We sat by Gordon and Susanne and had a bit of chance to visit with them. We also, being in the front row on the right side behind the coach driver, were able to chat with Jason (the driver). Jason is an incredible driver. He could maneuver that monster of a vehicle inbetween and around obstacles and tiny spaces that I could not have gotten a mini-cooper through. But all that skill at driving does you precious little good if you do not know where you are going. No problem getting to London. No problem for most of the trip in London. But when London traffic gets backed up like, well London traffic, then you are apt to lose sight of the coach you are following and suddenly find yourself leading the former third, now second coach. Furthermore you begin to mutter about the rotten scoundrel who did not pull over and wait for you. I did not voice this but did wonder where in the world pulling-over would have been possible in a sea of nearly-frozen traffic.
Not to fear because the coach in the rear was being driven by Pinky (I did not make that up). Pinky is an angle of a man who looks like one of the Gargoyles on any of a hundred buildings we passed in London. Pinky’s most valuable asset is that he knows the streets of downtown London like the men and women of the Old Testament “knew” each other: intimately. We found our way back to the hotel.
Jason, the one who did not know where he was going, was trying very hard to be a good tour guide. He was pointing out the sights and describing the statues and buildings we were passing. The people in the back of the coach undoubtedly thought Jason was a wealth of knowledge. Those of us up front were very aware that Jason was just reading the signs on the buildings and statues as he came to them. This system for impromptu guiding collapsed under Jason when we went by the Tower of London (where Henry VIII had most of his detractors and some of his wives beheaded). There was no sign on the side of the tower where we were driving. Not to fear, he just called Pinky on the “mobile” to find out what it was and then announced that to the rest of the coach.
Being the great organized trip planners (i.e., really cheap) we are, we made our London hotel reservations on Priceline back in March. We consequently took the “tube” from the student hotel to our hotel. We booked a room at one of the Hilton hotels and it is on Kensington High Street. Kensington is a long street that goes by the Royal Albert Hall, Kensington Palace Gardens, and Hyde Park. Our hotel is on the west end of the street and all of that stuff is more toward the central and eastern end of the street. It was roughly 3 miles from the action. This is not a problem (we thought) since the tube stop is just a couple of blocks from the hotel. We had to change trains (subways) to get to our stop but that was not much of a problem other than it did require me to stand with a blank stare in front of the information signs for quite some time.
When we got off the train we turned right toward the street where we had seen the hotel from the train as we pulled into the station. No worries, we walked the few blocks and arrived safely at the hotel in about 8 minutes. But it was a bit of a disconcerting walk through a working class neighborhood. The first people we encountered were 3 macho-macho men of about 13 years of age who were dividing up a quarter pack of cigarettes and learning how to contract cancer. The next people were two men just around the corner. One of them was looking for something in his backpack and pulled out several bottles and sat them on the fence so he could get at the bottom contents of his backpack. When we emerged on to Kensington High Street we were back in the land of the suited business person and tourist. It turns out that if we had walked out to the left from the train station and down that street to our hotel it would not likely have had any scary people. (I did not really feel threatened at all.)
After settling in our hotel we decided to venture out to the city. We were walking and I was looking down the street and Penny was looking down the side streets. She suggested a detour down a small lane that said Church Lane. A half a block off one of the busiest streets in London we came to the beautiful St. Mary Abbot's Church. It is an Anglican church with large wooden doors with “Welcome” signs. The doors were locked. We stood in the forecourt (graveyard) and looked at a church appendage which clearly was an orphanage at some point in the past. They evidently were a segregated orphanage in that the doors were labeled girls over one and boys and infants over the other.
A woman walked by us and down the walk to the right of the church and we followed. The church was, in truth, welcoming if you find the correct door. St Mary Abbot is a lovely building not unlike (except in scale) many of the other formerly Catholic now Anglican churches.
As we left the sanctuary we entered the long covered walkway that was connected at one end to the quiet beauty of a house built to worship God and spilled out at the other end into the hustle and bustle of Kensington High Street.
We weaved our way through the mostly random-walking pedestrians east on Kensington and wound up at the corner of Kensington Gardens where Kensington Palace, the former home of Princess Diana, is located. Friday, August 31 was the 10th anniversary of her death. The formal ceremony to mark the occasion was held at St. Mary's Church in Aylesbury. The public was not invited, so the public gathered impromptu outside the walls of Kensington Palace. Several thousand people were there along with the news people setting up to do “live at five” features.
There were families picnicing and playing games, there were people (me for example) gawking and taking pictures, there were people very solemnly placing flowers and lighting candles, and there were those weeping. Flowers, large banners and small notes filled the crevices in the wire fence and obscured the view of the palace. One man was displaying his patriotism by wearing Union Jack clothing.
As we walked down the very large park I became engrossed with the people. One kid of about 3 had mastered his scooter and had poor dad huffing and puffing trying to keep up with him as he “WHEEEE-ed all the way down the paved path. Two more tow-headed kids were giggling and grinning as they rolled down the apparently steep-to-them but gently-sloping to the rest of the world hill.
By this time we were due for out nightly where-are-we-going-to-eat ritual. Tonight this ritual was mercifully short as we emerged from the park and quickly found a nice pub. The pubs in England have always been a nice place to get a meal but now they are wonderful due to the recent countrywide ban on smoking in public buildings. The need to weave your way into the pub by pushing through the smokers all gathered outside on the patio leads me to hope that they amend the law to include a breathing area near entrances to public buildings.
After our dinner we took a tube to Piccadilly Circus (no clowns but lots of funny people to be sure). It is a bit like a miniature Time Square, lots of neon bill boards and giant TV screens. The Criterion Theatre is located here and we have tickets for Saturday night.
We found a very nice grocery store near the Circus and bought breakfast food. This was far cheaper than the 17 pound per person (that is $34 for you American types) breakfast at the hotel.
Back at the Circus heading toward the underground we were held spellbound by a bicycle parade or trek or something. There were 300 or 400 hundred people on bicycles accompanied by police on bicycles pedaling through one of the busiest intersections in London. It was not apparent why they were riding. I assumed it was not a protest because surely they would have had signs to announce what they were opposing. They were mostly a quiet polite group and made up of all ages. The building mob of traffic backing up deeper and deeper in all the streets feeding into the intersection was neither quiet nor polite. People were blowing their horns, standing outside their vehicles waving their fists and shouting suggestions as to what the cyclists might do to entertain themselves as they rode.
It was then time for our daily “where the heck are we” hour. We hoped on the subway and got off at Kensington South station. Took the long stairs and escalators up to the street level and began looking for our hotel street. It was not readily found. This did not worry me much as many of the subway stations have multiple exits onto the street and sometimes they are a block or so from each other. We (that would be the me we) kept looking at the map and could not locate on the map the streets on which we were standing. Finally Penny figured out that I had gotten us off the subway at the wrong stop. We should have gotten off at Kensington High Street station. Unfortunately we never did find the correct stop or our hotel and we had to take a night train to Oslo. Just kidding, we figured it out and got back to the hotel a short time later.
Traveling in a strange place and trying to find where you are going is difficult and stressful at times but what an adventure.
Ray
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