I See London...
If you've read (or seen, I suppose) 84 Charing Cross Road, you might remember the line about how everyone who visits London finds the city they expect to find. The author, on being told that, replied that she wanted to find the London of English literature, and was told, simply, 'It's there.' I wanted to see that, too, but mostly I went looking for the city where so much history either happened or, at least, was scooped up and deposited.
It's there.
This is a trip that's been both years in the planning and rather incredibly last-minute; London's been near the top of my dream destinations for years, but I didn't really expect to go, expect to go anywhere, for that matter, until I suddenly found a week of vacation time that nobody else in the department had pre-empted, and I found myself in the travel agent's office looking for last-minute flights before I quite had the chance to talk myself out of it.
London is the second most wonderful city I've ever seen, despite the undeniable fact that her street layout is an organic, impossible, joyously illogical Jackson Pollock mess that had me cheerfully lost much of the time. I just picked a direction and a destination, and enjoyed whatever I found along the way, trusting that I'd find what I was looking for. Eventually.
And oh-- the things I found! I met Jeremy Bentham while trying to find the British Museum-- he's embalmed and dressed in his favorite clothes in the London University. Used to be in the staff room to 'participate' in the staff meetings, but now he seems to be just watching the campus buzzing around him. I saw an open-air book market under London Bridge while trying to find the Globe Theatre; nothing too special book-wise, but a number of matted illustrated plates removed from old books, including maps, scenic views of various neighborhoods of London, and a great many from original printings of 'Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens' that I wish had been a bit more in my price range. (And on the subject of Kensington Gardens, as I walked through them on my way to take tea at the Kensington Palace Orangery, I saw a man walking the same sort of dog Barrie had had when he met the boys for whom he wrote the play there. Barrie said it himself-- there always was some magic, some mischief, about where Peter was concerned.)
The Tower of London, a slow boat ride down the Thames, day trips to Salisbury Cathedral and the original Magna Carta, Bath (and you can feel the heat rising off the water,) and Stonehenge. Brass rubbing in the crypts of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. Westminster Abbey-- there's something amazing about turning the corner and unexpectedly finding the old friends who just happen to have died a few centuries ago, and the same goes for the National Portrait Gallery. There was a great deal of roadwork going on, I noticed, because the Victorian plumbing was being replaced. Victorian pipes. More than a century on, the waterworks were only now needing replacing. There were Starbuckses and t-shirt shops abutting Whitehall, which was being renovated and expanded when Henry VIII brought his girlfriend, Anne Boleyn, to see the tennis courts he was having put in. Tyburn Tree-- or, at least, a plaque showing where it used to be-- was in the middle of a busy intersection by the bus stop.
I went there looking for history. It's there.
Is it ever.
It's there.
This is a trip that's been both years in the planning and rather incredibly last-minute; London's been near the top of my dream destinations for years, but I didn't really expect to go, expect to go anywhere, for that matter, until I suddenly found a week of vacation time that nobody else in the department had pre-empted, and I found myself in the travel agent's office looking for last-minute flights before I quite had the chance to talk myself out of it.
London is the second most wonderful city I've ever seen, despite the undeniable fact that her street layout is an organic, impossible, joyously illogical Jackson Pollock mess that had me cheerfully lost much of the time. I just picked a direction and a destination, and enjoyed whatever I found along the way, trusting that I'd find what I was looking for. Eventually.
And oh-- the things I found! I met Jeremy Bentham while trying to find the British Museum-- he's embalmed and dressed in his favorite clothes in the London University. Used to be in the staff room to 'participate' in the staff meetings, but now he seems to be just watching the campus buzzing around him. I saw an open-air book market under London Bridge while trying to find the Globe Theatre; nothing too special book-wise, but a number of matted illustrated plates removed from old books, including maps, scenic views of various neighborhoods of London, and a great many from original printings of 'Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens' that I wish had been a bit more in my price range. (And on the subject of Kensington Gardens, as I walked through them on my way to take tea at the Kensington Palace Orangery, I saw a man walking the same sort of dog Barrie had had when he met the boys for whom he wrote the play there. Barrie said it himself-- there always was some magic, some mischief, about where Peter was concerned.)
The Tower of London, a slow boat ride down the Thames, day trips to Salisbury Cathedral and the original Magna Carta, Bath (and you can feel the heat rising off the water,) and Stonehenge. Brass rubbing in the crypts of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. Westminster Abbey-- there's something amazing about turning the corner and unexpectedly finding the old friends who just happen to have died a few centuries ago, and the same goes for the National Portrait Gallery. There was a great deal of roadwork going on, I noticed, because the Victorian plumbing was being replaced. Victorian pipes. More than a century on, the waterworks were only now needing replacing. There were Starbuckses and t-shirt shops abutting Whitehall, which was being renovated and expanded when Henry VIII brought his girlfriend, Anne Boleyn, to see the tennis courts he was having put in. Tyburn Tree-- or, at least, a plaque showing where it used to be-- was in the middle of a busy intersection by the bus stop.
I went there looking for history. It's there.
Is it ever.