And the Beat Goes On

And the Beat Goes On

Breakfast is getting boring. We both agree on this. Chocolate croissants are wonderful for a couple of days, but day in and day out, the novelty wears off. There is always the same number available regardless of how many of us are available for breakfast. We are wondering what will happen when more people come for breakfast. We still have not had a conversation with our “host”. He doesn’t even try to continue a conversation when we attempt one, but it has not dampened our stay in London. Most people we have stopped for directions or had reason to speak with have been extremely friendly and helpful.

There are problems with the transport system. We have caught some headlines in the papers about slowdowns and work stoppages. Many of the tube lines have signs that display all of the stations that are having problems for that day. It has not been too disturbing on our routes, but the tubes are getting farther and farther apart, so our commute to work each day gets longer. It took us an hour and a half to get to Kensington Palace, our mornings work sight as tourists.

Kensington Palace is where Princess Diana lived and so do many other Royals including the Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret. The Queen uses this palace from time to time also, depending on her needs. From what we understand, she is moved about for security reasons. Each of the Royals has their own apartment on the grounds of the Palace. Our pass gave us free entry and it included an audiophone. We usually shun these, but we were delighted that we had it to tour us from room to room. Kensington, like Buckingham is not an architecturally wonderful looking building, but it has charm. This was one of Queen Anne’s favorite palaces, but more on her later.

The tour is a bit different from what one would expect. Each room shows something of the life of the Royals from more of a sociological perspective. One room was the sewing room that had authentic materials used in gowns sown for Royals from the 18^th century. The conditions were deplorable by today’s standards and it was said that many lost their sight from working on miniscule lacing or sowing on beads in very poor lighting conditions. Also displayed were some of the wardrobes that both men and women were expected to wear in the royal court. Men had to wear as many layers of clothes as women did. They also had to wear two pairs of leggings. One pair is to cover the hair on their legs and the other white pair that fit their uniform.

Each of the rooms had specific purposes for the monarch’s use. There have not been many decorating changes for years, according to the tour program. One of the long halls included painted portraits of many of the royalty that have lived there. Poor Queen Anne had 19 children and not one of them survived past eleven years old. Her husband predeceased her and she was said to have had some disease that crippled her and she lost her sight. She did not produce an heir to the throne. One room holds the gowns the Queen has worn for different official occasions and the tour spoke about why the design was chosen. For an official visit to the United States when Reagan was president, her gown included beaded California poppies. After someone explained it to Ronnie, he is said to have appreciated the gesture.

Kensington is a beautiful palace inside and the tour was well worth the time. It was very educational without being redundant from what we had heard already. The grounds are wonderful, but the sunken garden was not planted. It looks like it is between seasons of plants, since the earth is turned up. There is grass and other shrubs that are permanent greens surrounding the fountain, so one can imagine what a wonderful sight it must be with flowers in bloom.

On the bus on our way to the Royal Mews, our next work assignment, we overhead the woman ahead of us ask her husband what one of the landmarks was. He said he did not know, so Ron offered the information. She told us that this was their first day in London. She was originally from Austria, but had been living in Virginia for the past forty years since her marriage. This was there first trip to Europe and they were on a tour. They had two days in London, five days in Paris, and four in Rome. When I started thinking about the amount of time that it took them to finally make this trip, I was not sure if I should be sad for them or ecstatic that they finally made it. We all prioritize differently, so my hope for them is that they have had other things in their life until now that is as life renewing as travel is for me. Shortly, after we made it to our bus stop, we had two American women stop us and ask for directions. They were from Utah and decided to try Priceline.com and flew to London. They too were only going to be here for a couple of days and then on to France where one of them lived for a year. They had hopes of touring Buckingham, but we regretted to tell them that the tours ended on September 30^th. We did encourage them to see the Tower of London and Kensington. How is it possible to cram so much in such a short amount of time? There is too much to see and do and the question that is always in the back of my mind is wondering if I will ever get to return? What will never survive in the event of terrorism or war? We have to experience it all or as much as our pocketbooks will allow while we can.

Our job at the Royal Mews was to tour the museum and see all of the Royal carriages used to carry the Queen and other Royals in parades, processions, jubilees, and other official occasions. It is a tough job, but someone needs to justify the salary of the guards. Our afternoon was spent keenly observing the differences in each carriage, their purpose, how many horses it takes to draw that carriage and whether or not the horses are ridden or if there is a driver. It is amazing how beautiful these carriages can be. We went with a sense of curiosity, but were soon filled with wonder. The most beautiful was the 24-karat coach that the Queen rode in for her coronation. Queen Victoria also rode in it for her coronation, then her Silver Jubilee, but refused to ride in it after that since her beloved husband Albert had passed away. She shunned much of the pageantry after that. Queen Elizabeth had a second spin in this coach on her 25^th year Silver Jubilee and next year will once again ride for her Golden Jubilee. Doesn’t time fly. The Queen has been on the throne for close to fifty years already.

Due to modernization, the Mews is also the home to the Royal Rolls Royce. The Queen owns five. Each car weighs 30 tons and is claret and black in color. One of the cars was on display since the Queen was in Scotland when we were at the Mews. The cars are sometimes lent out to other Royals, but generally they are all kept for the Queen’s use.

We were also able to see the Queen’s horses. These are the horses that are used for all of the pageantry associated with the royal duties. Each horse is bred for temperament and they are judged for their worthiness at an early age. Their training starts at four years old and takes about seven years for complete training. They have to become accustomed to the cheers of the crowd, the trumpets and other instruments, flashing photos, plus all other distractions. There is a training school on the property of the Mews. There are two kinds of horses used: Cleveland Chestnuts and Windsor Grays. The Grays were not available to see while we were there. They were on their vacation since the Queen was out of the country. They go to pasture when she is gone to rest and relax.

There is much information here about Queen Victoria as there is all over London. Since she was the longest reigning monarch in the history of Great Britain, she deserves the attention. She is said to have watched her nine children learn to ride in the Mews riding school. It is said also that Queen Elizabeth, who is a horse admirer visits the Mews often to see the horses.

With all of that walking it was time to sit, relax and have some afternoon tea. There are many places with outdoor spots to sip your drinks and watch the people go by. The weather was warm and breezy, but a coat was not really needed. When I sit down at times like this, with my feet aching and swollen, I think back to the time I was a hairdresser. We used to put a rubber hat that was filled with very tiny holes over a person’s head. Using a very tiny crochet needle, we would poke it through the hole in the cap hoping not to gouge the scalp in the process and pull out a wisp of hair. When this was done all over the head, the hair was bleached for a frosted look. At this time of day, by 3:00 pm, my feet feel like someone is taking a fine crochet hook, poking it into the bottoms of my feet and pulling out nerve endings one by one, then smacking the hell out of them.

After our tea break, we headed to Leichester Square to the ½ price theater ticket office. We had high hopes of getting tickets to The Lion King or Mama Mia, but we knew they were both sold out until February of next year. We were lucky to get two tickets to Starlight Express for less than the price of one ticket at home. The show is scheduled to close by the first of the year. It has had quite a long run thus far. The curtain was at 7:30 pm. There are strange curtain times here. I am used to theater having a standard curtain at 8:00 pm. Here, some shows are 7:15 and every 15 minute interval until 8:00 pm.

With time to waste until the theater, but not enough to visit another sight, we went to the Official Brass Rubbing Center at St. Martin of the Fields church. They have a number of designs in brass that look like large rubber stamps. You tape paper over the brass and use different colors of wax to rub the brass. Whatever is raised above the surface that the brass is on, will take the wax. All of the indentations of the design will remain the color of your paper. I could not find a design that appealed to me, so I watched why Ron rubbed. A couple of times he looked like an overgrown kid, trying to stay within the lines. He would pick up his wax stick, check out his picture, then the head would go down once more in deep concentration and he would rub some more. Finally, I had to rush him to the finale, as we needed to get to the cyber café for a bit before heading for the play.

Our new friend Nick e-mailed to say that he arranged a free Internet connection for us to use anywhere in Great Britain. I needed to check out phone plug and see if it will fit the ones here. I don’t have a phone adapter. It continues to amaze me that people are so generous with their time and energy. Then there was another e-mail from a friend of ours in California who shall remain nameless saying that she had been deleting my e-mails up to this point thinking they were offers from a pornography sight. It wasn’t until she had a conversation with another recipient that she realized what she was deleting. With little time to spare, we went to Pizza Hut for a quick, cheap, and surprisingly very good quality pizza before the play.

I am amazed at how seldom we hear English on the streets. We are almost craving hearing a British accent. This is such a cosmopolitan with immigrants from everywhere.

News headlines: 15 million pounds are expected to be lost until the end of the year from American tourists alone, due to the New York City incident. Later tonight, the news said that hotels are hurting and they are trying to encourage the English to travel more in their own country to make up the losses.

So now to review Starlight Express. There were no stars that are known in the States or here either that we could tell. For those of you who do not know the story, it is basically The Little Engine That Could retold. There is a little boy who is never seen, but heard from. He has different train engines and cars that he races against each other. The whole show is about these trains racing. The characters are the trains in very clever costumes and the whole show is done on roller skates. The costumes were very well done, the skating was phenomenal and the races were interesting. Whenever the characters were out of view, skating around the theater including the balcony, there were monitors that showed the action for those in sections that could not see where the trains happened to be at any given time. There were cutesy names for some of the characters like Dinah the Dining car, Ashley the Smoking car, and Dusty the Coal car. The sound system was off or it was the singing. We could not understand the lyrics to most of the songs and it was not due to the accents. When they spoke lines, it was with an American accent. The story was simple, but it was an enjoyable evening and night out, but neither of us were ready to encourage anyone to run out and see it before it closed.

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Gruesome London

Gruesome London

It does not seem unreasonable to believe that if you are in a people oriented business such as a Guesthouse owner, they you should have some personality, charm, cheerfulness, or at least honesty in advertising. It seem we have run aground on all of the above with the owner of this pension. When perusing the web site for this accommodation, it was shown as a warm, friendly place with everyone knows your name, even the white Scottie dog Dougall, was a greeter and companion during your visit. The vast garden was available for eating breakfast and some one was available to answer questions as they arose. The Internet does not lie. Web designers lie.

Now don’t misunderstand me, we are very satisfied with our room, though it is the most we have ever paid for sleeping accommodations ever, with the one exception of the one night at the top of Machu Pichu, but that was Christmas Eve. When I first investigated places to stay, I checked out a number of sites. London is expensive and we knew that coming in, but decided we would do the heavy spending the first month or so and then live like paupers the rest of the trip. This place seemed to have a good deal offering a well-acquainted room with breakfast for 79 pounds a night. Since our top of the line in the past has been $55.00, this was quite a stretch for our budget travel minds to assimilate. The selling points were that it had the English garden, the little dog that would help us miss our own less, and they offered a 7-11 special. Book seven nights and receive the 7^th free or book 11 and receive the 7^th and 11^th free. That seemed like it would be less of a financial shock and we booked for the 11 nights. When I received the confirmation e-mail, we were confirmed for 11 nights at 99 pounds a night. Of course I pointed out that the request was for the 79 pound room, not the 99 pound deluxe and the response was that the correction had been made without a problem.

Upon arrival, I paid with my credit card, received our receipt, grabbed our keys and off to lullaby land to shake off the stress of flying. The owner had given us some maps pointing our favorite nightspots in the local area as well as other areas and wished us a pleasant stay. The English Garden it turns out is indeed lovely, if we could get to it. The owner keeps the door locked. The first morning, we asked to go out there and drink our coffee, but his attitude suggested we were putting him out by having to unlock the door. Of course since it rained the night before, he would have to spread a towel for our soiled shoes, but not to worry, he had one handy.

Each progressive day, there has not been one word about our visit, what we have seen, what we liked or didn’t. Our morning conversation consists of “Would you like coffee or tea this morning?” One morning, I arrived a minute before Ron. After greeting John by name, I said that I would like tea and Ron would like coffee, please. He nodded his head and I thought I had spoken clearly enough. A minute later, he said to me “Would you like coffee or tea this morning?” I repeated the request both for myself and for Ron. John’s reply was “You are confusing me. Do you want coffee or tea, this morning?” A minute later, Ron appeared and he asked Ron the same question. It seems to me that if you are confused that easily, you certainly do not have the capacity to run a business.

We had the audacity to arrive to breakfast at eight minutes before nine one day and five before another. Now the breakfast room is locked until precisely 9:00 am so that we do not disrupt his morning routine. John shared with us on check-in that many reservations were cancelled due to NYC, so business is slow. It befuddles me how he could cope if the place were at capacity. Even the dog Dougall snubbed us the one day that we saw him. We called him to us and he walked right past us as he looked the other way.

It was not until a couple of days later, that I had noticed the bill and in the back of my mind, the total seemed off. We did not receive either the 7^th or 11^th night free, but were in deed charged for every single night. When Ron went to refute the bill, he was told that I had changed the room from the 99 to the 79 pound rate and therefore the special was invalid. I could not find anything on the website that makes that distinction, but rather than fight with John, I will just post my comments on eight different web sites for others to be forewarned. Hence, for those of you who may have been wondering why we do not get out earlier and get breakfast elsewhere, we are trying to get the most this place has to offer, so we can skimp a little on food elsewhere.

Now on with our tour, we went first to the Tower of London. As we entered a Yeoman Warder or Beefeater, as they are otherwise known greeted us. If you have ever seen a bottle of Beefeaters gin, you will know what a Beefeater looks like. If you have never seen one, then run down to the store and look now at the gin. I want you to have a mental picture of the costume these men wear. I will wait for you to return from the store. The Beefeaters, all men, are former members of the Army or Royal Air Force, but not the Navy since the sailors are seafarers and the Beefeaters have to be landlubbers for the most part. Beefeaters are chosen from the decorated men of the Royal services and have to make a twenty year commitment to the service of the Royal House in order to be chosen. He was our guide for part of the tour of the Tower.

The Tower started out as a castle with an access way from the Thames River, where supplies were brought in by boat. It was later turned into a prison and execution spot for the more famous names of history. Ann Bolyen (spelled a couple of different ways on the grounds itself) was beheaded here. She was one of the many wives of Henry VIII. She refused to put her head on the chopping block, so they beheaded her in a kneeling position. Sir Walter Raleigh was imprisoned here three times. On one imprisonment, he wrote “The History of the World”, but only completed the first volume before dying. Two young princes, who were in line for the throne were murdered by their uncle so he could be crowned king. Years later, their bodies were found in the walls of the building. The chapel is filled with the remains of famous historical bodies and it is still in use as a chapel with regular church services.

As they say, this is a living building. The people that work there live there. The queen still resides there at times still today. The Royal jewels are kept there and are on display. The crowns from the earliest kings are in cases for the viewing, as well as the crowns for various functions of the current Queen. The world’s largest cut diamond is in a crown as well as rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and other precious gems. Other rooms have displays of armor throughout the history of England and that of royalty as well as their horses’ armor. Some of these kings were short, very short. One room had models of each king’s favorite horse. All told, we spent over three hours touring around and it was time well spent. It is a magnificent area to explore.

The Dungeon of London sounded fascinating in our little book and we walked the Tower Bridge to get there. It was so windy, we could easily have been blown down, no small feat since as you will remember, I have all of that extra baggage I am still carrying around. It was truly windy, but we made it across and to the Dungeon. It is listed as a place where you can learn the history of the old days of London when torture, mayhem, and murder were common events. What’s not to like about that? Really, it was supposed to be another piece of London history, but what it turned out to be was a historically based fun house. Ron looked at me and said, “This is your Halloween experience, so enjoy it.” It was interesting truly, but what can I say, hokey? When you enter they have one of you put your head in a stocks (Ron) and one of you hold an axe as if you are going to chop the head off. They take your picture to sell to you later. Ron refused to buy it because he thought I looked too gleeful with the axe. Once you are in, there is no way to get out until you have completed their maze of things. Some of it was interesting and educational, but mostly not. We took off from here to Kensington Palace.

By the time we got to Kensington Palace, it was closed for the day, being 5:00 pm, but the Orangery was open. The Orangery is a large greenhouse that was built as a gift for Queen Anne, but is now used as a teahouse. We decided to have a tea since it was part of our Pass. Ron ordered Shortbread cakes and I had Sable and Whites. These were round flat, but thick cookies that were ginger in the center and chocolate on the outside ring. They were delicious and the mix of ginger and chocolate is one that I would never have thought of mixing. Everything goes better with chocolate.

When we finally emerged from our afternoon tea, feeling like proper British folk, it was raining lightly. A walk in a light rain is mentally refreshing as well as physically, so we strolled past the sunken gardens and walked to the lake near the palace. The lake has dozens of swans and other waterfowl around the lake. Most of the swans were on land and not in the water. They are so accustomed to people, they have no fears about coming right up to you. Swans are really magnificent creatures and watching their antics on land gives insight to their swan culture. As we were observing them, the rain changed from light showers to torrential rainfall. It continued like this for about 20 minutes and even with our shelter, we were drenched. As soon as it lessened, we were off again.

The next stop was intended to be Soho, but we missed a turn somewhere and found ourselves in the Piccadilly area, which was fine by us. Just about anywhere in London is wonderful. With a sausage sandwich for dinner and in hand, we headed down to the Thames for a fifty-minute moonlight cruise on a catamaran. I had not slept well last night and this is the last thing that I wanted to do. I was exhausted and really wanted to crawl in bed. I knew Ron wanted to do this once while we were here and it was included in our pass. Since the weather was cooperating, it seemed like a good time to push my limits. The weather is so unpredictable. The catamaran goes as far as the London Bridge where it turns around and goes under the Tower Bridge. London at night is quite beautiful. The London Eye is still operating. This is the giant Ferris wheel type ride, but people stand in it. It goes so slowly, the first three days we were here, we thought it was stopped. The idea is to give you the most fantastic view of London that you will ever see. Unfortunately, I don’t think we will have time to do it. As it turns out, it was a positive enough experience that I did not feel badly about having to extend my energy level and my feet gained a fifty-minute break.

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Not a Day of Rest

Not a Day of Rest

I used to think that working was stressful. Already we need a vacation from our time away. The London Pass does not seem to be as beneficial as we thought it would be, although the transportation component has been a blessing. One of the problems has been that many of the attractions here in London have very limited hours. Most open at 10:00 am and close at 5:30 pm. That may seem like a sufficient amount of time, but when there are so many things to see and do, it is difficult to fit it all in. Then you have to figure out what is open on what day and sometimes it takes an hour or more to get to the area of the attraction. This all adds to the mix of frustrations. Sounds rough doesn’t it? We hope we have all of your sympathies.

Our day today started out with a tube ride to Westminster Abbey for the tour promised in our London Pass book, but it was not available due to religious services. We were able to view the three museums within the old monastery, which was quite interesting and full of royal history. English history is so complicated, but more fascinating than we had ever realized. We have been totally taken in by it. Ron decided to attend a portion of the Episcopal service at the Abbey and I took off in search of a Loo. See I am learning the language here. Big Ben is right next to Westminster and is looking very spiffy. When I was here the last time, he was covered with scaffolding for refurbishing. Of course, that was 1983, so he has had plenty of time to get himself together for a visit. Many people believe that Big Ben is the clock that is on the sides of the tower, but that is not correct. If that is what you thought, YOU ARE THE WEAKEST LINK and are out of the game. Well, okay, you can stay. Big Ben is the bell within the tower. Learn something new today?

The Jewel Tower is close to the Abbey and on our Pass, so that was the next stop. One would think this was a place filled with jewels as I did. All right, I am the weakest link this time. The tower was actually built for Edward III in 1363 to house his personal treasures. He had a moat dug around it to offer more protection. It was once one of the original buildings of the medieval castle of Westminster. Inside now are large displays that give an account of the British monarchy in regard to their level of power. Edgar the Great in the 800s had total control to the Queen now who is more of a figure head with Parliament having most of the political control. We spent a couple of hours reading the history. When we were on the second floor, we kept hearing this chanting. At first we thought it was the video on the third floor, but after viewing the movie, it was not. When we left there and was standing at the bus stop, we heard the chanting again. It was really more like yelling, shouting, and discontent. We saw a large number of people with masks and signs. Not wanting to miss a good demonstration, we went to investigate. It turns out it is the filming of the new movie “ Bridgette Jones’ Diary: Part 2”, so we were asked to leave.

Well we can take a hint when we are not wanted, so we took a bus in search of Wagamama. Really sounds British, eh? It is a chain of Japanese noodle restaurants that all of our friends here recommended. With the rain falling and feet aching, a hot bowl of soup with ramen noodles sounded comforting and nourishing. We found it after a long bus ride and entered our first Wagamama. It is starkly decorated with many blonde picnic tables each with six paper placemats and chopsticks. A person comes for your order. They have about 30 different soup/noodle/rice combinations. The noodles come in four varieties. I ordered a spicy chicken soup with wide noodles and Ron had a miso based soup with wide noodles. It saddened me to say that my soup was totally tasteless. Most of the filling was bean sprouts with other veggies, but the bean sprouts really dominated the bowl. It was slim chance on finding many noodles and the broth was neither tasty nor comforting. Ron’s was barely better, but not to any great extent. We may give this place another try, but not for a while.

With passes in hand, we rushed off to the Tower of London. When we reached there, we only had one hour left before it closed. The guard suggested we come back tomorrow as the full tour takes a minimum of three hours. With that information, we put it on our plan for tomorrow and walked the area lovely along the waterway getting post card views of the Tower Bridge. At the end of the walkway were a cluster of shops and restaurants. Shopping has no appeal when you are homeless. Why buy something only to cart it around with you? It is a money saver to have my shopping addiction wasting away. We did find a coffee house next to a historic ship called the Grand Turk, a clipper ship that was used in some historic battle, but the touring was done for the day and it was not of enough interest to us to investigate further. We planned our day for tomorrow.

The Tower Bridge looming over our heads was too enticing and we climbed the steps to walk the length of the bridge. It is a lovely view of London from the middle of the bridge and one is able, for a fee, to climb to the top of the bridge for an even better view. We have learned to pick and choose our energy battles. The bridge itself is painted a light blue with large emblems representing England and Scotland on the side. As Ron described it, he said it looks like frosting on a birthday cake and wondered how many arguments ensued in choosing the colors.

Since we have wanted to see some theater while we are here, we took a bus to the Leicester area where the theater discounters happen to be. They were closed, of course, but we thought we could to find what plays were available. Naturally, Lion King and Mama Mia are sold out, but we can possible get tickets if we go directly to the theaters. We both had to use the bathroom by that time and there was no public facility in sight. I asked a street cleaner where we could find a bathroom. He said there we none in the area, but did I just want to wash up? I told him our need and he suggested that we just enter any pub or fast food restaurant. As fate has it, all of the McDonalds, Burger Kings, even Starbucks evaporated from the area at that very moment. When we found a Pizza Hut, we thought we were in luck and rushed in. A hostess who wanted to seat us immediately greeted us. We looked over the menu and left totally unsatisfied. We did a quick walk down the street looking for a pub that would not ask questions and just leave us to do our thing. I grabbed Ron when spotting one and we sprinted through the door. About twenty feet in the door, I sensed something different about this bar. My mind found the memory of the Gary Larson cartoon of the chickens that walk into a bar full of cows. The caption states something like, “Suddenly, Ethel and Lucy looked around and realized that they were in a hay bar.” It was a gay bar we had found as our oasis in the bathroomless desert. We used the facility and left.

After taking the tube home, we stopped in our neighborhood pub to chug one with the locals and off to bed for another day of work, I mean touring tomorrow.

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