A Day of Rest

A Day of Rest

We leave London tomorrow. We have not decided where we are going yet, but yesterday we sent out a number of e-mails checking out accommodations. Ron wanted to go to Westminster Abbey for services at 11:00 am, so that meant we needed to get through our happy meal fast and get on the buses and tubes hoping they are running.

Westminster Abbey is a Church of England (Episcopal) place of worship. Its biggest importance is that it is where the royalty had its coronation. Elizabeth II being the last to process up the aisle to receive her crown and take the vows of monarch to hold the Church of England in the highest regard and accepting no other. A guard stands outside and only lets those in who are coming for the service. We looked pious enough to be allowed through the gates. Actually, I had to hide under Ron’s most pious coattail to get by. The church is lovely inside, but no pictures are allowed. What we would call the church with the altar in front, they called the Nave. Through the Nave and on both sides are choir stands on both sides. The stands or seats are done in rich blue velvet and golden wood that has been beautifully carved. Beyond the choir area there is yet another altar. On either side of the altar are chairs for the congregates. Each of us was given a handout on the order of the service, which included when to stand and when to sit.

The sermon was quite interesting. The priest started out with the story of Snow White. He said that when she was baptized, three fairy godmothers were invited to bestow blessings on her, but the fourth was shunned either accidentally or purposefully. She feeling snubbed placed a curse on Snow White. He went on to make the analogy that we grow up thinking that only good exists, but there is also evil in the world. He said we had to be the godparent to ourselves and not wait for life to be good to us. Of course, he delved into this theme to a greater depth than I have here, but that is the focus.

From the sanctity of the church service, I ran over the Internet café while Ron went to the train station to check schedules. As I was typing away, a porno sight popped up. I immediately closed it and another one popped up elsewhere on the screen. I rapidly closed that one to no avail as another smaller window then appeared with four letter words on it. All of my attempts to close them were fruitless, so I just switched back to Yahoo and kept typing. When Ron arrived, he was sitting next to me and one of the sights jumped to the forefront. He was startled and dumbfounded at the same time. He asked how long that had been happening and I explained since I got there. I did not tell the attendant since she was this young woman and I did not want to be standing there while she viewed the scenes that were plastered on the desktop. When we finished out session, I did close as many as I could and then I did tell her. I did not want someone else to have to deal with this. She came over and of course then they were all gone. No matter how many of the X boxes I clicked on they continued to come from nowhere, but now there was no evidence left to justify my concerns.

One of our sub-hobbies of traveling is collecting Hard Rock Café pins from the restaurants in the cities we visit. London is the mother of all Hard Rock Cafes. This is where it all began, so getting a pin from here was a real coup. From the Internet café we had to take the tube to get close to the Hard Rock. It was raining heavily and again the gusts were beyond normal. The announcer came on the overhead in the tube station declaring an emergency with the tube. It had broken down and would not be arriving for quite awhile. We were strapped for time as Bruce was going to drive over at 6:00 pm to collect us with our luggage to bring to their home for safekeeping. We decided we would have to take a bus and found the correct one, eventually.

The Hard Rock is small. Being the birthplace of a multi-continent business, one would think that it would be huge. It was not disappointing though. We saw memorabilia from the bands we grew up with and of course there was a good amount of Beatle’s things to gawk at. In the dining room, there are screens everywhere with music videos playing. Some were stars and songs we had never heard of, but others were songs we knew and loved from years past. Then one started that we really could have done without. The theme song and video to the Sopranos was the next in queue. Ron had successfully forgotten about the show he loved to watch. This refreshed his memory and his eyes were glued to the screen. His next comment was that he hoped he would be able to find the videos in a video store to keep up with the series and I just silently groaned, hoping this too would pass.

One of the public bathrooms we went into had a sign on the wall “1996/97 Loo of the Year Award”. Somehow we missed the latter year presentations on our television satellite dish system, but the award ceremony must be a real treasure. …And the winner for the most sparkling bowls that are consistently supplied with sufficient paper goes to…. I got to thinking that if they did not win the award since 1997, shouldn’t the sign come down by now? Maybe it is time to rethink bowl cleaner or retire the bowl brush if there is ever going to be a chance of picking up the award again.

The same thing goes for the B & B we are staying in. They have the Pink Paper Award for Outstanding B & B for 1995 and 1996. Did the paper fold after that or did some other more deserving B&B displace them? If the paper folded, they should have yet another sign that says “We may have continued winning, but the paper folded in 1997 and our attitudes soured the same year.” For heaven sakes, if you have not won anything since 1996 and it is now 2001, get over it and take the signs down. Your day of glory has faded and all who stay with you now are certainly not going to vote for you in any positive categories.

We made it back home by 6:00 pm, but we still needed to rearrange our things to leave with Anne and Bruce and then decide what we would need to take with us. More decisions! Bruce came for us at 7:00 and we carted the luggage to their second floor, a chore that reminded us how grateful we were for their generous offer so that we did not have to lug them with us for another few weeks. Bruce was gracious enough to drive us home again. We finally had an early evening in London with me on the computer and Ron reading. It was wonderful to relax. We had covered miles and miles of London on the tubes and buses, but also a huge amount of miles by foot also. We had climbed thousands of steps since not all of the tube stations have escalators and those that do also have steps that need to be climbed. Every sight we went to had steps that needed climbing. Steps were everywhere we went that needed ascending or descending. It was time to put the feet up. I had been doing very well about staying in the moment and not anticipating what was coming next. This is not easy to do. I have always had to make plans and then reassess the plans and make adjustments as things went on. Now, I was just enjoying the moment and not planning the next hour, let alone the next day, week, or month. But we were leaving London tomorrow and we had to make some decisions.

If you want to know where we went, keep reading.

Keep going…

A little farther…

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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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