Saturday, May 19
London Calling
6:30 AM, Newark Airport. How can the Newark terminal have no coffee beyond the security check-in? A small, inadequate coffee cart slowly opens for business and sleepy patrons hover, waiting for a fix.
Five middle-aged blonde women who sound like they’re from the Midwest, suck all the air out of the gate area. They must have found coffee somewhere. One of them has a shrill, boomerang voice. We sit as far from them as we can.
7:20 AM, boarding our Virgin Atlantic flight. We walk past the plush, sleep-pods to the economy seats in the rear of the plane. We rate Virgin higher than British Airways because Virgin keeps us better entertained. Gene predicts the five Marx sisters will sit near us on the plane, but we are not subject to that cruelty. I see and hear them in the ladies' room in Heathrow and I see and hear them in the Customs line too.
8:00 PM, London. Customs takes more than an hour. The Heathrow Express train to Paddington Station, plus the taxi to St Giles Hotel takes another hour. I worry about our hotel because L. made a sour-lemon face when I told her where we are staying. I worry me because I price-shopped this hotel. I made sure the hotel has air-conditioning though.
Saturday night's z'all right
Our taxi pulls up to the hotel on the eastern edge of Soho. The St. Giles Hotel is big, bright and bustling. We hear laughter from bar inside and feel relieved. The hotel looks fine.
There they are, the five blonde bombshells from the plane, checking into the St. Giles Hotel behind us in line. I say too sweetly, oh you were on the same plane as we were! They look at me suspiciously and for the first time, are silent.
We walk around Soho Square to the Indian restaurant C. recommended, The Delhi Brasserie. We go down tiny stairs to a tiny dining room. I have Tandoori Shrimp Masala. We have the best Garlic Nan ever. (We experience all our “best evers” when traveling.) We share two bottles of Chardonnay and outlast two sets of people at the table to my left.
Outside, I chat with a Danish couple. The man speaks with fast enthusiasm; he tells me the Eurostar train used to be cool, but now it’s “just another train”. He tells me I must see Place de la Concorde in Paris. I think he is telling me that it is related to the Concorde aircraft, but now I realize he was just giving me a reference point.
This neighborhood is buzzing on a Saturday night.
Manchester's Sportz Dogz
We have a nightcap at the hotel bar, The Lazy Dog. I keep thinking the name is The Ugly Dog. The bar is filled and a bachelorette party filters through the crowd. The veiled bride-to-be wobbles around the bar working on her list of assignments, variations on approaching and kissing strange guys. The bridesmaids wear pink fuzzy tentacles on their heads.
It’s Karaoke Night and Gene signs up to sing “We are the Champions”, though the night ends before his name is called.
We sit with a group of middle-aged men from Manchester with barely decipherable accents. They are really drunk and Gene gets them singing along to “The Lady is a Tramp”.
The closing Karaoke song, one I don’t recognize, starts off kind of sappy but the entire room sings along. It’s a big sports anthem, “You’ll Never Walk Alone”.
Our friends must be the only ones from Manchester in the crowd and therefore, hold a different sports team dear. This misguided loyalty becomes apparent to other patrons. A red-faced guy in a red t-shirt is singing directly to one of our Manchester boys who sings back in almost an operetta dialogue. It appears friendly to me, but I am mistaken. Our Manchester boy says he wants to punch the guy in the red tee. He says this after his desired victim walks away.
Jackhammer Fans
Our room is more like a cabin in the Wisconsin woods than a hotel room in London. Maybe it is a typical hotel room in London, but we're comparing it to The Trafalgar Hilton where we stayed in September. The large black marble bathroom is disproportionately superior to the room itself.
We can’t close the window and it sounds like a jackhammer is pounding relentlessly outside. Gene calls the front desk and a man comes to our room but he can’t shut the window either. The man returns with a screwdriver and gets the window almost closed. Only then we realize that “jackhammer” is the fan. (That’s the air-conditioning?) The hotel’s online description said “climate controlled” which could mean a fan and not an air-conditioner, depending on what century you live in.
Sunday, May 20
Easy Like Sunday Morning
We sit outside a patisserie at a tiny blue table and eat chocolate croissants and drink Café Ole for breakfast. Very French. The streets are empty in contrast to last night’s revelry. Soho is nursing a hangover.
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| Gene | The Soho Patisserie |
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| Croissant | Kate |
The Beatles' Walking Tour
We meet the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour outside the Tottenham Court Underground, by the Dominion Theater. Richard, the tour guide, is tiny with a full mop of wiry hair and bumps on his face. He talks out of the side of his mouth like Edward G. Robinson. His Beatle stories are boring and Gene knows them all anyway. Gene says the tales themselves are interesting; Richard just renders them boring.
Richard shows us the studio where Yellow Submarine was animated and we see Paul McCartney’s offices, both in Soho Square. We see the outside of the Trident Studio in St Anne’s Alley, where “Hey, Jude” was recorded. A man leans out from an upper window of the studio, listening to the tour guide. We walk on the car-free Carnaby Street and see a mural of Soho, inspired by the St Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band album cover.
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| The Dominion: We Will Rock You | Soho Mural | Paul McCartney's Offices in Soho Square |
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| Paul's Studio Logo | Side View (barely) ofLondon Palladium |
We Stray from the Group
We see the side entrance of the Lodon Palladium where Beatlemania began, Richard tells us. The tour heads away from the Palladium and walks single-file on a narrow sidewalk. I am behind a few people who are walking too slowly. I realize they are not with our group. Gene has stopped to get a photo of the London Palladium and just like that, we are separated from the tour group. We try to catch up for about a block, stunned that such a large group could disappear in two minutes. Gene is sorry we lost the Beatles’ drone before we saw 7 Savile Row where the Beatles performed their final performance on the rooftop.
Ale & Pie with the Barkers
The Barkers show up at 2:00 PM with their perfect children, Leah, Lucas and Eden. We follow Kerry and Carl in a nearby pub and I’m surprised that kids are allowed. Just as we sit at a picnic-style bench, the staff tells us kids must sit outside. So we do and it is nice out. I get a spinach, mushroom and goat cheese quiche. Gene has a poached salmon sandwich.
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Lucas and Kerry | The Barkers: Click Pic for Video |
Chocolate Heaven at Harrod's
Chocolates, stacked in pyramids behind glass counters, formed and decorated in countless shapes and patterns. Ribboned boxes in stacks in the aisles, tubes of chocolate, tins of chocolate, baskets of chocolate: chocolate every way possible.
The rooms of Harrod's food court lead into one another like a railroad apartment in New York. That is, if Willie Wonka had a railroad apartment in New York. A sushi bar graces the center of the next room and more glass counters display gourmet main dishes to take home and pretend you cooked. Private-label Harrods champagne in green totes. Cases of cheese, figs, gift baskets. Produce of the most unreal green.
The candy room: every shape of sugary confection, all-day suckers, a gelato bar, with taste flights. There’s a tapas bar in the next room, with aisles of oil and vinegar and beauty products.
I hear opera, but it is not a recording. An opera singer performs live behind the pizza bar, while hand-throwing pizza crusts. Hired for his singing and not his pizza-crust throwing, the singer/chef holds up a doughy circle with three big holes.
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| Video: Singing Chef |
Come Back to The Nellie Dean
We say goodbye to Kerry and Carl and kids at the Knightsbridge Underground. Then we hit the HMV in Piccadilly Circus. Gene buys Cat Stevens’ first two albums, plus one by Richard Hell.
We plug on to find a pub with hand-drawn ale and fish & chips. We approach several pubs that are closed or don’t have the hand-drawn ale we came for. We drink a beer at the Nellie Dean, but they don’t serve food.
We find a little Mediterranean restaurant. The mussels are good, big and meaty like New Zealand mussels, in a cream sauce. My seafood risotto is too rich. We have a final, watery drink at The Lazy Dog in our hotel.
Monday, May 21
Parting on the Eurostar
The garbage trucks are louder than the constant whirring of the fan and we spend a long night drifting in and out of sleep in the noisy room.
In the morning, we check out of St Giles and taxi to Waterloo Station. We are taking the Eurostar train to Paris today.
For the second time, London has left us wanting more and we look forward to returning to this great old city. Living in New York, we experience the city’s headaches, stresses and hardships more often than its glories. Visiting London, we can leave the trials of daily life to the ones who live here and just enjoy.
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| The Royal Opera House |
Friday, May 25
The Other Side of the Thames
After four stunning days in Paris, we drag tired ass back to London.
The Tower Bridge Hilton on the south bank of the Thames River, our hotel for our final European night, is the best of the trip. After the noisy St Giles room and the spartan Mercure Chateau Landon, we welcome the plushness of our Hilton room. Tired from traveling and a week of rich food and wine, we stop at Marks & Spencer Food Market for some snacks for the room.
We check out the traditional pub across the street, The Shipwright Arms, a pub full of dirty-faced laborers having pints after work. The men are so dirty Gene wonders if they are coalminers. The bar staff employs a dumbwaiter stationed beside our table. We admire the simple efficiency of the low-tech device. We order fish and chips and squeeze numerous packets of ketchup and mayo onto our plates. The fish is better than the North Sea Fish company, which previously had our nod for the best fish & chips in London.
We watch the Helen Mirren film, The Queen in bed before falling asleep early.
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| Bead Shop in Covent Gardens | London Record Shop |
Saturday, May 26
Borough Market
This morning is our last in London. We walk to Borough Market just as it is opening. Some vendors are still setting up their fruit and vegetable stands, or their cheese stands, meat stands, fish stands or pastry stands, or even organic mushroom stands.
We buy muffins and coffee and eat breakfast outside.
We wander back to our hotel, finding some art galleries along the way. We walk by the Coffee & Tea Museum and the Britain at War Museum, but there’s no time to go in.
We taxi all the way back to Heathrow because the concierge explains that the fixed rate is only slightly more expensive than a taxi to Paddington Station to the Heathrow Express. It doesn’t take much to persuade us, as a single taxi ride rather than trains and transfers sounds good. It is a long ride, but we get to see some extra final bits of London before we head home.
