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So guys, weird not to have me obsessively updating, isn't it? (Probably not, really...) But, with a rocky work-week mostly behind me, I finally have enough time between getting home and passing out to finish writing up the London leg of the journey.
At the risk of repeating things (especially if you've read through the map), I'm going to attempt to do this whole thing in chronological order so I don't forget anything.
Starting with the Eurostar trip, which was uneventful (the French countryside looks like every other countryside, except it seems like every home in the entire country has the same kind of shingles). I wasn't on the train more than five minutes before the Brits in front of me started making fun of American accents and how we pronounce the h in herbs. I managed to keep my laughter silent and my opinion to myself. Actually, I had a pretty serious problem with laughter throughout the whole train ride, because our French conductor sounded exactly like every horrible Monty Python French impression. Our arrival in England, though, was full of fog and sheep and was entirely, quintessentially English, which put me in an excellent mood. Then there was the arrival in St. Pancras, which immediately made me want to tell everyone I was looking for Valhalla (As a corollary, I was also pleased to see that it does seem to be possible to get pizza delivered in London now. I'm sure that's because of Douglas Adams).
The hostel was a lot farther from King's Cross/St. Pancras than I thought, and I also managed to take a wrong turn while going in a straight line, which was an excellent preamble to my entire experience with getting places in London. I could write an entire treatise on how a city should not renumber streets just so fictional places exist, and how streets shouldn't change names and personality arbitrarily, or how an underground "line" ceases to be a line when there are four or more branches and loops and... actually, we'll cover this later as well. Back to the point, the hostel was also a lot larger than I expected, and was full of a much younger demographic than the Paris hostel (my room averaged about 21ish here, while I think both Paris rooms shaded a lot closer to 25). I stashed my luggage, though, and trekked back out into the city with no real plan other than to get over to Baker Street and be a geek.
I ran into a tiny Asian woman on the way back to King's Cross station, who stopped me and asked me for directions to Pentonville Road. She pronounced as if it was a French word, which I found incredibly endearing. I told her I had no idea where it was, and had until recently been kind of lost myself, but with my trusty map we quickly determined that we were standing on Pentonville Road, and she was going to the only place I could give her directions to: the hostel I was staying at.
That odd serendipity out of the way, I headed down into the tube station, where I incompetently, touristically, and repeatedly attempted to feed the ticket machine a ten-Euro bill. After I worked out that money without the Queen on it wasn't going to work, I bought my day pass and hopped on the train and went the two stops to Baker Street. (I think, in the end, I spent something like 17 pounds on transit, which is an awful lot for just two days.) The part of Baker Street south of the station is full of fast food and is very typically a city street. (Yes, I turned the wrong way and walked several blocks in the wrong direction.) And the part of Baker Street that was tacked on and renumbered to please the black armband-wearing, fiction-fancying Londoners (or, possibly, just because the street needed extending) is somehow entirely different. It's also numbered wrong so the Sherlock Holmes museum has the correct number. I peered inside, but didn't go in partly because I'm obsessed with not looking like a tourist and also because it was already full of people. Instead, I kept on walking up to Regent's Park, which was cozy. I also discovered that London has different and very interesting birds. (For a while I was also convinced that Paris must groom its pigeons, though, since they were so much better-looking than Chicago ones, so take my comments on foreign fowl with a grain of salt.) Apparently watching the birds in Regent's Park is a bit of a thing, so at least I got that right. It makes no mention of the impossibly long parade of children in Halloween costume that was also going on at the time, though. Nor does it mention the incredibly happy man I saw doing a Hiro Nakamura impression in front of the park map, who, in response to my somewhat-confused smile, told me it was a wonderful day (I agreed).
So, from Regent's Park I hopped the tube again and looked for a station on the Thames. I was going to get off at Embankment, because I figured that'd be my best bet, but then I decided that I'd rather take a longer walk, so I got off at Westminster. I took the southwest station exit and found myself at the foot of Big Ben. I wasn't exactly expecting it to be right there, so it took me walking a block and then turning back to look at it to make sure that's what it was, and that there weren't great giant clocks all over London. (I think I was expecting more tourists.) It was also near this corner that I popped into a Tesco and grabbed a sandwich, because I was hungry and didn't feel like doing a thorough search for food. I then took a walk down the Thames, and generally enjoyed the view (even if it was overcast). And yes, the only reason I recognized the Millennium Eye was because of Doctor Who, and yes my brain automatically superimposed scenes from Rose over that particular section of the river walk (cue geeky grinning from me while I think Hey, I'm standing where the Doctor stood, hehe). I eventually took a detour up a promising-looking street and found myself in Trafalgar Square, but not before passing the Sherlock Holmes (which is on Northumberland Street. The distance between this and Baker Street makes me think that the address of the restaurant in ASIP is a sneaky reference to this restaurant, rather than anything remotely geographically sound. Thanks, Moffat, for breaking London just that little bit more.)
Naturally being in Trafalgar Square gave me a perfect chance to make my walk of the Strand and Fleet Street. Unfortunately, most of its literary and general history was pretty well hidden (this made me a bit sad. I mean, it used to be publishers and apartments and things. I am apparently about a hundred years too late). It wasn't until Fleet Street that things began to look like proper London to me. There was also a pasty/pie place that looked very good that I thought about stopping at until the fact that I was on Fleet Street gave me pause, and I remembered that I intended to hunt down a fish and chips place for dinner. I also attempted to poke my head in to the Royal Courts of Justice, but not one was wearing wigs or robes (at least, not by this point in the afternoon), so yet another of my outdated hopes was dashed.
As an aside, before embarking on this journey I was convinced that at some point London (or Paris) I would finally have some kind of epiphany that would explain why the British culture produces proper time travel fiction and we in the US (mostly) don't. I was pretty sure something in the mix of very old and very new would spark that. But I'd be lying if I said I ever had that epiphany while I was there. Now, however, looking at the above paragraph, I can certainly see a good motivation for time travel. However, I've also had that feeling of being just a bit too late here, too (though it's measured in decades, here, rather than centuries), so it's certainly not something I can pin on The Old World alone. There's just more history to wish you'd been around for there, and maybe that's enough? I suppose this warrants further research and I'll just have to go back once I've worked a bit more on the theory behind this. I also need to do further research into whether the inability to walk in a straight line or know where you're going in London, even when you have a map, is what spawned the dry, stiff upper lip British sense of humor. It's got to be a coping mechanism to deal with the underground.
After I finished my walk, I was finally a bit peckish, so I decided to hunt down the fish and chips place![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lisiche recommended to me all the way back in July. Despite her seemingly-vague directions, my only trouble in finding the place was that one of the turns should've been a right turn, and the coin shop was actually after Costa's, not before. The whole thing kind of made a loop around the block, which is not what I was picturing when I first read the directions but hey, it worked, so I'm not complaining. And Costa's was still there, and it was good, and everyone who came in seemed to know the owner and everyone else in there, so it was warm and cosy and I felt very conspicuous, but no moreso than I feel in any neighborhood restaurant where I'm not part of the neighborhood. I should've walked around this area a bit more, since it was the only really residential bit of London I set foot in, but it was dark and my earlier experiences told me that I was not unlikely to get myself lost, so I hopped the tube again, randomly got off at Bank for a few nighttime blurry bus pictures and then headed back to the hostel, where I discovered the extent to which I occasionally speak the Queen's English in an American accent (when I woke the sleeping Australian girl in the bunk below mine and she offered to turn the light on and I surprised myself by saying "No worries, I already sorted everything in the corridor."). I also did this kind of thing to an English guy in the elevator at work today. Mercifully I don't seem to do this as much when in normal midwestern company, and it usually doesn't seem to strike these exotically-accented people as weird to hear such un-American turns of phrase in an American accent. And oh goodness, I've been painfully aware of my accent since I got back. To the point where I'm noticing when I emphasize my goshawful midwestern 'a' sounds and when I tend to gloss them over in my usual Canadianish affectations. (I hate the midwestern nasal 'a' and have done all I can to get rid of it. I didn't have it much in the first place, but being in Chicago I live in constant fear that it's going to rub off and I'll wake up some morning saying 'maa' instead of mom or something.)
Right-o. So, the second day was pretty aimless, once I realized I'd already done Baker Street, the Strand and Fleet Street. That pretty much left me with a mission to see a play/show of some sort, and a fair desire to do some wandering. I decided I could afford to spend some of the morning museum-ing, but I underestimated the extent to which I was tired of paintings, and just plain tired (I'm sorry, Louvre, but you wore me out a bit in that respect). I wandered around Tate Britain for a bit, mostly admiring the Blakes (this trip definitely reminded me how cool William Blake is) and the Mondrians and a little of the modern stuff, and being amused at how often Whistler seemed to change his mind about frames.
From there I wandered up toward Victoria Station again, with no real aim in mind. I grabbed some lunch, walked around some, and then, spying a full-sized Tesco, decided that I needed to try to findsketchyheart's mythical vanilla tea (no luck) and that I needed some Jaffa Cakes. I did manage to find Jaffa Cakes (after browsing the tea/biscuit/tea cake/various other edible tea accessory aisle several times), and I took them into what I thought was the check-out line. It turned out to be the chip and pin line. I tried not to laugh to myself about this (because it really did resemble the scene in TBB), but as I moved up in line I slowly began to dread the experience. I had cash, but I couldn't see anything on the machines other than pin card things. I'd already tried to use my card once earlier in the day, to buy some extra batteries for my camera. The ordeal had required two cashiers and took nearly ten minutes, during which I apologized profusely for my stupid American credit card, and for making the whole transaction far more complicated than it should've been. Thankfully, as I navigated the touch-screen menu and placed my item on the baggage area, I managed to locate the spot for bills and change without looking like a complete noob. My victory complete, I emerged with my Jaffa Cakes in tow and headed for the nearest tube station. And this is where I inadvertently passed Scotland Yard and finally failed at not laughing. (In part because, really, should police have a sign that spins? Really? One that isn't fictional? Because that sign looks like it's just designed for TV. Also because, giddy from my defeat of the chip and pin machine, I was only a few Jaffa Cakes away from thinking it was a good idea to go inside and ask if Sherlock Holmes was around and if maybe he wanted to help me figure out why the Tube is so bloody nonsensical. I mean, I think it was the first day when I tried to take the circle line somewhere and ended up at the end of the line. I mean, if a line is the "Circle" line, one thing it should not have is an end. And to make matters worse, I had to get off the train and change platforms in order to transfer back onto the Circle line in order to go in a circle. And let's not even start on the Northern Line, because we're not even to that part of this tale yet.)
Actually, this is taking far longer than I thought. I will have to finish this up tomorrow, because I'm still partly on a backwards sleep schedule, and I kind of like waking up at 6:30 in the morning and having time to eat breakfast and get things done before I leave for work, so I'm going to try to stick with this nonsense schedule as long as possible.
At the risk of repeating things (especially if you've read through the map), I'm going to attempt to do this whole thing in chronological order so I don't forget anything.
Starting with the Eurostar trip, which was uneventful (the French countryside looks like every other countryside, except it seems like every home in the entire country has the same kind of shingles). I wasn't on the train more than five minutes before the Brits in front of me started making fun of American accents and how we pronounce the h in herbs. I managed to keep my laughter silent and my opinion to myself. Actually, I had a pretty serious problem with laughter throughout the whole train ride, because our French conductor sounded exactly like every horrible Monty Python French impression. Our arrival in England, though, was full of fog and sheep and was entirely, quintessentially English, which put me in an excellent mood. Then there was the arrival in St. Pancras, which immediately made me want to tell everyone I was looking for Valhalla (As a corollary, I was also pleased to see that it does seem to be possible to get pizza delivered in London now. I'm sure that's because of Douglas Adams).
The hostel was a lot farther from King's Cross/St. Pancras than I thought, and I also managed to take a wrong turn while going in a straight line, which was an excellent preamble to my entire experience with getting places in London. I could write an entire treatise on how a city should not renumber streets just so fictional places exist, and how streets shouldn't change names and personality arbitrarily, or how an underground "line" ceases to be a line when there are four or more branches and loops and... actually, we'll cover this later as well. Back to the point, the hostel was also a lot larger than I expected, and was full of a much younger demographic than the Paris hostel (my room averaged about 21ish here, while I think both Paris rooms shaded a lot closer to 25). I stashed my luggage, though, and trekked back out into the city with no real plan other than to get over to Baker Street and be a geek.
I ran into a tiny Asian woman on the way back to King's Cross station, who stopped me and asked me for directions to Pentonville Road. She pronounced as if it was a French word, which I found incredibly endearing. I told her I had no idea where it was, and had until recently been kind of lost myself, but with my trusty map we quickly determined that we were standing on Pentonville Road, and she was going to the only place I could give her directions to: the hostel I was staying at.
That odd serendipity out of the way, I headed down into the tube station, where I incompetently, touristically, and repeatedly attempted to feed the ticket machine a ten-Euro bill. After I worked out that money without the Queen on it wasn't going to work, I bought my day pass and hopped on the train and went the two stops to Baker Street. (I think, in the end, I spent something like 17 pounds on transit, which is an awful lot for just two days.) The part of Baker Street south of the station is full of fast food and is very typically a city street. (Yes, I turned the wrong way and walked several blocks in the wrong direction.) And the part of Baker Street that was tacked on and renumbered to please the black armband-wearing, fiction-fancying Londoners (or, possibly, just because the street needed extending) is somehow entirely different. It's also numbered wrong so the Sherlock Holmes museum has the correct number. I peered inside, but didn't go in partly because I'm obsessed with not looking like a tourist and also because it was already full of people. Instead, I kept on walking up to Regent's Park, which was cozy. I also discovered that London has different and very interesting birds. (For a while I was also convinced that Paris must groom its pigeons, though, since they were so much better-looking than Chicago ones, so take my comments on foreign fowl with a grain of salt.) Apparently watching the birds in Regent's Park is a bit of a thing, so at least I got that right. It makes no mention of the impossibly long parade of children in Halloween costume that was also going on at the time, though. Nor does it mention the incredibly happy man I saw doing a Hiro Nakamura impression in front of the park map, who, in response to my somewhat-confused smile, told me it was a wonderful day (I agreed).
So, from Regent's Park I hopped the tube again and looked for a station on the Thames. I was going to get off at Embankment, because I figured that'd be my best bet, but then I decided that I'd rather take a longer walk, so I got off at Westminster. I took the southwest station exit and found myself at the foot of Big Ben. I wasn't exactly expecting it to be right there, so it took me walking a block and then turning back to look at it to make sure that's what it was, and that there weren't great giant clocks all over London. (I think I was expecting more tourists.) It was also near this corner that I popped into a Tesco and grabbed a sandwich, because I was hungry and didn't feel like doing a thorough search for food. I then took a walk down the Thames, and generally enjoyed the view (even if it was overcast). And yes, the only reason I recognized the Millennium Eye was because of Doctor Who, and yes my brain automatically superimposed scenes from Rose over that particular section of the river walk (cue geeky grinning from me while I think Hey, I'm standing where the Doctor stood, hehe). I eventually took a detour up a promising-looking street and found myself in Trafalgar Square, but not before passing the Sherlock Holmes (which is on Northumberland Street. The distance between this and Baker Street makes me think that the address of the restaurant in ASIP is a sneaky reference to this restaurant, rather than anything remotely geographically sound. Thanks, Moffat, for breaking London just that little bit more.)
Naturally being in Trafalgar Square gave me a perfect chance to make my walk of the Strand and Fleet Street. Unfortunately, most of its literary and general history was pretty well hidden (this made me a bit sad. I mean, it used to be publishers and apartments and things. I am apparently about a hundred years too late). It wasn't until Fleet Street that things began to look like proper London to me. There was also a pasty/pie place that looked very good that I thought about stopping at until the fact that I was on Fleet Street gave me pause, and I remembered that I intended to hunt down a fish and chips place for dinner. I also attempted to poke my head in to the Royal Courts of Justice, but not one was wearing wigs or robes (at least, not by this point in the afternoon), so yet another of my outdated hopes was dashed.
As an aside, before embarking on this journey I was convinced that at some point London (or Paris) I would finally have some kind of epiphany that would explain why the British culture produces proper time travel fiction and we in the US (mostly) don't. I was pretty sure something in the mix of very old and very new would spark that. But I'd be lying if I said I ever had that epiphany while I was there. Now, however, looking at the above paragraph, I can certainly see a good motivation for time travel. However, I've also had that feeling of being just a bit too late here, too (though it's measured in decades, here, rather than centuries), so it's certainly not something I can pin on The Old World alone. There's just more history to wish you'd been around for there, and maybe that's enough? I suppose this warrants further research and I'll just have to go back once I've worked a bit more on the theory behind this. I also need to do further research into whether the inability to walk in a straight line or know where you're going in London, even when you have a map, is what spawned the dry, stiff upper lip British sense of humor. It's got to be a coping mechanism to deal with the underground.
After I finished my walk, I was finally a bit peckish, so I decided to hunt down the fish and chips place
lisiche recommended to me all the way back in July. Despite her seemingly-vague directions, my only trouble in finding the place was that one of the turns should've been a right turn, and the coin shop was actually after Costa's, not before. The whole thing kind of made a loop around the block, which is not what I was picturing when I first read the directions but hey, it worked, so I'm not complaining. And Costa's was still there, and it was good, and everyone who came in seemed to know the owner and everyone else in there, so it was warm and cosy and I felt very conspicuous, but no moreso than I feel in any neighborhood restaurant where I'm not part of the neighborhood. I should've walked around this area a bit more, since it was the only really residential bit of London I set foot in, but it was dark and my earlier experiences told me that I was not unlikely to get myself lost, so I hopped the tube again, randomly got off at Bank for a few nighttime blurry bus pictures and then headed back to the hostel, where I discovered the extent to which I occasionally speak the Queen's English in an American accent (when I woke the sleeping Australian girl in the bunk below mine and she offered to turn the light on and I surprised myself by saying "No worries, I already sorted everything in the corridor."). I also did this kind of thing to an English guy in the elevator at work today. Mercifully I don't seem to do this as much when in normal midwestern company, and it usually doesn't seem to strike these exotically-accented people as weird to hear such un-American turns of phrase in an American accent. And oh goodness, I've been painfully aware of my accent since I got back. To the point where I'm noticing when I emphasize my goshawful midwestern 'a' sounds and when I tend to gloss them over in my usual Canadianish affectations. (I hate the midwestern nasal 'a' and have done all I can to get rid of it. I didn't have it much in the first place, but being in Chicago I live in constant fear that it's going to rub off and I'll wake up some morning saying 'maa' instead of mom or something.)Right-o. So, the second day was pretty aimless, once I realized I'd already done Baker Street, the Strand and Fleet Street. That pretty much left me with a mission to see a play/show of some sort, and a fair desire to do some wandering. I decided I could afford to spend some of the morning museum-ing, but I underestimated the extent to which I was tired of paintings, and just plain tired (I'm sorry, Louvre, but you wore me out a bit in that respect). I wandered around Tate Britain for a bit, mostly admiring the Blakes (this trip definitely reminded me how cool William Blake is) and the Mondrians and a little of the modern stuff, and being amused at how often Whistler seemed to change his mind about frames.
From there I wandered up toward Victoria Station again, with no real aim in mind. I grabbed some lunch, walked around some, and then, spying a full-sized Tesco, decided that I needed to try to find
sketchyheart's mythical vanilla tea (no luck) and that I needed some Jaffa Cakes. I did manage to find Jaffa Cakes (after browsing the tea/biscuit/tea cake/various other edible tea accessory aisle several times), and I took them into what I thought was the check-out line. It turned out to be the chip and pin line. I tried not to laugh to myself about this (because it really did resemble the scene in TBB), but as I moved up in line I slowly began to dread the experience. I had cash, but I couldn't see anything on the machines other than pin card things. I'd already tried to use my card once earlier in the day, to buy some extra batteries for my camera. The ordeal had required two cashiers and took nearly ten minutes, during which I apologized profusely for my stupid American credit card, and for making the whole transaction far more complicated than it should've been. Thankfully, as I navigated the touch-screen menu and placed my item on the baggage area, I managed to locate the spot for bills and change without looking like a complete noob. My victory complete, I emerged with my Jaffa Cakes in tow and headed for the nearest tube station. And this is where I inadvertently passed Scotland Yard and finally failed at not laughing. (In part because, really, should police have a sign that spins? Really? One that isn't fictional? Because that sign looks like it's just designed for TV. Also because, giddy from my defeat of the chip and pin machine, I was only a few Jaffa Cakes away from thinking it was a good idea to go inside and ask if Sherlock Holmes was around and if maybe he wanted to help me figure out why the Tube is so bloody nonsensical. I mean, I think it was the first day when I tried to take the circle line somewhere and ended up at the end of the line. I mean, if a line is the "Circle" line, one thing it should not have is an end. And to make matters worse, I had to get off the train and change platforms in order to transfer back onto the Circle line in order to go in a circle. And let's not even start on the Northern Line, because we're not even to that part of this tale yet.)Actually, this is taking far longer than I thought. I will have to finish this up tomorrow, because I'm still partly on a backwards sleep schedule, and I kind of like waking up at 6:30 in the morning and having time to eat breakfast and get things done before I leave for work, so I'm going to try to stick with this nonsense schedule as long as possible.
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From:
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By Hiro Yakamura, do you mean Hiro Nakamura, of Heroes? If so, what does a Hiro Nakamura impression entail? Was he shouting, "Yatta!" with his arms in the air? Squeezing his eyes closed and shaking his cheeks in an attempt to teleport/time travel? Having an epic bromance with Ando Masahashi?
(I Googled "Hiro Yakamura", and this journal entry was the eighth result on the result page.)
From:
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From:
no subject
It sometimes weirds me out how quick google is to catalog things, especially things as entirely useless as this.