The Long-Awaited, Long-Overdue London Vacation Report! Part 2

Continued from the previous post…

Day 4, Monday: The smallest fawn gets separated from the herd. 

We arranged to meet our friends at the British Museum, an obvious first stop on one’s first real non-holiday day in London. In a word, it sucked. All the tourists. Never mind that we, too, were tourists. The other tourists were a problem. The throng! The crush! The mass of humanity. And must they all get their picture taken with the Rosetta Stone, such that it’s difficult for me to get my picture with the Rosetta Stone? Elgin Marbles, beautiful Egyptian stuff, all just crammed like sardines in with all these annoying people.

Now, we were proceeding through this mob scene in a group of 8, a G-8 if you will. Two families of four. Four kids, four adults, simple buddy system. Anna took a fondness to me and started holding my hand the entire time, which was very sweet, and mandated the Medium Ben take up the reins on trying to keep Elias in tow.

I’m beginning to wonder if Elias has a touch of the dreamy gene that tends to run on my mother’s side of the family. It can be a problem. Confronted with the onslaught of sights and sounds and fancy people wearing snoods and old buildings and double decker busses and cars going the wrong way and odd food and all else that made up the experience of London, he became much, much worse. On the street he would roam, wander and stray. He would just walk, sort of slowly, gazing around but not seeming to be fully aware of his surroundings, and he would lose track entirely of the group, the goal, and the need, the desperate life-giving imperative to stay together. I really wanted to put a leash on him. Also, making matters worse, he’s at a stage of wanting fiercely to be independent. So if I put a hand on his shoulder to prevent him from being crushed by an on-coming lorry, he would struggle free and cry, “Mom! I know what I’m doing!” But the terrifying and dangerous part was, he really, really didn’t. Little dude is only six.

With this in mind, Ben and I had formulated a plan and conveyed to the children this critical piece of information: if you are lost, you must stop. Cease to move. Stay in one place. Root thyself. Wait. Arrest your progress. STOP. Just stop. We are not far away. We will find you. Do not go out into the streets of London by yourself to find us. This we based on the old boy scout rule of “hug a tree” when lost in the woods. Stay put. Because if you wander, you could stay lost forever. The search parties may never find you alive, only your bleached bones and a few lonely vultures. All the more so in a massive, teeming city.

This rule came into play on day 4. After we survived the museum with life and limb and all members of the party in tact, we decided to get coffee someplace. Perhaps we let our guards down, because the museum itself was an adventure in fear of getting separated. The coffee shop did not seem to pose a threat. The eight of us large clumsy Americans invaded a lovely little tea/coffee and chocolate shop. Orders were placed, and we were told to convene downstairs where there were tables and where our stuff would be brought. We all sort of swarmed down a tiny spiral staircase and got situated. Alan, who is a teacher and has teacher instincts, naturally did a head count. “Aren’t we short a kid?” he asked. I looked around: Isaac, Anna, Little Ben. NO ELIAS.

Medium Ben instantly took flight and ran full tilt up the stairs while I sat quietly enduring a coronary event. Alan charged upstairs too. Maureen tried to calm me. “They will find him. They will find him,” she repeated. In a few moments, Ben returned with my tiny crying boy in his arms. We reunited in a manner befitting the train station scene in Sophie’s Choice.

He had not noticed that we went downstairs, or even that there were stairs in the back of the shop. He had thought we’d left without him. He’d set out into the streets of London on his own to find us, run half a block, and then– praise Jesus!– remembered the instructions. STOP. Do not look for the parents. Stay put and they will find you. He returned to the door of the shop, where he waited, crying, for five terrifying minutes before Ben found him.

I’m so, so glad that he remembered, and I’m so, so glad that we had thought this through and told him what to do.

Day 5, Tuesday: Gender-based activities. 

The boys and men wanted to go way out into the hinterland to the RAF Museum. The girls and women wanted to shop. So that morning we set out in our different directions. I had my special solo moment navigating the streets of London on my own, a big girl at last! I wanted to find a special knitting store, which was far afield from the touristy lands and into the heart of normal-people London. Wimpily, I took a cab. This turned out to be a good thing, because the “street” where this knitting store was located was only four shops long, and in fact in our country we would not have even bothered to name it. Cars couldn’t go down it, even. It was somewhere between a sidewalk behind some buildings and an alley. “Alley” makes it seem seedy, which it emphatically was not. It was as quaint and charming as it could possibly be. Indeed, it gave me a powerful Lust to Live in London and go there regularly and knit there with the ladies, while pausing to shop for antiques or possibly have a scone.

I was too shy to play my hand as a hopeless tourist, so did not take a picture of it. Pointless. Every time I opened my mouth, everyone knew my secret anyway.

I’m trying to learn how to do a screen shot. This is the place:

woo-hoo! I did it! The Loop, it’s called. The store itself was really underwhelming actually. I mean, it was a fine knitting store, but on a par with good knitting stores in Cleveland. Hard to fathom it is the “best knitting store in London.” But not only the Internets but the girl in I asked in a cheese shop BOTH insisted that it was. Who am I to say otherwise?

I bought some yarn to give to young Anna, who was wanting to learn to knit. Then went to meet them at the lovely, lovely Liberty of London.

We met and had lunch in their cafe. I gave Anna a knitting lesson while we waited for our food, and got to experience my first-ever elderflower presse’. Liberty of London is a department store, yes. It’s old and beautiful. But the main point, which I didn’t grasp at all, is that the whole upstairs is filled with special William Morris fabric and… yarn!! It’s a department store combined with what indeed may in fact be the best knitting store in London. I was happy that I had my adventure to the Loop, but slightly peeved that it was totally unnecessary. I could’ve shopped at Liberty’s all day, all week. Indeed, I had an opportunity to stay longer than I wanted to, because it had that famous appallingly horrible British service we had been warned about. How awesome it was to experience it first hand! I got to wait a million hours to buy a little pair of scissors and matching tape measure and a needlepoint kit of the Letter I with Iguanas on it for Isaac, while the saleslady pointedly walked away from me and didn’t return until she was bloody well ready to.

We were in something of a rush, too, because our next stop was the also untouristyPuppet Barge. There’s an area of London called Little Venice, because it’s a remnant of the old pre-rail canal system. There are pretty canals lined with long barges, most of which are heart-breakingly charming little homes. Agh! Must. Live. There. Soon.

We met up with the men-folk, who had a fine day looking at airplanes. Then ducked our heads and climbed down into the barge. Inside this small, tiny space, they had somehow created a tiny theater, with a bank of seats (maybe 50 people or so) and a diminutive stage where marionettes enacted Aesops fables. I’m not sure it was a hit with the kids, who seemed restless and tired and rather hot. But I loved the oddness of it, and the sense that somehow we were boldly exploring unusual corners of the galaxy where no other American there for a week would ever go.

Some angst ensued at this point, because we didn’t agree on what to do. Maureen had forged a plan to go back to their hotel, where kids could swim (supervised by dads) and moms could have high tea in the incredible stunning old library with a view of Big Ben and the Thames. I was all for it! The kids were all for it! But Ben was something of the poop in the punchbowl at the moment, because he just had a powerful resistance to it all. I think his concern was that he was in London and didn’t want to be sequestered in a hotel pool, much like the one at the Days Inn in Marion, Illinois. I could see his point, but the tea thing saddened me, and the kids protested vigorously in a chorus of shrill whines. Still, Ben won the day, and to be fair everyone was frankly exhausted. We headed home.

However, perhaps as a consolation prize to me and my lost tea, on the way home he took us to tea in a crypt!  A lesser traveller might have complained that eating in a basement with dead people was no match for the luxurious library at the fine hotel, but I didn’t. Actually, I was kind of charmed by the whole thing. The church (St. Martin’s in the Fields) is a pretty little jewel box anyway, and the cafe in the crypt intriguing. Elias didn’t agree, however, and thus ensued one of the few serious tantrums of the whole week.

Ben carted him out, leaving Isaac and me to enjoy cakes-n-graves. But he and I bet a few pence on whether they would return, and soon enough they did. We drank our tepid tea and ate so-so scones wrapped in saran wrap, and it was not fancy British tea, per se, but working man tea to tide us over until supper.

Day 6, Wednesday: The Crown Jewels and the Cutty Sark

The Tower of London was, like most tourist attractions we experienced, crowded and freezing cold. We got sucked into a line to see the White Tower, and only half way through did we grasp that it was impossible to get out without seeing ever stinking bit of the whole thing. Like twigs in a rushing current, we simply had to go forth and experience floor after floor, up and up, until it finally disgorged us. I would’ve been okay with it, but Elias wanted out, and out was impossible, and this all became suboptimal.

So too to gigantic roping line, out in the frigid wind, wrapping around for miles to see the Crown Jewels. The children balked. We stopped for scones and cocoa, but ate them outside, at a little counter in the arctic landscape, huddling our backs against the gale. Only later did we figure out that an indoor place, with heat, had been an option. Duh.

I’m glad we saw the crown jewels though. The giant moving pictures projected on the walls caused me no small unsteadiness, even full-blown dizziness, and it was dark and crowded in there. I had to cling to Medium Ben to make it through. But, really, the jewels are stunning, incredible, and something that is actually worth all the effort it takes.

Afterwards, the kids engaged in some hand-to-hand combat with their new armaments.

We stopped at the Tower Bridge, and met our friends one last time at a nice Indian restaurant near there. They had to go back to Switzerland, and so we bid them farewell and stepped onto a boat going up the Thames to the Cutty Sark. I’ll tell the rest of this day in pictures.

When we got to the Cutty Sark and Naval Observatory, a little old lady stopped us and insisted, accepting no excuses, that we go to the Painted Hall immediately. She said she’d been trying to get people to go, and they won’t, and they’re missing the best part, and it’s just a travesty. So we obeyed. Who can say no to an adorable old English lady with a halo of white curls?

Isaac walked in and was all “Hey, it’s William of Orange!” painted on the ceiling and Ben and I were all giving each other the “our kid just correctly identified William of Orange!” secret glances. To our surprise, Isaac was quite moved by the painted hall. “I gotta sit down,” he said. And sat, studying it, for a long, long time.

 

This is part of what he was looking at.

Turned out he was trying to memorize it so he could later attempt to build it in his world in Minecraft.

The Cutty Sark is a huge ship suspended in mid-air, and that is a worthy project. You could walk all through it, and on top of it, and under it, and even reach up and touch the copper bottom. I even read and loved all 20 of the Patrick O’Brien Aubrey-Maturin books, so it’s right in my wheelhouse. But I think I was done being amazed that day, very tired, and I was all, “More incredible stuff, whatever. Let’s go back to the flat and collapse.”

Day 7, Thursday: All About the Kew

At this point we started to run into the horrible, horrible problem with traveling: reality. The grim unyielding confines of space and time. The reality is, you really can’t see and do everything. It’s a huge, Henry VIII-style banquet and your stomach is only so big. You just can’t do it. There are a lot of wonderful things that you just have to leave on the table. That day, we began to feel the crush of our to-do list and the anguish of editing it down, determining our must-dos and our next-times. I’m happy to say that the Kew Gardens made the cut. We spent the whole day there, and still left much, much undone– the walkway in the treetops! The castle! But what we did we loved. Here are a few highlights.

 

Very weary and footsore after this day, we unwittingly took the long, long way home. We couldn’t find a cab for some reason (cough-cough– I took us out the wrong gate– cough cough), so walked to find a bus to take us to the tube. But this ended up being an extended bus, train, cab fest that went on for close on two hours. We did meet some interesting Brazilians along the way. One odd thing that kept happening– people kept asking us for directions! As if they couldn’t tell we were blundering idiots? Or maybe as if all blundering idiots (British and American) look alike.

Day 7, Friday: non-stop action

So on Friday our backs were really against the wall. We each had something we just would not and could not give up. And I’m not talking about Isaac who kept gassing on about this haunted dungeon he wanted to see. (Actually, that we didn’t see it still sticks in his craw– he said as recently as today that he plans to go back and see it for realz!). Serious London stuff. Ben had a rather vast list: The Globe Theater, then walking across the Millennium Bridge to St. Paul’s Cathedral, which we would then see properly. I had one must-do: real, fancy English Cream Tea. We worked it all in, and then an excellent add-on.

The Globe Theater underwhelmed me. The kids were whiny, especially Elias, who was totally unimpressed by Shakespeare, whatevs. Isaac was slightly better, but the bottom line: tour too long and dull. The real highlight for Elias came at the end, with this lolly:

 

We walked across the Millennium Bridge, which was actually terrifying and also freezing cold, and then did St. Paul’s to the fullest. You’re not allowed to take pics in there, but it’swell documented. We had a sort of fancy lunch in their in-cathedral cafe, and then explored. At one point Ben and boys made the narrow, challenging hike up and back down hundreds of steps in an ancient stone spiral staircase to the tippy top.

I mean, the tippy top of the dome. Once up there they had a great view, and unlike the London Eye, open air and patently unsafe.

This was physically impossible for me, but I had a lovely time doing an audio tour. I lapsed into a long fantasy about making needlepoint versions of the incredible mosaics on the quire ceilings. We spent probably three hours there. I think the boys especially liked all the awesome tombs and monuments and creepy crap in the basement.

To be continued…

 

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