Rewind!
I realized I never finished up the last days of London, and since I am incredibly bored this afternoon (I've read, I've written, I cleaned and made soup and made bread and I'm still bored) I guess it's time to finish that story.
So, I believe we left off with me giggling at NSY and their spinny sign. Since I had no solid plans for this day, I decided to go into the city center, more or less, and find the Clockmaker's Museum, which seemed like an interesting little place for someone thoroughly tired of paintings to go. It was on my map, which was also a good sign, but it was in a little knot of streets that didn't seem to have any relation to the surrounding area. And, worse, there didn't seem to be a station connected to Victoria St. station that was nearby. So I picked the next-closest, with the fewest transfers (considering transfers sometimes seem to involve a mile of walking) and set off walking... in the wrong direction. Instead I found myself several tube stops in the opposite direction in a distance that felt like it couldn't have been more than a couple of city blocks (though I suppose that happens here too. Red line stops aren't all that far apart downtown, either). I actually had to sit down near a church and re-orient myself. I somehow ended up walking southwest instead of northwest. And it turns out I'd been wrong about needing to go northwest in the first place. But I did eventually find the corner I was sitting at on my map, and I sorted out (I thought) where I was going and headed up the street again. I found Guildhall, which was in the same general area, but once I found the street I'd meant to go down in the first place I couldn't find the cross-street I was looking for and somehow found myself going in a giant circle and ending up back on the first street I'd been on. Which was funny, because I didn't think I'd even turned that many times. I'd chalk this up to a space-time anomaly, but I'm pretty sure it's mostly because I'm not used to streets that don't run in straight lines. After a few more stops to consult my map I actually did locate the Clockmaker's Museum. And this is where I defer my inability to explain things to spacio-temporal failings in London, because as far as I could tell it existed but didn't have an entrance. At this point I sat down, laughed to myself, and decided if I was walking around lost I might as well just walk around lost, so I picked a random direction and quickly found 30 St. Mary Axe and Lloyd's of London and, soon after, the London Bridge. Which were on the list of things I'd just given up looking for. I crossed London Bridge, which is 1) not falling down an 2) entirely unremarkable except for its view of Tower Bridge. From here I walked along the Thames through Bankside (which is all cobblestones with a few token Old things, but feels kind of like the cleaned-up end of a warehouse district or something) over to the Globe. I'd hoped to see Henry IV, but the entire place was crawling with sour-faced noisy students. And, here's the part that really confused me. There were ice cream trucks. Outside the Globe. Two of them. Just... hanging out, vending ice cream. On one hand, Shakespeare's plays were hardly the Serious Business Literature, Guys! thing we hold them as now and so ice cream trucks would be kind of like the sausages-inna-bun I'm sure were peddled to theatregoers back then. But then again, the Globe would've never been crawling with petulant 13-18 year-olds under the pretence of cultural experience. It's like... one or the other of these things is very out of place and yet here they both are in tandem. Also the show was sold out, and even though it would've been a fantastic night for an open-air show and I was secretly hoping to get a ticket so I wouldn't have to dress up for the theatre, I was a little bit relieved because I had serious reservations about rubbing elbows with unhappy high schoolers while trying to enjoy Henry IV, which is fun but really not one of my favorites in the first place.
So, foiled again I walked back to London Bridge tube station with the vain hope that the northern line was in fact a line and not a mysterious loop. In theory, you'd think downtown stops on the same line would be connected, but apparently that's not the case and what should've been a simple trip from London Bridge to Leicester Square actually involved me taking the Jubilee line from a Northern Line stop to another Northern Line stop on a different branch so I could make another transfer and then get to Leicester Square. Where I promptly got lost again and wandered off in the opposite direction from the theatre I was looking for, and was accosted by another American tourist who was looking for something equally obscure. (I didn't bother with my map on this one, since once we both heard each other's accents we pretty much knew we were useless to each other.) I eventually got un-turned-around, located the theatre I was looking for, successfully (with a little confusion) managed to buy a ticket with my stupid American credit card, and then wandered off in a different random direction, which landed me in Covent Garden, where I watched street performers and browsed through the wares of random crafty vendors. I probably could've spent a bit more time there, but I knew I needed to go change out of my baggy tourist clothes and into something more respectable for the theatre, so I trekked back to the hostel and spent probably half an hour pulling things out of my suitcase and going "Why did I bring this if I don't have any shoes that go with it?"
Having finally sorted out my wardrobe the rest of my evening was pretty uneventful in terms of narration. I was running early enough to be silly and get off the tube at Picadilly Circus and walk over into the theatre district (and to take a detour into Chinatown. I think it's kind of fantastic that they all sit together like that. I'm used to a Chinatown that's isolated in the middle of a fairly rough area). Dinner was at a random Italian place, which was staffed entirely by French people, evidenced by their accents, and the fact that, when I asked if they could take my Stupid American Credit card, the guy replied "Oui!... do!" For a moment, I was afraid I'd somehow asked in French. It's actually possible I did, I don't know for sure. But I managed to eat, and figured since I was having my fancy night out and was all dressed up I decided I should have dessert too. I felt right fancy.
And I've already covered the show (meta, full of odd American accents, entertaining), so that does it for Wednesday. I've also already covered Thursday morning (Harrods, Speedy's, train). And that... is that. I've probably left some things out. Like the full extent of my ranting about the design of London's public transit. But it's been long enough that I've resigned myself to just having to return, sword in hand, to defeat the beast. Or at least document it a bit better. Oh! And I know there are a ton of details I've omitted, because I can see them in my notebook, but I can't figure out how to work them in. How the escalators in the tube are massive, how the streets are labelled with the way you're supposed to look for traffic and how I still got it wrong every time, how the "mind the gap" announcement sounded like "orange baguette" on my first day, when I was tired and had my headphones on to dispel a bit of the sensory overload... And now that it's been a few weeks, sometimes I'm sitting at my desk at work and I'll randomly remember someplace I went or something I saw. I thought I'd somehow escaped without that awful nostalgia for far-off places you know you won't see again for a long time. But no. One of my friends bought me a book before I left: Parisians, by Graham Robb. I finally sat down and started reading it yesterday. I couldn't even get through the introduction without getting misty-eyed (he talks about walking the length of Paris in a day, okay? And I went "Oh, I did that too!" and... yeah. All right, let's pretend that it's perfectly normal for me to get sentimental about things, okay? I'm working on my coping mechanisms. I made baguettes! But mostly because I got some fantastic apricot-almond brie at the farmer's market and I didn't want to go to the store just for bread.)
And finally, to bring this whole story arc to a close, since I ran out of space so quickly on Flickr, I've dumped practically every picture I took into a couple of scrapbook galleries: London and Paris. I haven't pared them down to just the pretty ones, nor have I edited any of them, so beware that there are a lot, and not all of them are good. But that's how trips work, so I don't think I'll be editing them anyway.
So, I believe we left off with me giggling at NSY and their spinny sign. Since I had no solid plans for this day, I decided to go into the city center, more or less, and find the Clockmaker's Museum, which seemed like an interesting little place for someone thoroughly tired of paintings to go. It was on my map, which was also a good sign, but it was in a little knot of streets that didn't seem to have any relation to the surrounding area. And, worse, there didn't seem to be a station connected to Victoria St. station that was nearby. So I picked the next-closest, with the fewest transfers (considering transfers sometimes seem to involve a mile of walking) and set off walking... in the wrong direction. Instead I found myself several tube stops in the opposite direction in a distance that felt like it couldn't have been more than a couple of city blocks (though I suppose that happens here too. Red line stops aren't all that far apart downtown, either). I actually had to sit down near a church and re-orient myself. I somehow ended up walking southwest instead of northwest. And it turns out I'd been wrong about needing to go northwest in the first place. But I did eventually find the corner I was sitting at on my map, and I sorted out (I thought) where I was going and headed up the street again. I found Guildhall, which was in the same general area, but once I found the street I'd meant to go down in the first place I couldn't find the cross-street I was looking for and somehow found myself going in a giant circle and ending up back on the first street I'd been on. Which was funny, because I didn't think I'd even turned that many times. I'd chalk this up to a space-time anomaly, but I'm pretty sure it's mostly because I'm not used to streets that don't run in straight lines. After a few more stops to consult my map I actually did locate the Clockmaker's Museum. And this is where I defer my inability to explain things to spacio-temporal failings in London, because as far as I could tell it existed but didn't have an entrance. At this point I sat down, laughed to myself, and decided if I was walking around lost I might as well just walk around lost, so I picked a random direction and quickly found 30 St. Mary Axe and Lloyd's of London and, soon after, the London Bridge. Which were on the list of things I'd just given up looking for. I crossed London Bridge, which is 1) not falling down an 2) entirely unremarkable except for its view of Tower Bridge. From here I walked along the Thames through Bankside (which is all cobblestones with a few token Old things, but feels kind of like the cleaned-up end of a warehouse district or something) over to the Globe. I'd hoped to see Henry IV, but the entire place was crawling with sour-faced noisy students. And, here's the part that really confused me. There were ice cream trucks. Outside the Globe. Two of them. Just... hanging out, vending ice cream. On one hand, Shakespeare's plays were hardly the Serious Business Literature, Guys! thing we hold them as now and so ice cream trucks would be kind of like the sausages-inna-bun I'm sure were peddled to theatregoers back then. But then again, the Globe would've never been crawling with petulant 13-18 year-olds under the pretence of cultural experience. It's like... one or the other of these things is very out of place and yet here they both are in tandem. Also the show was sold out, and even though it would've been a fantastic night for an open-air show and I was secretly hoping to get a ticket so I wouldn't have to dress up for the theatre, I was a little bit relieved because I had serious reservations about rubbing elbows with unhappy high schoolers while trying to enjoy Henry IV, which is fun but really not one of my favorites in the first place.
So, foiled again I walked back to London Bridge tube station with the vain hope that the northern line was in fact a line and not a mysterious loop. In theory, you'd think downtown stops on the same line would be connected, but apparently that's not the case and what should've been a simple trip from London Bridge to Leicester Square actually involved me taking the Jubilee line from a Northern Line stop to another Northern Line stop on a different branch so I could make another transfer and then get to Leicester Square. Where I promptly got lost again and wandered off in the opposite direction from the theatre I was looking for, and was accosted by another American tourist who was looking for something equally obscure. (I didn't bother with my map on this one, since once we both heard each other's accents we pretty much knew we were useless to each other.) I eventually got un-turned-around, located the theatre I was looking for, successfully (with a little confusion) managed to buy a ticket with my stupid American credit card, and then wandered off in a different random direction, which landed me in Covent Garden, where I watched street performers and browsed through the wares of random crafty vendors. I probably could've spent a bit more time there, but I knew I needed to go change out of my baggy tourist clothes and into something more respectable for the theatre, so I trekked back to the hostel and spent probably half an hour pulling things out of my suitcase and going "Why did I bring this if I don't have any shoes that go with it?"
Having finally sorted out my wardrobe the rest of my evening was pretty uneventful in terms of narration. I was running early enough to be silly and get off the tube at Picadilly Circus and walk over into the theatre district (and to take a detour into Chinatown. I think it's kind of fantastic that they all sit together like that. I'm used to a Chinatown that's isolated in the middle of a fairly rough area). Dinner was at a random Italian place, which was staffed entirely by French people, evidenced by their accents, and the fact that, when I asked if they could take my Stupid American Credit card, the guy replied "Oui!... do!" For a moment, I was afraid I'd somehow asked in French. It's actually possible I did, I don't know for sure. But I managed to eat, and figured since I was having my fancy night out and was all dressed up I decided I should have dessert too. I felt right fancy.
And I've already covered the show (meta, full of odd American accents, entertaining), so that does it for Wednesday. I've also already covered Thursday morning (Harrods, Speedy's, train). And that... is that. I've probably left some things out. Like the full extent of my ranting about the design of London's public transit. But it's been long enough that I've resigned myself to just having to return, sword in hand, to defeat the beast. Or at least document it a bit better. Oh! And I know there are a ton of details I've omitted, because I can see them in my notebook, but I can't figure out how to work them in. How the escalators in the tube are massive, how the streets are labelled with the way you're supposed to look for traffic and how I still got it wrong every time, how the "mind the gap" announcement sounded like "orange baguette" on my first day, when I was tired and had my headphones on to dispel a bit of the sensory overload... And now that it's been a few weeks, sometimes I'm sitting at my desk at work and I'll randomly remember someplace I went or something I saw. I thought I'd somehow escaped without that awful nostalgia for far-off places you know you won't see again for a long time. But no. One of my friends bought me a book before I left: Parisians, by Graham Robb. I finally sat down and started reading it yesterday. I couldn't even get through the introduction without getting misty-eyed (he talks about walking the length of Paris in a day, okay? And I went "Oh, I did that too!" and... yeah. All right, let's pretend that it's perfectly normal for me to get sentimental about things, okay? I'm working on my coping mechanisms. I made baguettes! But mostly because I got some fantastic apricot-almond brie at the farmer's market and I didn't want to go to the store just for bread.)
And finally, to bring this whole story arc to a close, since I ran out of space so quickly on Flickr, I've dumped practically every picture I took into a couple of scrapbook galleries: London and Paris. I haven't pared them down to just the pretty ones, nor have I edited any of them, so beware that there are a lot, and not all of them are good. But that's how trips work, so I don't think I'll be editing them anyway.