London

Let’s finish this up. There’s a lot going on around here, more coming, so I need to wrap up this narrative. Today: London, then a couple more posts on where we stayed and what we ate – and then onward.

As I mentioned before, we’d be flying in and out of London, but in the trip planning, London didn’t play a huge role. After all, we’d been there before! And it wasn’t that long ago – 2017 to be exact. So let’s use London as a base for a couple of day trips – definitely Canterbury, and maybe Portsmouth (the reason).

I was open though, considering it would be the end of our trip and we just be mighty tired of hopping on trains.

(Narrator: They were.)

And then: When we arrived in London on Monday afternoon, checked into our hotel and took a walk around, the youngest – now 17, who’d been 11 during that last trip, said, “Yeah, I don’t remember any of this.”

And considering he’s the museum and history guy, I figured – well, maybe we’d just better stick to London.

Good choice. We saw a lot we’d not seen before, and that youngest had plenty of time in the British Museum, some with us, and more on his own.

So let’s do a quick recap:

First, the trip down from Edinburgh. I had purchased tickets way ahead of time for a train trip from Edinburgh to London. Total cost was about $120 for the three of us for about a 4.5 hour trip. Not bad. (It would have been a lot more if I’d waited until the last minute – that’s the way it is with most European train tickets).

Even though the strike was supposedly over, the system was still experiencing fallout from the previous week, plus there had been cable theft down the line that meant there was a section at which the train would have to be manually guided.

Now, I am still confused about this, even though my seatmate explained it to me, but there was additional pressure because of cancelled trains and so on, the line had essentially lifted all reservations, making it possible for anyone to get on any train. At each stop, more people kept getting on, to the point that the train manager was telling people to get off and that she wasn’t going to let the train move forward unless people got off. Luckily, we had our seats, but it was an interesting, slower ride…

NOW – here’s an interesting point, especially for those of us in a country like this one where “consumer protection” means that you need to perform a surgical operation to open a ketchup bottle, but good luck at getting a company to respond to a complaint.

The British rail system is VERY clear and direct about how customers are to be compensated for delays. In fact, it’s almost automatic. Our train arrived in London a little less than an hour late – as such, we were due a 50% refund. If it had been over an hour, it would have been 100%. (A good incentive to make the trains run on time).

Getting that refund? Automatic. A couple of hours after the journey, I got an email from LNER giving me a simple link to click for the refund. I clicked it – and that’s it. Three days later the refund had been processed and had been credited to my credit card.

Amazing.

Navigating the crush at King’s Cross (they were holding crowds of outgoing travelers back behind a line as the incoming travelers disembarked and got out of the station), we walked to our hotel, checked in, and then set out. We walked down towards Westminster, went to Vespers at Westminster Cathedral (no photos allowed) , saw a couple of my books in the wild at the St. Paul Media bookstore (unfortunately none of the books I actually get income from, since both of these were works-for-hire). Saw other obligatory sites.

The next morning (Tuesday), I woke up early, as per usual, and, thinking about the London trip a friend of mine had taken a few weeks before, looked up a tour of the Royal Court of Justices – and there it was. I emailed the fellow to see if there were spots – there were – so I got us signed up.

It was a good tour (no photos allowed inside) of the Royal Court of Justice, the Inns of Justice and then the exterior of the Old Bailey – we were given a schedule of that afternoons trials and instructions for how to attend. I would have been up for it, but others weren’t that day. The guide is a former journalist with strong views on the system. He also offered insight on the current conflict related to payment of what we would call public defenders – they are woefully underpaid and overworked – a common problem, I now see.

Lunch at the Seven Dials Market, where they have a wonderful, marvelous creation called the Cheese Bar – perhaps you’ve heard of or experienced conveyer belt sushi restaurants. It’s that – but cheese. Yeah, I know. Heaven, right?

And potentially very expensive – fortunately I popped in (the guys were downstairs eating other things) on Tuesday afternoon, when a lot of the selections were 2 pounds/plate. So that worked.

But still – brilliant.

Then…British Museum, where we split up to see what we liked, regrouped, went back to the hotel, and then to the Globe.

I am normally not much interested in cross-gender casting (even though there’s historical precedence for it, for example, Sarah Bernhardt played Hamlet back in 1899) – but I was very interested in the Globe’s production of King Lear, which starred Kathryn Hunter as Lear.

Some of you have seen Joel Coen’s recent film of Macbeth – Hunter played all of the witches, offering an amazing turn with her hyperflexible body (partly due to a car accident when she was young) and distinctive, deep, resonant voice.

Yes, I thought, I could see her as Lear.

It was a wonderful production (no photos, of course) – with the interesting twist of two of the players being out, and since there are no understudies, a couple of actors replaced those out by reading – that is, they had scripts with them. Because they are pros, it was a bit odd for about two seconds, but then flowed very well.

And Hunter was a magnificent Lear. She’s tiny, and, as my sons observed, is completely believable as a wizened old man.

Of course, seating at the Globe is….problematic especially if you’re not prepared, being almost all narrow benches (unless you are a Groundling, of course). I’d read that it was best to get seats that were either the back row of a section, giving you a wall to lean back on, or the front row, giving you a rail to lean forward on. All of the latter were sold out by the time I got tickets, so I went with the former – which was fine, but still, the benches were so narrow, the wall didn’t help a lot – I’d say go for the rail if you can.

The next morning (Wednesday), we separated – the youngest went back to the British Museum for the morning, and the other guy and I wandered a bit – we started down at Liberty London, made our way up Regents Street, then took the tube to Portabello Road – there weren’t as many vendors as there would be on a Saturday, but still, there was a bit going on, and we did some exploration.

Later in the afternoon, we all met up at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where then we separated and saw things there and at the Natural History Museum. I spent a lot of time with objects I’d enjoyed on the last visit – the massive altarpieces, most of German provenance – and then the Cast Courts (there’s an entire museum in Paris dedicated to casts like this, which I greatly enjoyed when we were there in (gulp) 2012).

Pub dinner near the hotel. Flight the next day was at 2, so no hurry – took the regular subway out to Heathrow – but thank goodness we got there at 11 – the check in lines (and yes, we had to check luggage because of some liquids I’d purchased) and security were ridiculous. Thank God we at least didn’t have to do a Covid test.

The flight from the ATL to BHM was, of course running about an hour late, but nonetheless we were home by 10, and ready for the Next Thing, whatever it is.

So as I said, general reflections, a full rundown of accommodations and food forthcoming.