if it hadn’t been so poor) — a dish that managed, in one fell serving, to put Jackie off Indian food until roughtly mid-2004 (perhaps less, as it was a pitifully small portion as well).
We all woke up or roused from our respective torpors coming in toward Ireland, giving us about 45 minutes to anticipate arrival in Gatwick. ***Dave had mentioned that he and Margie had to walk to the terminal across the tarmac on their last trip, but we got a jetway. The weather looked wet, drizzling over and soaking everything in sight — in short, beautiful to our drought-starved Colorado eyes.
Luggage pickup and filing travel-voucher cards was no problem and the Customs area was beyond pointless — in fact was entirely deserted. In the main terminal we had some problems finding both the money wall and the place to get rental cell phones and train passes. After some searching, I located the money wall (non-functional), the train ticket counter, and no phone vendor. We missed the express down to Victoria station, so it took some forty-five minutes to get to the station, which at the current GPB-to-USD conversion worked out to something like an hour and thirteen minutes.
Jackie got directions for where to pick up week-long passes for the Underground at Victoria station and I picked up a similar pass to the EasyInternet cafe across the street from Victoria while everyone else got latte’s from the nearest Starbucks kiosk (“Coming soon to a location near you… whereEVER you are…”) Everyone was punchy, so we set out immediately for WoodVILLE House (correction goes to Jackie), the B&B on Ebury St. just south and west of Victoria Station. After some fits and starts (caused mostly by Dave and I paying way more attention to the road signs than they actually deserved), we found it easily enough, though we really came at it the wrong way (i.e.: much more walking around outside than was strictly necessary).
Rachael, our host, was quite accomodating (since we were there 3 or 4 hours early) and got us into two of the three rooms we’d reserved. At this point the first major culture shock hit, as Jackie encountered what passed for a King-size bed in a central London B&B and then found out it was quite a bit larger than the beds in either of the other two rooms. (It was all smoke and no fire, anyway — the beds were plenty large enough, just unbelievably uncomfortable and hard from far too many years of heavy use.) Woodville House is to be commended for relatively low rates and a fine location near a major transportation hub in quite a nice neighborhood; based on those two criteria, it’s a great stay; my shoulder just didn’t like it much by the third night of sleeping on that mattress.
We wanted to get well tired out, so as to sleep through the jetlag, so we headed back out, stopped for some comfort food at KFC and McDonalds, and blundered northward until we found Buckhouse and took some pictures. It was Sunday, so the traffic around the area was very light.
McDonald’s has obviously lobbied heavily for better market presence in London — when I was here last, there were certainly McD’s around, but they were hard to find or even identify since the typical garish U.S. signs had been replaced in England with small, subtle brass plaques beside the entrances.
Now, led by a charge from American food conglomerates, every business sports garish wooden and plastic marquees hanging over the historical brickwork, so heavily covering the area above the store fronts that you can only find an exposed street sign (which are normally mounted on the buildings, not on their own posts) on abandoned buildings alongside narrow alleys.
After that, we wandered through St. James park (unassailable bastion of clandestine Cold War espionage exchanges) and watched people feed the ducks, shot some distance pictures of Big Ben, went through the Horse Guard Barracks then south/closer to Parliment and Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. By then the girls needed a rest or a restroom or both. We couldn’t find the later, so we caught Westminster’s tube back to Victoria and walked from there to the B&B for a 2 hour nap until ***Dave and Margie showed up.
Our B&B hostess showed what I’ll coarsely label a “typical Brit’s” interest/obsession with sighting the wealthy or famous. She was honestly (and frequently, and vocally) surprised we didn’t go walking south and west from the B&B towards Knightsbridge (where double-parked taxis are replaced with double-parked Jaguars and Mercedes) on the off chance we’d spot Sean Connery or Roger Moore.
Once everyone had assembled we went up to small the Duke of York restaurant (which was most notable to us at this point for being open on a Sunday) over the packed Duke of York pub (just north of Vic Station) for supper, then tubed up to Westminster and wandered up the embankment of the Thames as far as Blackfriars, northwest to the outside of St. Paul’s cathedral and down Cheapside to the Monument Underground stop (via Bank station) to ride home. (I think we’d have gotten on at St. Paul’s if we could have, but only the Center Line runs through there and that line is still closed for repairs after an engine fell off one of the trains a few weeks back.)
And that was the night. We collapsed into our respective beds and tried to sleep.
