London: Recap of Day 2: Electric Boogaloo

I know I’m a million days behind at this point. Ugh! It’s Wednesday and I still haven’t told you guys about Monday or Tuesday. I know Jeff has already uploaded all the pictures from that day, but somehow writing about what all happened takes a lot longer. Plus, when we retire for the evening I am invariably exhausted from whatever goings on happened in the day, and so I resolve to write it all out tomorrow, tomorrow, I swear. But it’s always tomorrow, isn’t it?

But it shall be today! I swear! Because now Jeff and I have left London and are on our way up to Edinburgh on the East Coast Rail, and so I have four long interrupted hours to do nothing but type. And so we begin.

When we last left off, Jeff and I were snoozing like logs after landing on London and going to a rugby match with our friends Peter and Alex and then having a few pints at the local hooligan’s pub. On of the tricks to beating jet-lag, in addition to eating lots of proteins the day before (thanks, Wendy!) is to stay awake until everyone in whatever time zone you’re in goes to sleep. This is what Jeff and I did, and it worked quite well. Breakfast at the hotel was to be served between 7 and 9, so we set the alarm for 8AM, and both of us were up before it, well rested and ready for the day. Breakfast was what’s called a Full English, consisting of eggs, sausage, toast, beans and salted bacon. And tea, of course. It was quite good, even though I didn’t eat the beans (never really a fan) and then we were ready to go. It was a really nice day, shockingly, with blue skies and a brisk wind and all in all I was really quite antsy to get out of the hotel. We had wanted to get a mobile while we were in the UK, and while we had procured a SIM card the day before, we still needed to get one of our phones unlocked, and so we went around the corner to a little shop marked “Mobile Accessories” to ask the guy behind the counter if he could. He said that for Jeff’s phone, a T-Mobile Google Android thingy it would cost 40 pounds and be ready in three days. For mine, an old Sony Ericsson from my uni days, it would take only one day and cost only 10 pounds, so we left my phone with the smarmy man behind the counter (I was not a fan of him. Just something about him) and went back to the hotel to collect Peter.

Now, Jeff and I had some very definite ideas on what we wanted to see while we were in London. Buckingham Palace, Madam Toussads, Tower of London, Tower Bridge, London Eye, the British Museum, the National Gallery, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and the Tate Modern. And at this point we had to do all this in two days. Peter suggested that we start with the British Museum, as he knew where it was and so we did.

I could spend days in the British Museum. We got there at around 10 and didn’t leave until 2, after wandering through King George III’s private collection, the Americas, Hindu statues, Persian kings, and Britain in Roman times. It was enchanting. And gorgeously built. Most of the museum is in a classically beautiful way, with lots of marble steps and columns. But it’s also quite modern.  As you can see from the photos Jeff and I took, it’s also got this sort of courtyard in the middle, with a domed glass ceiling, crisscrossed with metal beams, casting a chessboard of shadows down on the marble walls. It’s really gorgeous. You feel like you’re outside, but still pleasantly warm as it’s inside. And the light is wonderful.

So suffice to say, we spent half the day there, happily, and only at 2pm did we emerge back out into the sunlight for lunch and to meet up with our friend Dan. We went into a pan-Asian restaurant chain called Wagamama’s (I love saying that, I do) and had huge bowls of noodles and lots of green tea, and then we went to go and find our next adventure. Now, remember our huge list of things to do? We had knocked only one off, and it was already nearly 3pm. So we made our way to Covent Garden, watched a bit of a Punch and Judy show, and then walked down to the River Thames, where we could see London Eye, the Tate Modern, and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, in addition to other huge buildings. Having crossed the river, we found that the Eye was far too expensive (at 20 pounds a head? We’ll go next time, when Jeff and I are richer) and instead resolved to walk along the Thames until we came to the Tate and the Globe.

It should be said, it was almost sundown at this point, and we were not very far along on our list of things to see. But, honestly, I couldn’t really have cared less. We were with friends, we were walking along in a beautiful city, and we were having a great time. Who cares if we don’t see everything? We hardly need to.

When we got to the Tate Modern, I made everyone stop in the gift shop with me. I absolutely love museum and gallery gift shops, and am constantly wanting to outfit an apartment with everything I find. A great example of this is the tons of shopping I wanted to do at the MoMa, but having no apartment to put it in (yet!), Jeff and I held back. We left the gift shop and wandered around the Tate for a little bit, but it was very close to closing time, and we got to see only one exhibit. Luckily, it was the coolest thing in the world.

What it was, is a giant steel container, like a shipping container, several stories tall and facing towards a wall. There was enough space to walk in front of the piece and into it. It was cavernous. No lights were allowed in, so we stood, dwarfed in front of this mammoth black hole, staring deep into the darkness. Sometimes I think modern art is just play acting at ideas, but this was really quite… I don’t know. Not moving, exactly, but impressive? As we walked in, I could feel myself willing my eyes to adjust, to be able to make out anything in the massive darkness. But they refused. I could no more make out anything in that cave than I could in the deepest dead of night. Less, even. We wandered like the newly blind, arms in front and short, shuffling steps. Finally I could make something out. Floating faces, pale like a clouded moon, and indistinguishable in feature from any other. We had reached the end of the container, the back of the wall, and as I reached out my hand to check, I could scarcely believe it was real. Yeah, we were joking around about ooh it’s dark and ooooh who’s hand is that, but in truth, it was a relief to feel a solid wall. And then I turned around to see the entrance and suddenly, this big metal shipping container, two stories high in the middle of the Tate Modern made sense. What an astonishingly clear allegory for development and advancing into the future. Because as I looked towards the entrance, back from whence I’d come, I could see perfectly the way, and likewise could I perfectly see other people who struggled along the same path I’d just traveled. It was amazing.

Unfortunately, then it was 6PM and the Tate was closing and it was dark out and we’d wasted our whole day. But not really, not at all. We walked then past the Globe, but it was closed. And it’s not even on the spot where the original Globe once stood. And they don’t even know what the original Globe looked like! What a gyp! I’d rather like to go inside, I think, but as they were closed and we didn’t feel like scaling the walls and getting in trouble, so on we went. To a pub!

We happened upon a really Welshly decorated pub (Welsh flags, Welsh beers, Welsh Welshmen, etc) and had ourselves a seat and a few pints, Welsh and otherwise, before moving on again. I was loath to move, honestly, as with any good day’s journey, my feet were tired and I was hungry. But with the promise of food, I would gladly have moved at least to another pub. And that’s just what we did. We found a lovely pub with seats enough for all of us (a rarity at most other pubs) and good food. Jeff had a burger, as he had said earlier that he doesn’t believe that any other country does BBQ properly, or even at all. And I had bangers and mash. Good bangers and mash are amazing and I’d missed them, as they’re hard to find in the US (bangers and mash, for the gastronomically uneducated, are sausages and mash potatoes in gravy. Delicious!). A few more beers, and I was properly tipsy.

Dan had to catch a train back to the Midlands, which left at 10:30, so we said our goodbyes at the station and then our goodbyes again to Peter on the Victoria Line. We were going to see him again the next night, after he was done with work and after we were done seeing We Will Rock You (Queen’s Rock Opera). And so after a really, really full day and with really, really tired feet, we went back to the MacDonald Hotel and feel quickly to sleep.