A Full Day

It’s Tuesday today, at least I think it is. It all runs together a little. The alarm went off at 7:30 and we got up and moved furniture a little to make space for us to go through the modified day 2 of BodyFit, even though both of us wanted to go back to sleep. Afterwards we got cleaned up and went down for the extensive included breakfast buffet. I didn’t find out you could get oatmeal until too late, but we both got filled up. I like the yogurt here and in Ireland better than home.

We had so much fun with the hopper bus in Ireland that we decided to do it here (tickets conveniently available at the concierge desk), but I’m not sure that was the best thing. The city is much bigger and more congested, so we spent an hour on the bus and didn’t really see too many sights – mostly expensive houses and places to shop. By the time we got to St Paul’s my zephyrhillis had flared up, so we got off the bus and toured the cathedral.

The best part was the climb to the top of the dome, which is over 1,000 steps and has the most amazing view. It starts with a wide, shallow spiral staircase with wooden treads, then moves to stone treads, and finally a series of spiral staircases made of iron. One you get to the top, the walkway is narrow and the railing is old, so we both alternated between being blown away by the view and having panic attacks about the height. We’ll return to those feelings later today. Both of us preferred the climb up to the climb down. The former is just tiring, the latter adds in the fear of falling. But we made it safely to the bottom with no mishaps. We visited the toilets there several times, because the ladies’ room won the Loo of the Year award. I kid you not – there is such an award, and it won it. I didn’t find it all that spectacular, although it is the only place we’ve found that has paper towels for drying your hands as well as the ubiquitous blowers.

By the time we got down I was starving. We’d come up Fleet Street on the bus and the tour guide had said there were good pubs on it, so we headed back that way. I wanted pie, and the first pub we came to didn’t have any, so we continued on. The second one we came to was called Punch, and it advertised a large gin selection as well as “award winning pies”. So we went in and it was perfect. For one thing, we were the only non-locals as far as I could tell. For another thing they had DoomBar beer on draft, which is named after Dave (his nickname is Doom) and which I really liked. Also the food was good, it was quiet, and the peas were tasty. It was a nice break in the day. One odd thing was they had a TV turned to BBC news (that’s not odd), and in the corner of the screen was someone repeating everything in sign language. It’s like closed-captioning, only not as useful to the general population.

Our plan was to get back on the bus and head to Westminster Abbey, but after we’d waited for the bus a while we realized we needed to get there in less than an hour, so we popped back on to the tube. We got off Bank, which shows on the map as connecting to Monument. It does, but it’s a 5 or 10 minute walk underground, up and down stairs and escalators and along moving walkways. It’s really an experience of its own. Also during the journey there were some places where this signs said “keep left”, and others where they said “keep right”, and others where you could walk on either side, so you needed to stay alert. We eventually got there, and then got off at Westminster, which has 6 separate exits, covering most of a city block. Fortunately the signage was excellent – as it has been everywhere in London – and we made our way to exit 6, navigated the street crossings, and made our way to the Abbey.

One of our favorite movies is called Holy Matrimony, and it has a scene where Monty Woolley, playing our hero, climbs into the organ loft and begins crying. He is dragged ignominiously out of the Abbey, and when he is rescued from the clutches of the police by Alice (played by Gracie Fields), the police tell her that he was ‘owlin’ like an ‘ound in the Abbey. So Dave and I had agreed not to howl. At the entrance they convinced us to take the audio tour devices, where you punch in the number of what you are standing in front of and they talk to you about it. It is very time consuming and more information than we wanted, and after 9 or 10 stops we had both had enough. We continued the tour in blissful ignorance of the burial dates. Many famous people are buried there, but our favorite is the stone for John Harrison, inventor of the Harrison clock, which is marked with the longitude of the stone. This made us laugh. Dave stood on Sir Isaac Newton, and we both walked over several composers, who, one assumes, have now decomposed. They also have signs for toilets which do not exist and therefore will never win loo of the year.

Interestingly, exit 1 of the Westminster tube stop is for the London Eye, which was our next stop. The other concierge, whose name escapes me, had told us he didn’t recommend it, but we were determined. We payed a little extra to get the fast track tickets, which work the same way they do in Disneyland – you basically just walk on to the ride.And quite a ride it is! It’s like a huge Ferris wheel with pods attached. The engineering of it is astonishing. Each of the pods holds 20 or so people, and they have two tracks around them that rotate so that the pods stay in the same position as wheel goes around. The views are spectacular (it’s higher than the dome of St Paul’s by quite a bit) and the weather couldn’t have been nicer – about 70 and mostly sunny. It moves very slowly and smoothly, so there’s no swooping feeling in the belly, but it is very high up, so we did have that conflict of emotions again. For me, more on the way up than the way down, which makes no logical sense – it’s just as far down no matter which way you’re travelling. It moves so slowly that they generally don’t stop it to let people on and off – it’s less jarring than stepping off an escalator. Especially an escalator in a tube station with billions of people behind you.

By this time it was almost 5, and we were ready to head home. We found the Waterloo station and tubed back to Victoria, our home station, where once again my Oyster card didn’t work at the exit. But this time I just ignored it, and we went back to the hotel. I did some writing and Dave did some researching, which is how it goes. The pub lunch at Punch was huge, so we didn’t want an elaborate dinner, and we needed to leave by 6:45 for Covent Garden, so we just ate at the bar in the hotel – it’s not great food, but it is good enough.

Here’s what about Covent Garden Station: the platform is 15 stories (almost 200 steps) below the street. There are signs everywhere telling you that the elevators are faster, and to only use the stairs in emergencies. It’s possible that if we hadn’t already done 2,000 steps (counting all the tube transfers) Dave would have wanted to see if it was true, but as it was we were happy to queue up for the elevator, which holds quite a lot of people so we didn’t wait long at all.

Once we got to the top, we had a short, slightly tense time of not being able to figure out how to get where we were going. We had gotten started a little later than we’d planned, and Dave’s iPhone was sensing the stress and refusing to cooperate. Eventually I asked one of the pedicab drivers, who tried to intimidate me into taking a ride instead of just telling me where to go. I gave him my best “don’t sass your mother” stare, and he caved.

We got to the Lyceum in plenty of time and our seats were pretty good. The show was Lion King, and we loved it. The audience was about 1/3 kids, 1/3 parents, and 1/3 adults who just wanted to see the show. The set and costumes were amazing, and unlike the Coaster Theater in Cannon Beach (which we love, don’t get me wrong!) everybody in the production could sing and act. My favorite was the rhinoceros, although there was also a zebra (say zebra, not zeebra) who could really move. Also the cheetah – “never mind the head growing out of my hind end, I’m a cheetah”. They’d put in a couple topical moments – they even had “Let it Go” from Frozen – and it was just a super enjoyable evening.

Getting home we knew Covent Garden would be closed (it is exit only until November), but I’d seen the signs for the Leicester Square station while we were looking for the Lyceum, so it was an easy trip there. We got to the platform and a train had just pulled up so we walked right on, same thing at Green Park for the second train, so we were back before we knew it, and my card even worked at the exit.  Up to our room, more writing for me, more researching for Dave, and that’s the end of our first (very) full day in London. If you’ve read this far, congratulations! I’m hoping to do and write less tomorrow.

This one's for you, Tim.