United Kingdom Travelogue

December 10, 2003 - 3:33pm - 12C, mostly cloudy - Rome, Italy

(Krista) Ahhhh, London, what can I say. (As you can see, we are no longer in London, as we did not have an opportunity to update the site - tooooo many museums). We arrived in London on the 29th of December, just as Rammadan celebrations were winding down, and our opportunities for food and sleep in Egypt were emerging. Well timed, I must say. We really hit the nail on the head by travelling to Egypt during Rammadan. Other tourists must have heeded the warnings about travelling to a Muslim country during the holy month; we didn't, and we suffered.

What is this Egypt? (Krista, stay on track). Arriving in London the 29th was a breathe of fresh air for us. We were so excited to finally be in an english speaking country, after 100+ days of communication barriers and cultural differences. After a slight hassle at border control (long story), we made it into the city that has defined our own culture and traditions. I cannot express the joy I felt the first time we passed Christmas lights lining a street while travelling from Heathrow to downtown. It was like we were home again. Then, less than an hour later, I was greeted by my friend Kristi at her front door. Here we were to stay, with Kristi, Robin and Julie for the week of our visit to London. Friends from back home, a clean house, bed, kitchen in a small suburb of London - I was ecstatic.

Upon arrival at our home for the week, in Southfields, Kristi, Tony and I headed to a grocery store to pickup the weekly necessities: Guinness, Strongbow cider and some other goodies to eat. Tony seemed to be in seventh heaven, surrounded by Guinness. Kristi had even pre-purchased some for him to enjoy immediatly upon arrival! I, on the other hand, was able to pickup a two-litre bottle of Strongbow, my favourite drink (as you can see, I can once again handle alcohol. Peru knocked that gift out of me, luckily only temporarily). Soon, however, I was to discover that Strongbow is obtainable on tap in pretty much any bar in London. Alcohol aside, the food business in the UK is ideal for folks with food allergies and intolerances; almost all packaging lists whether the food is suitable for those who are gluten, wheat, soy or dairy intolerant. Further, I found gluten free cakes and pies! This was my first taste of pie in four years. What a nice gift.

Once groceries and dinner were done, Tony, Kristi and I headed right into downtown London, via the tube, for Tony's first experience in the narrow streets and British pubs. (For all those who don't know, London's metro is called the London Underground, better known as "the tube".) Actually British pubs didn't make our list, as we bee-lined it to the Maple Leaf pub; a Canadian bar, serving some Canadian beers, decorated in Canadian garb, and playing the Tragically Hip. To make matters even better, but not Canadian, they served Guinness and Strongbow! Here we were, in downtown London, but standing in a Canadian pub. What a nice treat.

The one completely incomprehensible thing about London that we discovered that night was the closing time for pubs: 11pm, any day of the week. Coinciding perfectly with this is the tub closure at 11:30pm. Thus, after only a few pints, we were forced to leave the pubs, with crowds of others into the streets of London, only to battle the drunken crowds on the tube. Wow, that was a phenomenon. As I understand it, British admininstration maintains the pub closing time at 11pm, as they fear too much rowdiness late at night if pubs are kept open longer. Fair enough, but they way they have it now, people binge drink until 11pm, then spill into the streets singing and staggering their way to the tube, where they continue their singing and partying until reaching home (or as three really rowdy men were heading: London Heathrow - too bad they didn't realise they were heading in the wrong direction). My opinion is that the bars, and the tube, should remain open later like any other western country, thus allowing their patrons to weed out at their own pace through the evening.

As mentioned, Tony and I crashed in Southfields over the week, and not in downtown London. Southfields is a small suburb of London, and borders the famous suburb of Wimbledon. Here at Kristi and Robin's we were no more than a five minute walk from the famous Wimbledon tennis club. Besides a really nice place to stay, the upside to staying here was peace and quiet. After three weeks of very little sleep in Egypt, we had no noise through the night. The only downside to staying in Southfields is its distance from downtown London.

The next day after our first, and definitely not the last, pub experience, Tony and I headed back in London to begin the week-long whirlwind trip of museums and sights. Our first destination was the famous (or infamous if you are Egyptian or Greek) British Museum. We decided to make this **free** museum the number one priority since it contains many relics and artifacts pilfered from Ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt by Lord Nelson. Here we saw the Rosetta Stone, half of the Parthenon and many more objects from all over. We only had a few hours, and thus limited ourselves only to the wings containing objects of our travels during this trip. Because of time limits, we missed Egyptian mummies, pre-history artifacts and other Oriental exhibits. I can only say that this museum is the largest I have ever set foot in, and when I move to London, I am going to spend once a month exploring this place.

Because we had our own private tour guide, Kristi, with us at this point, we decided to head to the most famous shopping centre, and likely the busiest, of all times: Harrods. Once we plied our ways through the crowds, our first destination was the food halls. Here we were in the most prestigous grocery store of all times, buying sushi by the piece (£1, or $2.25 CDN each!). You would not believe the products they supplied, and the quality of them. The produce room was amazing, each piece of fruit must have been specially selected for the prestigious honour of being sold in Harrods. It was like a trip into pomp and circumstance browsing the displays here. I can only imagine the bank accounts of people who use this store to grocery shop. A really cool feature of the store is the Crispy Cream donut kiosk in the basement, where you can watch the calorie-laden donuts being made. They also give out free samples! Luckily, being gluten-intolerant, I was unable to indulge, thereby saving the calories for gluten-free chocolate and caramel cakes from Tessco.

Once over the shock of Harrods, Tony and I wandered through the London streets, getting ourselves aquainted with the royal avenues surrounding Buckingham Palace, and St. James Palace. Even at night, tourists are crowding around the Victoria monument to get a panoramic shot of the Queen's residence. She was there too (that's what the Union Jack flying abover her house told us)! Close to here live William, Harry and Charles (Clarence House and St. James Palace), who weren't home to welcome us into their terrific empire. That night, we eventually made it over to Picadilly Circus and Chinatown for some Vietnamese soup, and candy at Trocaderos.

London is very expensive, and luckily Kristi, Julie and Robin put us up for the week or else we would have been in the poor house while here. The weekly tube pass we bought was 24£ each (equivalent to $52.80 CDN), and each meal eaten out broke the £15 barrier ($33 CDN). Each pint was £2.80, or $6.20 CDN To make the city even more expensive, many of the "must-see" sights start at £6 and increase up to £20 per person! Multiply this by 2.2, and you are spending quite a load of Canadian dollars to catch only the basics. Luckily the adminstration in London covertly or overtly realizes the astronomical pricing of their city, and the newly instituted Mayor of London has recently made all national museums free for all visitors. This feature made our visit to London so much more enjoyable and enriching, as we could roll in and out of museums at our pace without having to sacrifice many dollars, or pounds, to do so.

December 13, 2003 - 11:23pm - 11C, mainly sunny - Rome, Italy

(Krista) I think one of my favourity highlights of London is the tube and trains (Mind the Gap). Save for the often very long delays (we were stuck on a train between Vauxhall and Clapham Junction for an hour one night - good thing we had a book), I love everything about London's efficient and extensive travel system. With our weekly travelcards (great keepsakes), we could travel three zones on the tube, bus, train and LRT. One of my favourite things to do is to map out our routes from Southfields to downtown, or between stops downtown. Should we take the tube to Wimbledon and the train to Waterloo? Or should we take the tube to Victoria, stopping at Earl's Court if necessary? Should we take the Picadilly Line or the Central Line? Do we exit at Picadilly Station or Covent Gardens? I would love a map of the London tube and train system as a picture for my walls. I also would like a pair of underwears they sell with "Mind the Gap", or the tube map on it. The London Underground is a big tourist attraction, with souvenir stores smattered across downtown and their own museum!

Our trip to London was just a blur, and to recount now is a little bit of a gong show. I do know that we had rainy and cold weather 50% of the time, and cloudy and cold weather the other 50%. We did get sun one day. Unfortunately it wasn't the day we took a walking tour to Greenwich. We did have our jackets, parkas, toques and gloves handy though. The 3Euro umbrella bought in Barcelona was always handy too. We never did use it, as umbrellas are weapons on busy streets, and more than once we've been attacked. As an aside, Romans are terrible with umbrellas. As soon as one little drop of rain falls, all umbrella-totting walkers explode them into the air to protect whatever it is they protect. Furthermore, with the first drop, hundreds of umbrella-touts come out of the woodwork, haunting those emerging from metro stops or walking the streets of downtown without one.

There are so many things to see and do in London that we attempted to prioritize our visit to the main sights and major museums. Our third day was very rainy, so we decided to make it a museum day. In the High Street Kensington tube stop area there are three major museums, all of equal interest to us: the Science, Natural History, and Victoria & Albert Museums. We decided on the first one we stumbled upon, which was the Natural History Museum. Fortunately we ended up here, as we discovered a gold mine of learning opportunities (our brains are starving for information), and really cool things to admire. Exhibits on geology, biology and wildlife, a section of a 3000 year old California redwood tree, a mammal exhibit with hundreds of full-sized models (or stuffed), moose, camelids, elephants, canines and even a blue whale. My favourite exhibit, which was a museum in its own right, was the Earth Galleries. Tony and I fell in love with geology and bought a book on it while here. To complete the full day (7 hours!) here, we ended with a tour of the Darwin Centre: a monster research centre dedicated to the life sciences and collections of millions of earth-bound specimens (some are even from Charles Darwin's trip on the Beagle). This museum was by far the most exciting, in my humble opinion, and I recommend it to all who visit London.

Following our information filled trip to the museum, we took a rainy walk along Charing Cross Road in search of more information: books. Bookstores are littered along this road between Tottenham Court Road and Leicester Square. This was our first time in english language bookstores in over three months. You could only imagine the excitment, and the impulses to buy every book that interested us. We definitely felt the burden of having only one backpack and limited packing room here, and thus settled on one book (Rome Lonely Planet)

Luckily the next day was a little nicer, and so we decided to spend a little more time wandering the streets. Tony ended up with a visit to the famous St. Paul's cathedral, a highlight of my visit in 2002. Unfortunately a large proportion of it is undergoing restoration, limiting the visitors' tour to only a few sections of the cathedral and only half of the Whispering Dome (!!). I, on the other hand, chose not to visit it a second time, and headed to the Tate Modern directly across the Thames via the Millenium bridge. This free museum is dedicated to modern art, and makes for quite an interesting visit. Back in 2002, this was my very destination after a long and sleepless trip across the Atlantic from Edmonton. As you could imagine, I was torn between a great interest in the art and sleep. To solve this dispute I ended up taking a major nap on one of the leather chairs on the second floor after having visited a majority of the art galleries. Apparently now in 2003, I was having the same argument between art and sleep. Guess who won? Sleep. So while waiting for Tony to finish at St Pauls, I skipped all the art, and napped for a good hour in the leather seats on the second floor.

Finishing up my nap, and his visit to the cathedral, we took our pansy time walking along the south side of the Thames towards the awesome Tower Bridge. Here we joined in on the Tower Bridge Experience - a trip up into the upper galleries of the bridge, across and back down into the engine rooms. I could go on for hours about the workings and history of the bridge (fascinating), but I would just be repeating what could be found on this site - Tower Bridge Exhibition. The views of the Thames from the bridge are spectacular!

We finished the day up with a trip to the Maple Leaf pub (again) in Covent Gardens, eating french fries, drinking pints and listening to Canadian music! Ahhh.

High on our priority list while here was the Changing of the Guards at Buckingham Palace, which occurs on odd days at 11:30am directly in front of the palace. Since it was an odd day, we had to see it this day even though it was freezing cold out. To beat the crowds, we arrived at the front gates 45 minutes early, only to wait around for an hour and a half to see this terribly anti-climatic show of three guards walking in to replace the two already there. Maybe in the summer the show would be better, but it was not worth it at this point in time.

A wonderful, and affordable tourist attraction of London is the London Walks company's two hour thematic or introductory tours to many places in and around the city. They offer hundreds of tours, including a Jack the Ripper tour, which I took back in 2002. Tony and I decided on two of the tours they offered. Since I loved Greenwich (as in Greenwich Mean Time) the first time I visited this city, we settled on taking the London Walks' tour through Greenwich. With this tour we had a discounted cruise along the Thames from the Tower of London to Greenwich (awesome), then a two hour tour through the historical city where time begins!Unfortunately it was freezing cold this day, thus I was not 100% into the tour while there. Our tour guide, Hillary took us around and through many of the sights within the town, and stimulated our interest in all of them. Unfortunately, the tour ended only within a few hours of the museum and sight closures. So we burned it up the hill to the famous Greenwich Observatory to stradle the Prime Meridian (Tony on the western hemisphere, me on the eastern), and then down to the Maritime Museum. This was our first time on the western hemisphere in 2+ months! I love the Greenwich Observatory's museum, its astronomical exhibits and the story about the search for an effective means of measurinng maritime longitude.

After Greenwich, Tony and I discovered the downside of London's Transport System. We experienced delay after delay after delay while trying to get back to Southfields. We jumped from tube line to tube line trying to avoid the delays, only to get stuck on the train for an hour. luckily I picked up a book on the Longitude problem while in Greenwich, and thus kept myself occupied reading this.

The second walking tour Tony and I partook in was called the "Along the Thames Pub Walk", where Mary took us and 30+ other brave soldiers dressed in toques along the south side of the Thames, visiting pubs and monuments along the way. We stopped at three pubs, each from different centuries; 20th, 19th and finishing at an 18th century pub. This was an awesome tour and included a stop in at the Tate Modern for fun under the mirrors in the turbine hall.

Two final attractions I took advantage of while in London were the Imperial War Museum and the Monument. The Monument would never have caught my eye had the entrance ticket not been included in our Tower Bridge Experience ticket. Built by Christopher Wren (who else?) in 1669 to commemorate the rebuilding of the City after the Great Fire in 1666, it affords a great view over the City of London from atop its 311 steps. It is a very short visit, with a decent workout, and well-worth the side trip from the Tower Bridge. My visit to the Imperial War Museum was a last minute decision, and turned out to be another excellent example of the city's information packed museums, where one visit doesn't do it justice. Because there was sooo much to see here, I limited myself to World War I and the Holocaust Exhibits. The latter was a tastefully-done history of Nazism and the persecution of millions in WWII. There were some gruesome parts to it, and thus children under 14 are not permitted to enter.

Our final full day in London was spent apart, with me settling in Southfields for the day, enjoying the local library (!!), and relaxing in town. A quick tube trip into the city to meet Tony and whisk him back to Southfields for a dinner of fish and chips with Kristi and Julie. We followed that with two movies. It was an awesome day, and watching rented movies definitely took us to life back home in Canada.

The following list is a daily breakdown of what we did in London, and is for reference by Tony and I. There is no reason for reading it. nov 30: British Museum, Harrods, walk to Picadilly, dinner at the Vietnamese restaurant dec 1: Natural History Museum, shopping on Charing Cross Rd. (Vietnamese Rest for dinner) dec 2: St Pauls, Tower Bridge, Tate Modern, Covent Gardens for TShirt, Tuk Tuks for dinner, Maple Leaf for drinks dec 3: Buckingham Palace & Changing of the Guard, internet at Easyeverything, dinner with Robin in Southfields dec 4: Greenwich, attempted to meet Robin for dinner but ended up at McDonalds (and drinks in Wimbledon) - delay on tube, late dinner at Robins dec 5: Imperial War Museum, Monument, Westminster Abbey, dinner at Tuk Tuks, Along the Thames Pub Walking Tour, attempt to party with Kristi and Julie dec 6: hang around Southfields while Tony went to Monument and tried for the Design museum, dinner with Julie and Kristi

December 23, 2003 - 7:54pm - 10C, clear (?)- Kathmandu, Nepal

(Krista) Well, the unexpected three weeks in Europe has come and gone, and boy do we miss it. After returning from Rome, we took the last six days in London to take our time sightseeing and polishing up on last minute items (such as buy a plane ticket from Delhi to Kathmandu). Originally our plan was to return from Rome, spend a night in London's Stansted airport, then fly to Glasgow the following day (Dec 14th). Rather, we had such a time in London, that we pleaded with Robin, Kristi and Julie to crash the remaining six nights at their place. Fortunately the three ladies are so easy going, they had no problem with us taking up 40% of their home (and Robin's bed, forcing her to share a bed with Kristi or Julie), and resources. Their hospitality did do us both a lot of good, as we needed some time in a place familiar and with familiar faces. There are many things that one takes to missing while travelling the world, and one of them is socialization. In only a few instances have we been able to meet up with people for good conversations. Conversation is one thing we definitely took for granted before embarking on this journey. There are many other things taken for granted, such as a shower curtain, or even a shower (our current hotel has only a shower head that spills right onto the bathroom floor), the ability to flush toilet paper down the toilet, english books, fast internet, clean food, reliable bus schedules, etc. etc.

So what did we do while through our second journey in London? We definitely made a point of catching the Tate Modern. I mentioned this museum of modern art in my last posting on London,and how it has become a great napping spot for me. This time I made a definite point of NOT sitting in those amazingly comfortable chairs on the second floor, and instead, Tony and I rented a couple audio guides for touring around the freaky exhibits that are considered art. I must admit, modern art, however much I liked its abstract nature before, really made me frustrated this time through. I don't know how curators can interpret messages from a few simple splashes of paint on a wall. I do however appreciate some of the exhibits therein, especially the Andy Warhol, Bill Viola (wierd!) and ever fascinating Joseph Beuys.

Our first day back from Rome drew us to the pleasant little University town of Cambridge, as a result of the previous days conversations with Tom Stevenson (a man we met while waiting for the airport bus in Rome). To get there, one must take a train from King's Cross station, which takes 45 minutes, and is very comfortable (a great napping opportunity for both of us). In Cambridge, the temperature dropped about 10 degrees (or so it felt), and thus froze us both to death. We decided to walk from the train station downtown towards the university, and it could be argued whether this was a good decision or not, as we stopped in many stores (and one pub!) to grab some warmth and a Guinness/Strongbow. A walk that should have taken max 20 minutes, actually took 1.5 hours. Once we did make it all the way downtown, though, we saw one amazing university campus. For me, I was reminded very much of the University ofToronto, specifically Tritinity, King's College and Knox College. For Tony, it was a step back into history. The buildings and chapels were spectacular. Unfortunately for us, but fortunately for the college, many buiildings and chapels were closed off to visitors, and thus we caught mainly only the outside of each building. Nevertheless, there are many highlights from this university. one of them being the numerous well-stocked book stores. Another is the fact that the 400-year-old academic buildings are intermingled with the commercial sectors, winding narrow streets, and markets within the town. This yielded a very comfortable and unpretentious feel to the area (which blew my expectations away). My favourite building of all was the Round Chapel from something like 1106 AD.

Unfortunately, the sun goes down very early in the UK (around 4pm), and thus our brief visit to Cambridge ended not long after this, as we could no longer see our Lonely Planet walking tour text, nor could we explore as freely (it is very easy to get lost in this town). Since it was sooo cold, we burned it back to the train station, passing a small house full of Friar Tuck-like monks gathering for dinner. This time, the 20-minute walk took only 15 minutes due to our lightening fast walking speed, while attempting to avoid the cold air. Our 45-minute train ride home, felt like 5 minutes, as both of us passed out the minute our bones felt the heated air of the train. Once back in London, we hit Brick Lane for some very tasty and reasonable priced indian food. We were refered to Brick Lane by Tom (mentioned above), as it is a street dedicated to restaurants and stores serving Indian food. I had to visit this street once before leaving London, as I have such a passion for Indian curries.

The majority of our time left in London was spent running India-preparation errands, and catching up with the girls in Southfields. Fortunately for us, one of the errands we had to run was along the famous Regent Street in London. This curved street definitely holds the fashion of London, along with the best street-lined Christmas decorations seen yet. Along here was the travel agency dedicated to selling Indian Airlines flights. Since we decided to not overland it between Delhi and Kathmandu (due to political violence between teh Maoist and Nepali people), we turned to indian airlines to transport us into the land of the Himilayas. Luckily, the folks at the travel agency were very nice, as we ended up visiting them more than once due to scheduling error.

What was this scheduling error? It was a gong show. Upon booking our flight from London to Delhi back in February we were told the British Airways flight was to leave London at 11:35am on teh 19th and arrive early morning on the 20th. Sometime in between, however, this flight changed to leave at 8:35am, and arrive late evening on the 19th. Ok, so for the past four months we were under the impression we would be arriving into Delhi on the 19th, or early morning on the 20th. No problem. Armed with this knowledge, we stormed into the Brightsun Travel Agency off of Regent Street on December 17th, and booked a flight from Delhi to Kathmandu on the morning of the 21st. This would give us only 12 hours or so in Delhi, but would get us to Nepal fast. Soooo, no problem. At least this is what we thought. The very next morning (the day prior to leaving), I accidentally discovered an itinerary printed for us in Greece, months ago. On this we read that our London flight was to depart for Delhi at 20:35 on the 19th, arriving in Delhi late morning on the 20th!!!!!!!!!!! If this is true, we would miss our flight to Kathmandu, as well as miss out on all of our reservations in Delhi and in Kathmandu! Well that morning (the 18th) suddenly turned into a stress case morning, calling hotels and airlines sorting this mess out before we were to leave the next day. Fortunately Brightsun Travel was very understanding, and rebooked our flights to Kathmandu for the 22nd, even though all flights were booked (we almost had to upgrade to business class). I must say, I am definitely going to miss the efficiency of first world countries while traveling the rest of this trip.

One phenomenon we experienced while in London was Londonites fascination with karaoke. Who would thing that such refined people would enjoy such a gong show of an entertainment medium as that. The second last night in town, Kristi and Robin took us to the Garage in Southfields where we witnessed tons of drunken late 20-something and early 30-something people join in on the fun! Even at 9:30pm at night! Normally people aren't drunk enough to perform this early in the evening. I guess it has to do with London's crazy rule of 11pm pub closures. Even though we weren't entirely drunk, Robin and I got up together to sing Gloria Gaynor's "I will Survive" (quite poorly I might add). Check us out here

One thing I have neglected to discuss about London is the food. Now we all know that the British are not known for their culinary skills, but I have to tell you about Jacket Potatoes. Jackets are a food you will typically find in pubs, however one outlet in Wimbledon's Centre Court Mall food court sells only Jackets, and is called Jackets (concidence?). What are Jackets? They are baked potatoes split open at the top, and covered in a topping of your choice. The most frequently found toppings are tuna and mayonnaise, baked beans, or cheese (the second is my fave, and goes along perfectly with the British's ubiquitous baked beans). The fast food outlet, Jackets, on the other hand, stocks an unending list of toppings, such as chile con carne, curried chicken (yes!), sweet corn, chicken casserole, etc. etc. For only 3 pounds, one can get a massive baked potatoe topped with a kilo of goodness -what a deal! I vow to open one of these stores up in Canada, these things would go like hotcakes! Women seemed to love this food, as 90% of their clientele were between 20 and 60. Great choice, and a definite competitor with the neigbouring McDonalds!

Well, all in all, I am definitely going to miss London and its warm culture. The people are so nice, and having english speaking signs, media and books are such a luxury. The pubs and MASSIVE amounts of clean restaurants are still jealously lingering in my mind as we travel the Indian Subcontinent. Most of all, though, I will miss my friends Kristi, Robin and Julie, and my next best bud: the tube. I will never end my love for finding the most efficient route on the tube/train/bus maps. My only regret is not picket up a mural-sized poster of the tube map (I'm a loser).