January 11, 2007

January 10: London (for real)




Kings Langley, Roz's living room: Wednesday 11:3 pm GMT

Once again we didn'€™t leave the house until after 10. We spent the time catching up on emails and preparing our travel plan for the day.

We took the train to Euston (pronounced like "€œHouston" only you don'™t make the sound of the "H"). From there we decided to walk down to our first and most illustrious stop of the day. (You'€™ll have to wait with hungry hearts until later for me to reveal this most wondrous of all tourist haunts.)

We walked past several University College London buildings. At first we saw only 1960s/70s monstrosities, but eventually we saw a building or two (whether of the University or not) that was beautiful and we ended up on a street that was filled with gorgeous architecture (which reminded me quite a bit of NYC). We stopped in a little grocer’s and Rob picked up some Hob Nobs which we munched as we walked.

We eventually started to sense that we were drawing near to our esteemed destination and asked at a shop or two for directions. It turns out we were placed exactly right and needed only to proceed forward to see this most noble of venues.

When at last we happened upon it, I wanted much to throw myself to the ground praising the heavens and sending up loud exclamations of thanks for the grandeur and status of that which lay before me.

I'm sure you'€™ve guessed by now our illustrious goal. Perhaps you'€™re weeping even now in grief and envy at what I have seen that you, so far in your lowly life have yet to behold. For on this day, 10 January 2007, I have walked through the campus of the London School of Economics.

*pauses to allow for cries of dismay, jealousy and perhaps even rancor at my recent good fortune*

After that, nothing more we could see, not St. Paul’s Cathedral, not the first pub in England to serve Guinness, not even the Tower of London could compare. The rest was but sorrowful denouement.

So after a time of worship in €œthe "Economist's Bookshop",€ (where I read through the script of "the Extras" and Rob purchased a copy of Intellectual Property Law (under English Law)) -- you can see who is the more devout between the two of us -- we wandered towards Saint Paul's Cathedral.

We were getting hungry, so we stopped on the way at a little Irish pub. The Tipperary turned out to be the oldest Irish pub in London. The food was excellent and our waitress (from Poland) was a kick.

We then finished our walk to St. Paul's. They were asking for 9.50 pounds (I’m sure I have a way to make the pound sign but I don'€™t feel like looking for it right now) per person to get in (which would be about $19 each), so we just looked around from the entranceway and headed back out.

We got a text message from Roz that she'd be meeting us at the Euston station soon, so we bustled off to the Tower as quickly as possible, snapped some photos, then sped back to the Euston Station. From there we went to TKTS and picked up some tickets for Twelfth Night.

We were getting hungry so we stopped and had tea. I had my first taste of clotted cream, which I had greatly anticipated after seeing an article about it in Saveur. And I have to admit that it was quite good. But I expected it to be a few more levels of heavenly than it was. I believe that if I had to choose between clotted cream and MouCo cheese, I might just go with the cheese.

After tea we stopped in at a bookshop. Then we headed across the Thames to the Old Vic theater and watched Twelfth Night. It was an all male cast, just as it would have been in Shakespeare'€™s day, and I think the guys played that off with wonderful effect. The acting was superb, the music beautiful and... well, at one point Rob, who has only read Shakespeare’s tragedies, leaned over and said, "I didn'€™t realize Shakespeare was so baudy!"

32 comments:

  1. Oooooh the 91 bus! We always used to get that back to my nan's flat, when we were visiting and went out shopping and stuff.

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  2. LOL glad ur having a good time Meg. My brother is coming back from Wales Friday and he's suppose to be moving back for good this time but we'll see ;)

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  3. Do they allow tours of this? I've always been intrigued by its history...

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  4. Yes they do. It's very interesting, and there are lots of buildings to go around. You can pick and choose as well, so you don't have to see everything. You can also see the Crown Jewels, since that's where they are kept.

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  5. Super cool! Meg, are you two planning on taking a tour?

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  6. To what would you compare clotted cream?

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  7. I had a pint with me da at the Tipperary... though I doubt that surprises anyone.

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  8. hmm...i wonder why the street lines are all crooked.

    i also wonder why i never thought of that while i was there, lol.

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  9. oooh. i saw mary poppins in london.

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  10. It's to warn cars/drivers that there is a pedestrian crossing there, and of the need to drive slow and be ready to stop for when pedestrians cross. :)

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  11. I thought it might have been to warn drivers that it was a no parking zone..but a dam good idea...

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  12. I think it doubles as that as well *has been a while since she did her theory test*

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  13. Hmmm.
    No pictures of King's Cross station?
    And in particular, the pillars between platforms #9 and #10? ;)

    Aloha mai Nai`a!

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  14. i don't think we went to king's cross station. at least, i don't remember stopping there. i did think about platform 9 3/4 several times though. do we call them platforms in the states? i can't remember. i think we just go with station, as in "16th street station."

    yes, i was glad i got the crazy lines in a pic. i meant to mention those. they mean watch for pedestrians (as in, "now's your chance to get 'em guys!") and don't park here. (as in any big city, people drive like maniacs in london. only here it's worse because they do it all backwards.)

    speaking of driving on the wrong side of the road, i'd like to point out that the brits appear to be completely at odds with themselves when it comes to walking on the sidewalk, riding on an escalator or taking a walking sidewalk. though they drive to the left, they walk wherever they want to. the direction of travel for escalators may be on the left or right and they're not consistently one or the other. same for moving walk-ways. we've tried to walk on the left hand side thinking we'll bump into fewer people that way, but we keep bumping into them anyway because there's no pattern. grrr!!!!

    i had a feeling that you'd been to the tipperary, D. your aura lingered in the air. ;-)

    clotted cream is like whipped butter. sorta.

    and as for doing a tour of the tower, i don't think so. we're in cambridge now and will be here till next friday (with the brief trip to nottingham next tuesday. i'm going to try to book our tickets for that today if i can, ivy. i'll let you know what we plan. ness has a friend she's hoping we'll visit with tuesday night so i need to see if that will work out.) once we get back to hemel hempstead we'll be staying at Shendish Manor where the wedding party and friends are staying. the wedding is Saturday and we leave on Sunday.

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  15. A platform here is the place where you get on a specific train; i.e., the orange platform, the red platform, etc. A station is where there are more than one platform, otherwise it's a stop. So, for the DC metro, the station is where the red line and the blue line intersect, and the red platform is where you go to ride to Rockville or Vienna, and the blue platform takes you to wherever that train goes. But, if you're in Rockville and want to go to DC, you'd go to the metro stop and board the train.

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  16. Keep an eye out for Mrs Bucket at the Manor hehe

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  17. I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU DIDN'T GO IN ST. PAULS! OMG! You missed out...

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  18. I can't believe you didn't go in St. Paul's! You guys are the type of tourists I hate to be with. You pay $1,000s to go to England, tour the free things, and then won't go in one of the most historic landmarks because it costs $20. Sigh...

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  19. well, we spent $46 to get to town on monday and another $46 to get to town on wednesday. we spent $160 for tea on wednesday. the lunch on monday was $80. and to be perfectly honest, if we're going to pay to see a church, i'd rather see westminster, which is older. but it's not just $20 to get in. it's $40 because there's two of us. $40 spent on a 30 minute tour just doesn't seem worth it. plus we did get to see other places that were of similar age for free.

    so despise us if you must, be we've been running through the cash as if our pockets had holes, so i think scrimping here and there is fair. :-P

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  20. You're as bad as Mark Anthony (maybe worse)

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  21. Meg, I'm with you this.

    I live only 100 miles from London and I've never been in the Tower. I always think there's so much other interesting stuff going on in London that paying huge amounts for one thing is a waste of time.

    Also it means I'd have to queue up with the tourists :-)

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  22. Sigh....I must counter the lies and accusations of my lovely and nobel wife in regards to the worship service at the London School of Economics! I humbly requested that we visit LSE *if* we were going to be close to it. I did want to amble about it a bit, if we had the chance. The buildings were not quite as beautiful as I expected (e.g. they were not as stunning as Cambridge or the older U.S. campuses in New England).

    I *was* very thankful that we went into one of the LSE bookstores as they had a good section on English / EU Intellectual Property law books that proved very helfpul with an NDA with a Spanish firm, over which I was struggling.

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  23. when's that award coming then, eh?

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  24. I'm just trying to give you even MORE honor! :o) (So...is there a way to fix that faux pas?)

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  25. you've gotta use the edit link, silly.

    (i should add, for everyone else's sake, that rob's sitting just two feet away from me.)

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  26. When we lived in Maryland, it wasn't that odd an instance for Christene and I to have a whole conversation in ICQ....even though were in the same room, not two feet away from each other. :)

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  27. From what I saw of the inside of St. Paul's, the King's College Chapel in Cambridge was much more impressive. No offense to Christopher Wren, but if you only have time to see one of the two, I'd recommend the Kings College Chapel. Where else can you see a King and Queen's initials carved into every nook and cranny of a church? (Made even more interesting by the fact that they were only married for 3 years before he had her beheaded.) And the ceiling was incredible! By far the best ceiling of our trip. I wish they'd had mattresses on the floor so you could just lay there and stare up.

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  28. Hallo..ooh nice picture's...I have a dream to come to London someday, if we have time to go there, but we have been very busy this moment, whereas we can only about 2 - 3 hours by plaint to reach there, from city where I've stayed in NL this moment. From those picture's I can see that London is very beautiful city...groetjes from Vlaadingen NL.

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  29. love these photos.I lived in London myself and it was such a great place.Very historical.

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