Touring in London
Aug. 8th, 2005 07:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
readsalotTrying to catch up...
After we got into our flat (two bedrooms plus a living room plus a kitchen), we napped for a couple of hours, and then looked for something to do. Unfortunately, by then it was after 4pm, and we didn't realize that the tickets for the Big Bus tour of London (you get a guide, and can get off and then on again at any stop) would be valid for 24 hours. So, we went to the London Eye, which is way cool. It's kind of like a giant ferris wheel, except that instead of having little two-person coaches, it has giant mostly-clear eggs that hold 25 people, and a full revolution takes about a half hour. There was a long line, but it moved pretty steadily, and the view was amazing. In fact, I may go back there some evening just to see what it looks like at full dark.
Later, we wandered around the river bank looking for food, and ended up at a very nice but pricey Japanese restaurant. They brought us a complimentary and very tasty little starter-thing that was mostly made of hijiki, a type of seaweed. It's the first seaweed I've had that didn't taste fishy and slightly yucky (I know lots of people like seaweed, but mostly I don't). I also had some sort of beef thing, that was quite tasty, and my very very good mushroom appetizer arrived after all of our entrees, but was devoured nonetheless.
Back to the hotel, and sleep, and I woke up on Monday at a reasonable time feeling non jet-lagged. Yay! Down to breakfast (continental included with room, full available for an extra £3.) I had the continental, which consisted of toast, jam, and apparently a slice of cheese and a slice of ham, which I wasn't interested in. My friends both had the full breakfast, which they found to be slightly disappointing. Then we headed towards what we thought was a stop for the tour bus, and stopped in at a small convenience store to buy our tickets. That turned out to be a waste of time, as, when we went to to the bus stop, we met one of the tour people, who immediately converted our big, shiny, decorative, easy-to-hang-on-to tickets to small yellow credit-card receipts, which we still had to hang on to and show to the bus driver every time we wanted to get on. None of us ever lost ours, but I know I kept worrying. And he could just as easily have taken our credit cards and given us the receipts right away, and it probably would have been just as fast. Sigh. A bus came by, and filled up without us getting on, but another one showed up fairly soon. We then had about one stop's worth of touring and then had to get off and get onto another bus at the start of the tour. But at least that time we were able to get onto the upper deck, where it was much easier to see things, though a little wet. We rode along for a while, listening to silly stories amusingly told by a good guide, and then I got off in Trafalgar Square because I wanted to look around, as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
harrock told me I had to. I liked it--it's a nice welcoming space, and Nelson's Column is very cool, but it didn't really give me the chills. However, right nearby was the National Gallery, where I went in and promptly got lost for several hours among the paintings. The audio guide was particularly nice; it was like having an older sister who was an Art major tell you neat things about the pictures that you might not have thought of.
Eventually I decided that I really had to see something other than the National Gallery that day, and went looking for food. That turned out to be more difficult than I'd have thought, as I was feeling both picky and cheap. I ended up getting on the tour bus again and riding for a couple of stops, and going to a place that I didn't realize charged about twice as much for sit-down food as for take-away. (Possibly a common practice in London, as I noticed a Starbucks that listed higher prices for muffins if you were eating them there. However, if I'd realized that before I sat down, I might have just gotten something and walked around while eating it. Oh well.)
I got back on the bus and rode around some more, listening to a new tour guide who was just not as good as the first one. Partly because of that, and partly because I hadn't yet had any coffee that day, I started to fall asleep, so I got off near Victoria station which seemed to have a lot of cafes. I got something at the Starbucks there because I knew how heavily caffeinated it would be, and then went back to the bus stop. Alas, it was now around 4pm, and the buses had suddenly all vanished--I saw about 4 buses from a different all-around-London tour come by, but none from mine. I'd been waiting for about 15 minutes when I suddenly remembered that I'd never retrieved the driver's license that I'd left at the National Gallery when renting the audio tour, and made my way back there in a slight panic. Fortunately, I got there before they closed, and the worker was willing to believe that I'd returned the audio tour to a different desk than I'd rented it from, and gave back my license. By this time, it was clearly too late to be doing any more touring, and I went back to the hotel area, had dinner at a nice Indian restaurant (prawn poori appetizer, which is something I miss very much in the US as none of our Indian restaurants do it; rest of the meal not that great), and then found an internet cafe, caught up on mail, and made my previous entry.)
The next day I was resolved to go to the Tower of London, because it's the one place I'd been wanting to see for years. (My English-history interest started with Henry VIII, and I mostly worked backwards from there.) Unfortunately, I hadn't really gotten in shape for a lot of walking, and taking the Tube to Tower Hill involved a lot of walking, and a lot of stairs, so I was a bit tired even before going in. I joined one of the Yeoman Warder-led tours at the beginning, and listened to lot of cheesy jokes about things that I mostly knew. After a few stops, I decided that I needed to sit, and did so on one of the many convenient benches. One of the Warders who apparently felt that I looked insufficiently amused stopped by to tell me that, "5 of the 6 women executed on Tower Hill had red hair like you, my dear." I laughed, and he went on, happy in having done his duty by a tourist. :)
I then went up some very annoying steps and rested on another bench, and eventually decided that if I just waited for a little while longer, I could just the next tour. So I did, and heard more cheesey stories. That I already knew. For example, when he was telling the story of Margaret Pole, one of the afore-mentioned redheads, who was executed for treason by Henry VIII, I was tempted to point out that she was Henry's first cousin once removed, which may have been part of the reason for her execution, as people who were anywhere near as royal as him made Henry nervous. You see, Margaret was the daughter of George, Duke of Clarence, who was executed for treason against his brother, Edward IV, allegedly by being drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine--the execution is fairly definite, but the method has never been established by any real evidence. I can neep about Henry VIII some more, but I'll stop, out of mercy to anyone who's actually reading this.
I then had lunch, to build up my strength for touring the White Tower, which is the first part of the Tower of London, having been constructed by William the Conqueror around 1078 in order to awe the people of London. It consists of four very tall stories, and has no elevator, and a set tour that pretty much forces you to climb all the way up and then all the way down. However, it's full of cool exhibits, and had lots of benches, so I just took it easy and rested whenever I needed to. The top floor currently has a great new exhibit about Guy Fawkes, with all of the wall posters done as if they were tabloid newspapers reporting on the events. The tower has been used as an armoury for the last few hundred years, so most of the displays were about weapons, and I would have liked to see more about history, but it was still a great exhibit, and I'm very happy to have finally seen it.
Once I got out of the tower, it was about 2:30, and as I'd promised to meetmerrylg at the National Gallery for a cream tea at 3, I had to go. I got there only ten minutes late, and we had a lovely tea, and I then shopped in their store a little and visited the display of the Westminster Retable, a 13th-century altarpiece that is sadly much reduced from its original state.
That was pretty much it for Tuesday. On Wednesday, we took a train to Glasgow to go to Worldcon, which will be the subject of my next piece.
After we got into our flat (two bedrooms plus a living room plus a kitchen), we napped for a couple of hours, and then looked for something to do. Unfortunately, by then it was after 4pm, and we didn't realize that the tickets for the Big Bus tour of London (you get a guide, and can get off and then on again at any stop) would be valid for 24 hours. So, we went to the London Eye, which is way cool. It's kind of like a giant ferris wheel, except that instead of having little two-person coaches, it has giant mostly-clear eggs that hold 25 people, and a full revolution takes about a half hour. There was a long line, but it moved pretty steadily, and the view was amazing. In fact, I may go back there some evening just to see what it looks like at full dark.
Later, we wandered around the river bank looking for food, and ended up at a very nice but pricey Japanese restaurant. They brought us a complimentary and very tasty little starter-thing that was mostly made of hijiki, a type of seaweed. It's the first seaweed I've had that didn't taste fishy and slightly yucky (I know lots of people like seaweed, but mostly I don't). I also had some sort of beef thing, that was quite tasty, and my very very good mushroom appetizer arrived after all of our entrees, but was devoured nonetheless.
Back to the hotel, and sleep, and I woke up on Monday at a reasonable time feeling non jet-lagged. Yay! Down to breakfast (continental included with room, full available for an extra £3.) I had the continental, which consisted of toast, jam, and apparently a slice of cheese and a slice of ham, which I wasn't interested in. My friends both had the full breakfast, which they found to be slightly disappointing. Then we headed towards what we thought was a stop for the tour bus, and stopped in at a small convenience store to buy our tickets. That turned out to be a waste of time, as, when we went to to the bus stop, we met one of the tour people, who immediately converted our big, shiny, decorative, easy-to-hang-on-to tickets to small yellow credit-card receipts, which we still had to hang on to and show to the bus driver every time we wanted to get on. None of us ever lost ours, but I know I kept worrying. And he could just as easily have taken our credit cards and given us the receipts right away, and it probably would have been just as fast. Sigh. A bus came by, and filled up without us getting on, but another one showed up fairly soon. We then had about one stop's worth of touring and then had to get off and get onto another bus at the start of the tour. But at least that time we were able to get onto the upper deck, where it was much easier to see things, though a little wet. We rode along for a while, listening to silly stories amusingly told by a good guide, and then I got off in Trafalgar Square because I wanted to look around, as
harrock told me I had to. I liked it--it's a nice welcoming space, and Nelson's Column is very cool, but it didn't really give me the chills. However, right nearby was the National Gallery, where I went in and promptly got lost for several hours among the paintings. The audio guide was particularly nice; it was like having an older sister who was an Art major tell you neat things about the pictures that you might not have thought of. Eventually I decided that I really had to see something other than the National Gallery that day, and went looking for food. That turned out to be more difficult than I'd have thought, as I was feeling both picky and cheap. I ended up getting on the tour bus again and riding for a couple of stops, and going to a place that I didn't realize charged about twice as much for sit-down food as for take-away. (Possibly a common practice in London, as I noticed a Starbucks that listed higher prices for muffins if you were eating them there. However, if I'd realized that before I sat down, I might have just gotten something and walked around while eating it. Oh well.)
I got back on the bus and rode around some more, listening to a new tour guide who was just not as good as the first one. Partly because of that, and partly because I hadn't yet had any coffee that day, I started to fall asleep, so I got off near Victoria station which seemed to have a lot of cafes. I got something at the Starbucks there because I knew how heavily caffeinated it would be, and then went back to the bus stop. Alas, it was now around 4pm, and the buses had suddenly all vanished--I saw about 4 buses from a different all-around-London tour come by, but none from mine. I'd been waiting for about 15 minutes when I suddenly remembered that I'd never retrieved the driver's license that I'd left at the National Gallery when renting the audio tour, and made my way back there in a slight panic. Fortunately, I got there before they closed, and the worker was willing to believe that I'd returned the audio tour to a different desk than I'd rented it from, and gave back my license. By this time, it was clearly too late to be doing any more touring, and I went back to the hotel area, had dinner at a nice Indian restaurant (prawn poori appetizer, which is something I miss very much in the US as none of our Indian restaurants do it; rest of the meal not that great), and then found an internet cafe, caught up on mail, and made my previous entry.)
The next day I was resolved to go to the Tower of London, because it's the one place I'd been wanting to see for years. (My English-history interest started with Henry VIII, and I mostly worked backwards from there.) Unfortunately, I hadn't really gotten in shape for a lot of walking, and taking the Tube to Tower Hill involved a lot of walking, and a lot of stairs, so I was a bit tired even before going in. I joined one of the Yeoman Warder-led tours at the beginning, and listened to lot of cheesy jokes about things that I mostly knew. After a few stops, I decided that I needed to sit, and did so on one of the many convenient benches. One of the Warders who apparently felt that I looked insufficiently amused stopped by to tell me that, "5 of the 6 women executed on Tower Hill had red hair like you, my dear." I laughed, and he went on, happy in having done his duty by a tourist. :)
I then went up some very annoying steps and rested on another bench, and eventually decided that if I just waited for a little while longer, I could just the next tour. So I did, and heard more cheesey stories. That I already knew. For example, when he was telling the story of Margaret Pole, one of the afore-mentioned redheads, who was executed for treason by Henry VIII, I was tempted to point out that she was Henry's first cousin once removed, which may have been part of the reason for her execution, as people who were anywhere near as royal as him made Henry nervous. You see, Margaret was the daughter of George, Duke of Clarence, who was executed for treason against his brother, Edward IV, allegedly by being drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine--the execution is fairly definite, but the method has never been established by any real evidence. I can neep about Henry VIII some more, but I'll stop, out of mercy to anyone who's actually reading this.
I then had lunch, to build up my strength for touring the White Tower, which is the first part of the Tower of London, having been constructed by William the Conqueror around 1078 in order to awe the people of London. It consists of four very tall stories, and has no elevator, and a set tour that pretty much forces you to climb all the way up and then all the way down. However, it's full of cool exhibits, and had lots of benches, so I just took it easy and rested whenever I needed to. The top floor currently has a great new exhibit about Guy Fawkes, with all of the wall posters done as if they were tabloid newspapers reporting on the events. The tower has been used as an armoury for the last few hundred years, so most of the displays were about weapons, and I would have liked to see more about history, but it was still a great exhibit, and I'm very happy to have finally seen it.
Once I got out of the tower, it was about 2:30, and as I'd promised to meet
merrylg at the National Gallery for a cream tea at 3, I had to go. I got there only ten minutes late, and we had a lovely tea, and I then shopped in their store a little and visited the display of the Westminster Retable, a 13th-century altarpiece that is sadly much reduced from its original state. That was pretty much it for Tuesday. On Wednesday, we took a train to Glasgow to go to Worldcon, which will be the subject of my next piece.