Duly refreshed, we took off on foot through Hyde Park, where Sarah split off. Amanda and I continued east, making our way up to Piccadilly Circus and adjusting course to arrive at Trafalgar Square. It was reassuring that I could find these places with scant need of a map, expertly accessing memories from my family trip to London and Wales a year before. It was a relatively clear day, so the view over the lions to Big Ben was nice.
We had found a nice guided walking tour of the Westminster area to join in the afternoon, so we made our way in that direction, passing the guards on horseback and swinging by Downing Street to see what we could see. We met up with the guide on schedule outside of the Westminster tube station.
There are a wide variety of such walking tours available for a nominal fee, which really seems like a great way to see parts of cities that otherwise you wouldn’t. There might be similar groups operating in cities such as NYC and DC, but they seem particularly well-managed yet informal in London. Regardless, the guide took our group around the Westminster area, giving a good amount of history about its separate role from London proper, points of interest, current functions, and all with a requisite British sense of humor.
The idea of history is clearly different in a place that has been continuously inhabited since well before the Romans, but the walk really drove that home. Amanda also displayed her incredible napping abilities by momentarily falling asleep standing up while we were by the Thames.
From there, we walked through St. James Park over to Buckingham Palace. It wasn’t near time for the changing of the guards, but there was a group of them marching down a nearby road. Before long, the day was nearing to a close, so we made our way back to Sarah’s for dinner, showers, and a well-earned snooze.
The following morning we were up at a good hour to join Sarah and a couple of her hiking buddies on a walk outside the town of Otford. The friends’ dogs came along too, a golden retriever and a terrier who couldn’t have been happier to see each other in the train station.
The system of public paths in the UK is a very nice holdover from earlier days for those of us who like to wander. Allying oneself with expats who have a comprehensive guidebook of circuits hitting local pubs perfectly at lunchtime is a wise course of action. The walk was beautiful, through woods, fields, and small towns. We periodically needed our rain gear, but that didn’t come as a surprise.
That evening, we met up with Malarkey for delicious Indian food. It was great to see him, and after dinner we continued the evening at a pub nearby.
I quickly became reacquainted with the fact that lagers and ales actually have a substantive difference in other parts of the world and are served accordingly. I’m talking, of course, about warm beer.
Our third and last full day in London, Amanda and I took the Thames Clipper to Greenwich. Finding the right pier took some time, but with some local help (“You’re looking for the Tems Cleepah. CLEE-PAH”) we got on our way. By river was a great way to pass by the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge, neither of which we would have time to explore in depth.
The Navy College is in Greenwich, which is beautifully situated by the river. The chapel is particularly noteworthy, priming us for an entire month of gawking at grand painted ceilings.
We made our way up the hill to where the Prime Meridian is set, where also there was an interesting museum about time pieces (especially the futility of pendulum clocks on ships) and solving the problem of longitude. It’s pretty amazing to think about how people solved very perplexing problems with a small sliver of today’s engineering know-how.
There was a nice market in Greenwich too, a combination of food and unusual antiques (nabbed a few hundred year old postcards), and the Navy Museum, despite being under significant renovation and/or construction, was a good stop as well. A big exhibit on the slave trade really brought home what an incredible movement of human beings it was. And although people are quick to point out that the UK had “long-ago” banished slavery by the time our civil war came around, after seeing the years I hardly think that a couple decades warrants much smugness.
We CLEE-PAH’ed our way back in time to meet up with Sarah for Greek food before seeing Much Ado About Nothing at the Globe Theater.
This was actually my third time at the theater, but each performance is very enjoyable, and it’s reassuring to see it existing for more than the tourists and on the merits of the performers. Thanks to Sarah for bringing some extra warm clothes though for that night. Amanda was quick to spot an old friend among the cast, none other than Joseph Marcell, the butler from Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Good to see that his life story didn’t begin or end with that role. After the play, we walked across the Millennium Bridge to enjoy the illuminated St. Paul’s Cathedral.
The following morning, we got our bags ready for Italy before heading out to see more than just the exterior of St. Paul’s. It’s always an impressive building, even more so to think of how it managed to survive WWII nearly unscathed despite deliberate targeting by the Nazis.
As we stepped outside to see Malarkey once more before we left, the folly of betting against rain and leaving proper clothing at the house became real. We managed to make it across the Thames and over to Borough Market only a few minutes away from being soaked to the bone, and thankfully somehow without slipping on our squeaky flip-flops into oncoming traffic even once.
There we met Malarkey, who managed to avoid the worst. Warm drinks and sampling the wares helped to warm us up, and we bade farewell to Malarkey for the time being after he accompanied us back to the tube on the north side of the river.
With that and a final quick lunch with Sarah, Amanda and I were off to Gatwick with our hiking packs for a flight to Italy. Evening was a pretty remarkable time to be flying in terms of the view, and our path took us over the recognizable sights of the White Cliffs of Dover, Paris hugging the Seine, and immense mountains as night took over.
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