Hiatus Over!
I am still alive! Despite the best efforts of London traffic and pedestrians and the Tube and scaffolding and everything else in London that was out to get me. It's always hard to pick up again after a few days of not writing, and I don't think I'll get around to transferring the London leg of the trip out of my notebook until I get back. It seems like every leg of the trip has had some odd sort of rationing. The first couple of days in Paris when I wasn't sure I had enough cash, the last day in Paris before London with no batteries left, London with no internet... I would've written something last night and then posted it up this morning before heading out, but I loaned my laptop to this Australian girl in my room so she wouldn't have to pay by the minute just to transfer her pictures off of her SD cards.
So. Let's see. Since Tuesday there was a lot of sightseeing, which doesn't really bear rehashing so long after the fact (but will, inevitably, be rehashed at a later date). I think the only thing of general (at least, LJ-wise) interest is the fact that Speedy's is actually hard to find. I think, by that point, London was teasing me, because I figured it'd be obvious, what with that giant awning. I walked the entire street, didn't see it, and then walked back down the street like a suspicious tourist, and it turns out the entire building is covered in scaffolding at the moment. So, I guess 221B will be spruced up a bit on the outside next season? I grabbed lunch there anyway. Tuna sandwich and hot chocolate. That's another nice thing about London. I don't have to feel guilty about grabbing food from sandwich shops because the food in London is nothing special. In fact, last night when I got dressed up and had my little night out in the West End and had proper dinner, everyone working in the restaurant was French (and so the food was good).
I ended up seeing Deathtrap, partly because it was one of only a handful of shows that seemed interesting (I'm not enough of a fangirl to go see Design for Living, Henry IV was sold out, I don't go for musicals or most comedies, so that left me with Ghost Stories or Deathtrap, and back when I was doing my research Ghost Stories' reviews were so-so. It seems like they've improved since then, though). It was almost painfully meta and self-referential (play about a murder play that has a murder and... it gets worse, but it'd spoil things). Despite this (or perhaps because of it) it was definitely fun. Even if the woman's American accent was awful and the boy sounded like he'd picked his up in the 1950s. (It's funny, you can kind of tell what people have studied to work on their American accents. Like those trailers for the show David Tennant was in in the US that never got picked up? I swear he must've studied Bruce Campbell for his accent. And the problem with that is only Bruce Campbell can sound like Bruce Campbell.)
I guess I might as well sum up the rest of today. I also popped off to Harrod's for a look around, since it was easier to get to than the Tower of London, and I had to get back to my hostel in enough time to drag my luggage 3/4 of a mile back to St. Pancras. It was... massive, and I guess it's the sort of thing you use "posh" to describe. Lots of people standing around waiting to help you. I didn't know what to make of all of it, so instead I spent my time trying to mentally fit the events of Neverwhere into it. (Which is kind of why I went there in the first place.)
And, actually, things like that were a good part of my London adventure. A lot of it has been (accidental and otherwise) fiction tourism. Random landmarks I know from TV shows (Doctor Who is the only reason I recognize the Millennium Eye), there was a random scene from the Redheaded League I wanted to verify (but didn't have the time/sense of direction to)... and beginning and ending the trip in St. Pancras, wondering where I needed to stand and which way I needed to turn to get to Valhalla.
I guess that's what really interests me about London. It's the sort of place that I've heard about endlessly in fiction, and here it is, not very fictional at all. It's not the sort of place I know anything about outside of fiction, actually. While Paris was pounded endlessly into my head during six years of French classes, London only came into my education, as it was, as a place where people lived while writing something, or a place things were set. So most of my information on it can't be trusted. (And I think this problem has actually begun to manifest itself in the nonsense that is the Tube and all the streets and... yeah. I could probably trace every street I was on in Paris. In London, I couldn't even tell you what street I was standing on at the time, and I'm pretty sure that's because London is mostly fiction. It's already a huge mix of new and old, it doesn't make much sense. It's kind of like Paris is one person's idea, so it's consistent and it generally knows what it is. London (like a lot of other cities I've been in) is more of a work-in-progress with about half a dozen editors that secretly want to be writers themselves, who make little changes here and there, so you end up with a "circle" line that you have to get off of and transfer change back onto in order to go in a circle. In fact, I'd like to re-introduce the concept of a "line" because I feel like something just isn't a line anymore once it has more than two branches or separates into two random sections that have no relation to each other before coming back together again.
And for cripe's sake, London transit, print your goshdarn modern art subway map on top of a real map somewhere please so there's some sense of whether there are three meters between stations or three miles. There doesn't seem to be any correlation whatsoever between your map and reality. I mean, all transit maps take some liberties so they look cool and you can print them up and sell them, but... eesh.
Lessons learned: London, I am not finished with you, not by a mile. Paris, it is time for dinner and taking care of the rest of those post cards. (Some of you got London postcards, which I mailed out this morning. The rest of you will be getting the Paris ones I'm sending out tomorrow. Turns out I have no idea what to write on postcards, so please don't hold it against me if I resorted to complete nonsense by the time I got to yours. I love you anyway.
So. Let's see. Since Tuesday there was a lot of sightseeing, which doesn't really bear rehashing so long after the fact (but will, inevitably, be rehashed at a later date). I think the only thing of general (at least, LJ-wise) interest is the fact that Speedy's is actually hard to find. I think, by that point, London was teasing me, because I figured it'd be obvious, what with that giant awning. I walked the entire street, didn't see it, and then walked back down the street like a suspicious tourist, and it turns out the entire building is covered in scaffolding at the moment. So, I guess 221B will be spruced up a bit on the outside next season? I grabbed lunch there anyway. Tuna sandwich and hot chocolate. That's another nice thing about London. I don't have to feel guilty about grabbing food from sandwich shops because the food in London is nothing special. In fact, last night when I got dressed up and had my little night out in the West End and had proper dinner, everyone working in the restaurant was French (and so the food was good).
I ended up seeing Deathtrap, partly because it was one of only a handful of shows that seemed interesting (I'm not enough of a fangirl to go see Design for Living, Henry IV was sold out, I don't go for musicals or most comedies, so that left me with Ghost Stories or Deathtrap, and back when I was doing my research Ghost Stories' reviews were so-so. It seems like they've improved since then, though). It was almost painfully meta and self-referential (play about a murder play that has a murder and... it gets worse, but it'd spoil things). Despite this (or perhaps because of it) it was definitely fun. Even if the woman's American accent was awful and the boy sounded like he'd picked his up in the 1950s. (It's funny, you can kind of tell what people have studied to work on their American accents. Like those trailers for the show David Tennant was in in the US that never got picked up? I swear he must've studied Bruce Campbell for his accent. And the problem with that is only Bruce Campbell can sound like Bruce Campbell.)
I guess I might as well sum up the rest of today. I also popped off to Harrod's for a look around, since it was easier to get to than the Tower of London, and I had to get back to my hostel in enough time to drag my luggage 3/4 of a mile back to St. Pancras. It was... massive, and I guess it's the sort of thing you use "posh" to describe. Lots of people standing around waiting to help you. I didn't know what to make of all of it, so instead I spent my time trying to mentally fit the events of Neverwhere into it. (Which is kind of why I went there in the first place.)
And, actually, things like that were a good part of my London adventure. A lot of it has been (accidental and otherwise) fiction tourism. Random landmarks I know from TV shows (Doctor Who is the only reason I recognize the Millennium Eye), there was a random scene from the Redheaded League I wanted to verify (but didn't have the time/sense of direction to)... and beginning and ending the trip in St. Pancras, wondering where I needed to stand and which way I needed to turn to get to Valhalla.
I guess that's what really interests me about London. It's the sort of place that I've heard about endlessly in fiction, and here it is, not very fictional at all. It's not the sort of place I know anything about outside of fiction, actually. While Paris was pounded endlessly into my head during six years of French classes, London only came into my education, as it was, as a place where people lived while writing something, or a place things were set. So most of my information on it can't be trusted. (And I think this problem has actually begun to manifest itself in the nonsense that is the Tube and all the streets and... yeah. I could probably trace every street I was on in Paris. In London, I couldn't even tell you what street I was standing on at the time, and I'm pretty sure that's because London is mostly fiction. It's already a huge mix of new and old, it doesn't make much sense. It's kind of like Paris is one person's idea, so it's consistent and it generally knows what it is. London (like a lot of other cities I've been in) is more of a work-in-progress with about half a dozen editors that secretly want to be writers themselves, who make little changes here and there, so you end up with a "circle" line that you have to get off of and transfer change back onto in order to go in a circle. In fact, I'd like to re-introduce the concept of a "line" because I feel like something just isn't a line anymore once it has more than two branches or separates into two random sections that have no relation to each other before coming back together again.
And for cripe's sake, London transit, print your goshdarn modern art subway map on top of a real map somewhere please so there's some sense of whether there are three meters between stations or three miles. There doesn't seem to be any correlation whatsoever between your map and reality. I mean, all transit maps take some liberties so they look cool and you can print them up and sell them, but... eesh.
Lessons learned: London, I am not finished with you, not by a mile. Paris, it is time for dinner and taking care of the rest of those post cards. (Some of you got London postcards, which I mailed out this morning. The rest of you will be getting the Paris ones I'm sending out tomorrow. Turns out I have no idea what to write on postcards, so please don't hold it against me if I resorted to complete nonsense by the time I got to yours. I love you anyway.