England
Swings like a Pendulum do…
We travelled from Strasbourg to Paris via the
TGV high-speed train then onto London via the Eurostar. Such a contrast! On the TGV we felt like we were on a
first-class seat on a Luxury Liner and on the Eurostar we felt like were in
cattle class on a Mexican bus. So far in
Europe the trains have been the way to travel.
They are comfortable and hassle-free.
You can get up and wander around for two reasons – there is enough room
to walk around and your legs function because they have not been rammed
up to your chin by the seat in front of you.
Getting off the train is simple – you don’t need to massage your legs
hardly at all to get the feeling back - you simply stand up and step off the
train. The Eurostar, on the other hand,
is crowded, smelly, shabby and noisy.
Like the airport they hassle you at customs and security then make you
sit and stew in hard plastic seats so that by the time the cattle-call is
sounded to board the train you are in just the right mood. The Eurostar is, however, the cheapest and
quickest way to get from Paris to London.
What do you do in London when you only have a
few days? First off we decided to visit
Buckingham Palace. We were not the only
ones with that idea. One of the things
we noticed were the number of people who got dressed up to go to the
palace. We saw lots of women with frilly
dresses and excessive hats and men in Morning Coats (tie and tails) who just
seemed to wander around taking pictures of each other. Mind you there were lots of other people
there dressed in more casual attire such as tuxedos and evening gowns. And then there was us. I wondered why people
were all fancied up – you don’t go in the palace - all you do is stand around
outside and peer through the gates like a homeless person whose nose is pressed
up to the restaurant window. I was
feeling slightly miffed that Betty and Phil didn’t come out and ask us in for
tea – but I guess I am partly responsible since I didn’t call ahead.
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| Perhaps an editorial on the Monarchy? |
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| More crap in front of Buckingham Palace
After not having tea at Buckingham Palace we
thought we would go and not buy something at Harrods. Harrods is the world’s largest department
store both in size and in cost. They
have a dress code. As we got to the door
the security goon immediately stood up and stepped in front of us. Then he got a look at Telen. Apparently Harrods did a study that found
that the average Chinese tourist spends almost three times as much at Harrods
as do members of the “Great Unwashed” such as myself. He reluctantly stepped aside with a supercilious
look, curled his lip and allowed us in.
Telen bowed deeply, smiled and called him an arrogant prig in Cantonese,
then snapped her fingers at me and I followed her in like a proper little
houseboy.
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| Harrods Department Store -- Beware all ye who enter herein |
Everything was as expected. We went into the pen room and saw a pen that
was worth 70,000 pounds (roughly $100,000).
What could you possibly be writing that required a pen worth 70,000
pounds? You couldn’t use the pen to
write big cheques because you wouldn’t have any money left in your
account. How expensive is the ink? Would it write on regular paper or would you
have to have paper made from an endangered tree? We saw an iPhone that was made from gold and
diamonds that sold for 250,000 pounds.
Who would you need a phone like that to speak to? Not me - my phone
probably couldn’t connect to it. Do you
have to have a special network to use it on?
What happens when you wanted to
switch from an iPhone 4s to an iPhone 5?
Harrods was full of people who were wealthy and
had the disposable income to spend a great deal on clothes and accessories. And
that was just the staff. The customers
were dressed in fancy clothes that could only have been bought at Harrods. When
you have been travelling for a prolonged period you learn to do with as few
clothes as possible. We felt like a
couple of scruffy, vulgar lowlifes scuttling around in the shadows hoping to
remain unseen.
One goes to shows in London, of course. We decided to bite the bullet and went to
“Les Miserables”. Once again we were met
with a bit of suspicion as we tried to enter the theatre. The show was incredibly well done with fantastic
music and singing. They had two children
in the show that blew us away. The little
girl looked to be about 5 or 6 years old and did not show up in the final bow
at the end. I guess she had to go to
bed. School night. The little boy was about 10 years old and
looked like he was having a lot of fun on stage. It was worth the price of admission, indeed!
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| Les Miserables |
While we were in Central London poking around
amongst the rich and aristocratic a horrible scene was playing out back near
our accommodation. You have probably
read about the 2 men who ran down the soldier and butchered him on the street
with machetes and knives. That occurred
2 blocks from where we were staying. We
had walked that street the previous day when we were lost. When we arrived in the area there were lots
of people on the streets but the next day there were none and we saw lots of
armed police and helicopters around.
There is no way to make light of this appalling
crime. The two men who did this stayed
at the scene of the crime and asked onlookers to video them. They said it was in revenge for all the
Muslims killed but these men were British born and had no experience with the
wars in the Middle East. They killed and butchered a young man with a wife and
a young 2-year-old son just to get their 5 minutes of fame. That is sickening, unforgiveable and
cowardly.
We went to the Tower of London like all dutiful
tourists. We picked the worst day
weather-wise to do so. When I looked out
the window in the morning I thought the rain looked odd to me until I realized
that, it was, in fact, snow. It snowed
briefly then became heavy rain and it was damp and very cold. When we got to the Tower it started to hail
and it hailed for about 20 minutes. We
left Canada to get away from all that crap.
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| A Yeoman Warder aka Beefeater and myself at the Tower of London. I am the one on the left. Her job is to guard the Crown Jewels. and smile a lot for tourist pictures. |
The Tower of London is more than a tower – it
is a working palace. People live there
– mostly the Yeoman Warders (better known as the Beefeaters) and a few honorary
this and that’s. People also died there
in droves. The Tower of London has its
dark side. Apparently it used to be that
when you annoyed the Royalty in some way they removed your head and hung it
from London Bridge. This procedure often
took place at the Tower of London. The
most famous example of this is Ann Boleyn but there are hundreds of bodies
buried below St. Peter’s Chapel in the Tower of London. Another example of this
is Sir Walter Raleigh who was beheaded to smooth the feathers of the King of
Spain. Walter got and still is getting
his revenge. He imported tobacco and has been slowly killing and disfiguring
most of the world ever since. Don’t piss
off Wally!
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| London Bridge. This is where they used to hang the heads. Now it is just where they have car accidents |
Nowadays if you annoy the Royalty you get a
stern look from Elizabeth then a few years later you get into a fatal car
accident. Not as fast and showy as the
ax - but effective.
After listening to all the pomp and
circumstance associated with the Royalty I began to feel sorry for them. Sure they have lots of money and they can buy
expensive pens and gold iPhones and live in any number of different palaces but
they cannot just go down to the pub for a few pints and some fish and
chips. Everything they do has to be
choreographed and follow all kinds of obscure protocols. If they fart in public it is reported in the
London Times. Do they have close friends
that they can hang out with and tell dirty jokes to? Could they go for a bike ride without a huge
entourage of seneschals, chamberlains and stewards following them around in
limousines? Could they drink a whole
bottle of coke and try to burp the alphabet?
I don’t think so! So why kill so
many people just to keep the position?
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| Heading into Parliament by my own special entrance. |
Speaking of fish and chips… I thought that since we were in London we
could have some of the real British Fish and Chips. The Brits are not known for their cuisine -
they will boil a lettuce leaf until it turns black and call it either soup or
tea depending on the circumstances. However they are known for their Fish and
Chips and for their Roast Beef and Yorkshire pudding. We wandered all over Soho looking for some
place that sold fish and chips. The
closest we got was to a pub that sold fish and chips yesterday but had changed
the menu this morning. We gave up and I
had a burger and Telen had a Caesar salad.
When we left the restaurant all we could see stretching from one horizon
to the other were Chip shops. I think we
had wandered out of Soho and into the Twilight Zone.
London is not Paris. London is huge, loud and congested. Paris is large but it has a more human feel
to it. You don’t see lots of suits with
anxious faces scurrying around in Paris like you do in London. Paris is majestic whereas London is just ‘in
your face”.
Telen writes:
London comes across both familiar and foreign
to me at the same time. It is familiar
in terms of language and food choices.
It is foreign in shades of subtlety.
For 2 months, we struggled in Italian and French. In London, we no longer needed frequent
checks with our dictionary. We easily
found food that we were familiar with in the supermarket. The dinner we cooked the first night in London
was “bangers and mash”. My tummy told me
that I missed this simple fare. People
we met seem more reserved than in Italy and France. For the first time in our year’s travel
staying in B&B, we never met our host in London. The traffic congestion was overwhelming. The people seemed stressed. Their eyes stared into space as they walked
and at times ran wherever they were fixated on.
My highlight in London is the Les Miserables
musical. It was fantastically put
together. It is hard to imagine that
this performance has been played nightly since 2004. There are at least a dozen other stage plays
and musicals being played in London at a given time. Incredible!
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| Tea at Harrods. Notice Telen is suffering from Etiquette in her left pinkie. |
I forced Rand to come to Harrods with me as I
have heard how it is the most luxurious store in the world. It is quite shocking to see something as
mundane as a pen can carry a 5-figure price tag. We saw an espresso maker that comes with it’s
own cup warmer. I must have made some
loud “exclamation” about this machine. A
very well dressed salesman came up to us saying “this compartment is a warmer
for the espresso cup, worth abut 200 pounds” in a voice cautioning us that we
probably might not be able to afford it.
We turned our nose up and walked casually away, trying to give him the
impression that our espresso maker at home is even more expensive than the one
on display. We did have “afternoon tea”
at Harrods since it should be of highest quality in town. My pot of “Harrods’ special blend” tea was
not bad but not that different from my usual Tetley tea. My scones with cream and jam were
delicious. Rand ordered the “queen of
puddings” with his coffee. He was hungry
and talked on and on about how this “queen of puddings” would be like a bread
pudding with raisins, cinnamon and all the caramel gooey sauces. It turned out that this highly anticipated
treat was a 1 cm x 3 cm layered treat on a big plate. Rand took one bite and it was gone. He looked so pitiful that I shared one of my
scones to appease him.
