Month: May 2004

The Tube is pretty comprehensive; it covers most places in London that you’d like to visit.
After my Unplanned Art Day, I went to Greenwich which is in the SE corner of London.
It’s a small town that’s nautical in tradition but also has the Royal Observatory where the Prime Meridian is and a Maritime Museum which is pretty cool.
I arrived in Greenwich around 1600 or so. The Observatory was already closing down and the Maritime Museum was preparing to close at 1630. Bummer.
The town itself is cute. A little touristed out as a “waterfront town” but it was nice in a theme park kind of way. This is also drydocked in their waterfront area. Not much relation to this besides the logo and name though. I looked.
Then, in a refreshing change from constant Tube travel, I took a boat down the River Thames to the London Eye across from Westminster. It took about 40 minutes and was very leisurely.
A nice walk down the South Bank, looped up past St. Paul’s Cathedral and headed back to Lancaster Gate. I’m going to sample some local Indian food tonght.
Maybe even some pix of the food too!

Today was a day with no plan.
Holidays can’t be totally regimented and all planned out. OTW they become stressful. Let the unplanned vacation begin! =P
I went to the National Gallery (they have a lot of Monets and Manets there). Art is good. And Free!
Then after that, I went to the St. Martin’s in the Fields Church to check out the place and to purchase tickets for a performance tonight. Inside the church were the musicians practicing for the show. I stayed there for an hour or so and then left. Free! Saved �16 right there!
I should have continued the theme of “unplanned art day” by heading to Tate Modern but I was getting arted out already. So I jumped on the Tube.

After the visit to the Cabinet War Rooms and an overpriced lunch (at least it was a buffet), I wandered through St. James Park before heading over to Westminster Abbey and the Halls of Parliament.
Now if you know me, you know I hate queueing. Or waiting for that matter. However, the Parliament was in Session and there was a queue to watch from the “Strangers’ Gallery”.
So I waited with a bunch of other Americans (they stuck out, especially the lawyer couple who went to Hah-vahd) and other people for a hour to get inside.
The building is magnificient. It looks like a really fancy gothic church. It’s still considered a Royal Palace, but to find out why, you’ll have to google that on your own. Got to see both the Houses of Commons and Lords debate. Aside from some verbal jabs at each side, it seemed very similar to what happens in the Assembly or in the Congress. In other words, same BS, different building. I was inside for about an hour and a half and got outta there.
While we were waiting, someone collasped inside and required Paramedic services. Now this was really cool, the service delivery that is.
Traffic is really awful here so (this is what I figured out from what I saw) they have an ambulance and a rider on a BMW K1100RS bike that rides ahead. He goes in and stabilizes the patient. Then the ambulance finally shows up and assists and transports if necessary. The bike looks cool too (in the Int’l Travel/London section of the gallery). That seems soooo more efficient than what we have in San Fran, an ambulance AND an engine company. Yeah, like they can cut through traffic faster than a skillfully ridden motorcycle…

The weather was on the chilly side today, but it looks like it will get warmer for the rest of the week. 19 degrees! As opposed to 14 today. Oh well.
Today was a continuation of the “History Tour”. I went down to the Cabinet War Rooms near the Halls of Parliament. These were the rooms that Churchill and his Cabinet ran the British part of WWII until three weeks after VE-Day. Non stop from the beginning of the Blitz through the buzz bombs and then the end of the European war.
Then the last people who were on duty there simply turned off the lights and locked up. Parts of the complex were stripped out and used for storage and the like, but the truly historic parts such as the map room where convoys were tracked and battle statistics were kept were left as they were in 1945 when that afforementioned fellow turned out the lights and locked the door.
One sad testament if you’re British; the maps still showed the extent of Empire, which no longer exists except in the mind of those who miss it.

So after getting my dose of wars from the past century, I thought that doing some sightseeing with live people around would be a good thing.
The weather has been socked in all day, but at least it’s not raining.
First visit was to Trafalgar Square. There’s a statue of Lord Nelson on top of a tower surrounded by four lions. The National Galleries are there as is the St. Martins in the Fields Church. If you’re a classical music fan, that name means something to you. I’m contemplating catching a concert there before I leave.
I was getting hungry and needed to get something to eat. That wouldn’t cost an arm or a leg. Things are more expensive there than in Tokyo.
Anyway, I alighted at Picadilly Circus and puttered around a bit. It’s their big touristy shopping area with lots of international chains and some neon. It’s not Shibuya or Shinjuku, not by any means.
I walked over to Chinatown through the theatre district. They’ve got a LOT of theatres for stage plays and musicals. Then I got close to Chinatown. I could tell because the signs were in Chinese, I heard Cantonese and that other mainlander dialect being spoken and it smelled bad. What IS it with Chinatowns and bad smells???
I found a small restaurant that didn’t have white tablecloths and ordered my comfort food, wontonmein. That plus a Coke = �5 = $9.00!!
I mean, the wontonmein was okay and all, but definitely not worth THAT much. And that’s cheap!!
You should see how much McDonald’s costs for breakfast…I stopped off at the Supermarket and picked up some yoghurt for breakfast. Definitely cheaper!

So what IS it with the London Underground?
On paper it looks very comprehensive. It goes to a lot of places. That’s good. However…it’s not air conditioned (since I guess it doesn’t get that hot here) and the cars are cramped (I’ll take a pic before I leave to show just how) and it seems to always have things happening to it.
Let’s see, just in the past 24 hours, there has been the following incidents:
Person under tracks (last night)
Line shut down because of signal failure (today)
and the most disturbing…
Train derailed on Central line.
And don’t even get me started on how bloody expensive the Tube is!

There’s a lot of recent history here in London.
After a fun-filled day of transportation yesterday getting back to London from Paris, I’m now going into tourist mode here in earnest.
I spent much of the day at the Imperial War Museum. All the events that affect our world today get traced back to the last two World Wars that the museum showcases.
There are also exhibits on the Cold War and Britain’s various engagements in its ex-colonies and about the Troubles.
Before I went inside (for five hours!) there was a photo op happening in front of the Museum. Seems it’s Black History Week here and the mayor of Sussex (?) was at the Museum along with some Black UK WWII vets.
I was chatting with one of the people who work there while the photo op was happening. He was formerly of the British Army from India many years back.
We both spoke of rememberance and how a lot of people view WWII as something unimportant or something that they see in the movies. Because many of these people think appeasement will work.
Learn from history! It didn’t work in 1937 and it won’t work now! Remember, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance…
Pretty deep for this travelogue, eh? =)

I got in this evening and had a “London Underground” adventure.
The Underground was shut down for 9 stops going into London from Heathrow. Seems someone jumped and got caught under the tracks. So they shut down service.
After some back and forth between the Underground people and the Heathrow Express people, the Underground arranged free taxis to get us all to Northfields so we could catch the last train into London (there were five of us stranded that chose this option).
The problem was that I needed to get to either Paddington or Lancaster Gate tube stops and that meant transferring to different lines that have already shut down for the night.
That meant an adventure with a Greek Masters student (who knew which buses to take) and the London Bus System (late night).
Long story short, it took 2 hours to leave LHR to get back. An hour longer then it would have by Tube. Grimley says that I’ve experienced the worst of London Transit. I hope so.
Oh yah, updates coming later in the week about my week in Paris. It was surprising, doing laundry is expensive and the weather sucked big time.

Goin’ to LHR via Heathrow Express.
Why would I do that since it costs �13 one way?
Cuz Yumi-chan is here! Yay!
This is her last day in London, helping out some friends. And she’s staying out at Heathrow.
So I’m goin’!
The trains look familiar. That’s because they’re versions of the HK Airport Express trains except they’re about 10 years older…

So unlike my trip outbound where I had a nice empty seat next to me, this train had more passengers on it going to London Waterloo. And naturally I got seated next to some guy with really really really bad B.O. I mean it was the kind of BO that works its way up your nose like the pain you get when your nosehairs get pulled out. THAT bad.
Because of that, I spent much of the trip hanging out in the dining car with 8 Koreans who proceeded to drink all the beer that was for sale.
So I guess it was half an UA nightmare #2, cuz you don’t get a place to hang out on a UA flight!