Board games, feasts and the spoils of empire
Travel Location: London,United-Kingdom
We arrived at Gatwick Airport after 18 hours on three planes, but it would be nearly four more hours before we were sitting on our friends’ couch just a few dozen miles away. It is often the case that the worst hell an international traveler faces, especially one on a budget, is the ground transportation at the destination city, and this was certainly a prime example.
A maze of sterile passageways led us to the now much more ostentatious “UK BORDER” where a typically surly border agent asked us totally simple questions, infuriatingly vaguely. He wanted to know where we had come from, but not the US – not where our trip began – but which city the plane we arrived on had departed. Then he wanted to know where we were going – but not the itinerary of our multi-country trip, but specifically where in Britain we were staying. Every step of me trying to ascertain what he was asking was met with the implication that I was either an idiot, or an international spy, or perhaps both. But UK security tensions were high, as during our flight the entire thing that just happened in Mumbai had been going on, perhaps explaining the adorable sniffer dog, seemingly not more than a puppy, making everybody laugh with his high-spirited antics at the baggage claim.
You couldn’t really tell The Guard was Changed – they all looked the same in their coats, hats, sashes and machine guns.
After navigating the interterminal monorail, the ticket line for British Rail, and the search for the correct platform, we boarded a train to East Croydon where we have to change lines to get to our hosts’ place. Unfortunately we had jusst missed the once-an-hour local and had to wait an hour on the cold and croded platform during rush hour. After nearly collapsing from lack of sleep, we somehow made it to the neighborhood stop and waited another 20-some minutes for a five-quid taxi trip to the house, where we were warmly greeted and slowly talked down off the ledge.
It turns out the smart thing to do is to get a cab at East Croydon and be done with it. Noted for future reference – near future, that is, as we return here again from a side trip on Friday the 12th.
London … we started with takeaway from a local pizza place, delicious, proceeding to wine and board games, some light comedy DVDs and a nice long sleep to adjust to the jet lag. That part continued into Friday afternoon, ultimately, given severe lack of sleep not only on the plane over but in the several days preceding the trip. But the day was not lost, as our hosts prepared an impromptu Thanksgiving dinner for their wayward American guests who missed the holiday. We got turkey, StoveTop we sent them from Casper a while back (one of our hosts is an expat who misses classic American fare), mashed potatoes, some kind of sweet carrot/vegetable mash that was new to us, cheese & broccoli and cheese & cauliflower, all smothered in a healthy pool of onion gravy. Wow. Even I was shocked when I suddenly looked down and our huge plates were practically licked clean.
A playfully spiteful game of Supremacy: The Game of Superpowers ended in nuclear devastation for the world at our hands before our hugely enjoyable night-in was over.
Saturday marked the day of our friend’s birthday party at a busy gay bar in Soho. It would be difficult to explain how we ended up staying there for about 10 hours, how many bottles of white wine we went through before actually exhausting their stock of the preferred label, how insane everyone in the place was about the “X Factor”episode (American Idol, essentially), or how many aggressive flower vendors and surly cabbies we encountered before bagging it and taking the train home. Or how much fun we had and how many amazing people we met who also enjoy these gents’ friendship.
A lazy Sunday was highlighted by the Sunday roast ritual at the local pub, “Brockley Jack’s” where David and I had the pork roast – they sold clean out of the roast beef – which is essentailly another huge Thanksgiving feast of a meal. This time though, I think I left a couple of fingerling carrots on my plate just to prove I am not a glutton. John’s curry and Guy’s ham and eggs were also, reportedly, out of sight.
Monday was our alloted day for cultural tourism. We took the train in to Westminster and emerged underneath Big Ben, quite a way to arrive in London. We circled the houses of Parliament and followed the river a short distance upstream to the Tate Britain, which is showing for another month or two a major retrospective of the works of Francis Bacon, an influential and pivotal 20th century painter of whom Guy is especially fond and whose work we saw in a smaller show a few years ago at the local art museum in the Hague. It was worth the free admission to say the least. After a quick go around the modern art wing (the nearby Tate Modern has the good stuff, really) and a quite disinterested visit to the ongoing Turner Prize finalists’ installations – what a bunch of crap that was – we started what would eventually turn into a five-mile stroll through a cold and windy London.
We swung past Buckingham Palace, which Jason had never seen, and happened to catch the changing of the guard coincidentally. Once they were done you couldn’t really tell they had been changed – they all looked the same in their heavy coats, furry hats, white sashes and submachine guns. From there, with a gaze at the Victoria Monument, we headed across the park, up Piccadilly, through a teeming shopping crowd eventually ending at the British Museum.
It was getting late in the afternoon so we hit the highlights here in this enormous storehouse of treasures finagled, expropriated and otherwise secreted out of practically every country in the world during the age of empire. Highlights: the actual Rosetta Stone, the Elgin Marbles (probably not PC to call them that anymore; a protestor had left a note on one of the interpretive plaques saying “We’ve had a lovely stay, but we’d like to go home now. -The Parthenon Marbles”) and King George III’s vast library. And a lot of mummies, and the remains from the mausoleum at Mausolos (sp?) which was a wonder of the ancient world. There’s so much more to see there – but then, we can go back and see it sometime.
The workday being over, we met our friends at a pub not so far away for a few after-work pints before returning home to chat enjoyably and sample a huge variety of local TV, the highlight of which was a few episodes of “Beautiful People” and the lowlight being the alarmingly laughable “Dante’s Cove” .
The following morning we were very glad we had selected an early afternoon flight for our next port of call. We’ll be spending three nights with our dear cosmic uncles in the Hague (it’s easier to say that than to explain the degree of cousinhood and the particulars thereof), before a long weekend in Amsterdam, some more time in South Holland, the folllowing week and a return for five more precious days in London.
