English Lesson #11: The french (lower case 'F')

We were in luck, there are two shows on Saturday, one at 9 and one at 11. Tickets were about $100. A little steep, but hell, we can say we’ve ‘been there’. Out of curiosity, I asked if it said what the show was. What I heard was “yada yada yada, featuring topless dancers”. A hundred bucks? That sounds very reasonable. Mark, does that—yes, you think it’s reasonable too? Whoa buddy, sit down, we gotta finish our dinner first big guy! OK then, we think that’s very reasonable.

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English Lesson #10: Nothing To See Here Folks

$8 ice cream, princeless palaces, festival shootings—by Monday there was only one last thing to do in London: we needed to recreate a photo. We checked out of the Thistle, gave our bags to the concierge, got our Starbucks, and hopped aboard the Tube. I’m sure many of you are familiar with the original photo, and what the it doesn’t show is the fact that it was taken at a busy stretch of roadway. Busy or not, standing in the middle of the street is always dangerous. Further complicating things, although we were off the beaten tourist path, we were not the only ones trying recreate this picture. What the girls didn’t understand is that life doesn’t stop just because crazy ham shanks want a photo.

I tried to explain something about English crosswalks to the girls. When there are crosswalks with flashing yellow globe lights on poles on either side of the street and pedestrians are present, motorists are obligated to yield to the pedestrians. I don’t think anyone was listening because suddenly everything got chaotic. Before I could finish my explanation, the girls had stopped some passing tourists and given them about fifty cameras to take our picture with before jetting across the street to the other side. Once on the other side, I remember a lot of clucking and a lot of confusion as we all stood at the edge of the curb. Per the vehicle code, the passing traffic stopped to let us cross. Not wanting anything else in the photo, the girls motioned for the cars to continue. Already we were gaining popularity with passing motorists because, as a motorist myself, I know how much I love stopping for no good reason. Why would these crazy motorists think we wanted to cross the street anyway?

Once the coast was clear, we began crossing. When I say it was clear, I mean there was no traffic for at least 100 feet in either direction, but there was more traffic coming. So now we’re in the middle of the street with cars approaching the crosswalk on a fairly busy street and the girls shout “STOP”.

WHAT!? You can’t stop! This is a crosswalk not a movie set!

Meanwhile, another tourist began crossing. “Nooo! You’re ruining our picture!” one of my posse shouted. I’ll admit now that she was with my party, but at the time I think I just kept walking and pretended not to know her. When we got to the other side (the chicken had it way easier) I got yelled at. Not by the motorists and not by other tourists, but by my party. When I refused to stop in the middle of the street, I broke formation and crossed the street too quickly, effectively ruining the picture. How silly of me. Variations of this went on for the next half hour. When all was said and done, one of the girls commented, “the Beatles must have had someone stop traffic for them”.

I’d say that’s a definite possibility.

English Lesson #9: Pizza...the New Spice of Life

We finished up our first night in London with pizza and wine along the Thames. The next day it was off to Buckingham Palace. With all those perfect date clothes we packed we were going to do our best to meet a prince. Lucky for us August & September are the two months of the year Buckingham Palace opens up the state rooms to the public, Prince William here we come. The palace was only about a five minute walk from our hotel and we planned our arrival to coincide with the changing of the guard. Talk about pomp and circumstance, it took nearly an hour for the band to march in, the soldiers to pace back and forth, and the guard to finally change. In the meantime, there were people everywhere, the pushing and shoving type of people. By the time the guard finally did change I was ready to get the hell out of Dodge.

Like many tourist destinations these days, the tour of Buckingham Palace was self-guided using a pre-recorded audio guide. I enjoyed it, and I think the girls did too. It was pretty neat walking down the same corridors official Royal guests use. I especially enjoyed the ballroom and hearing how the crystal chandeliers are on a pulley system so they can be lowered to ground level once a year and meticulously cleaned. I’m just glad it’s not my job.

Buckingham Palace left us rather hungry—hell I was starving—and we immediately began our search for lunch. After three days in England, the girls were already showing fatigue for English food. I was also learning that, even though they didn’t always say they were hungry, it was best to keep them fed and watered at regular intervals to keep morale high. We walked back towards our hotel and, wanting to avoid a long drawn out decision making process and general crabbiness (myself included), I ducked into the first pub we came to—much like the one we ate at the day before. In fact, it was so much like the one from the day before that the menu was exactly the same. The girls made it clear they did not want the EXACT same food as yesterday. That’s almost a direct quote. We walked half a block back the way we came and settled into a nice little Italian restaurant—where the girls ordered pizza. At least it wasn’t the EXACT same food as the previous day…this time I ordered beer instead of wine.

We had tickets for the presentation of Wicked that evening at the Apollo Theatre, conveniently located across the street from our glorious hotel (as was the bus station, if I didn’t already mention that). After lunch the girls went back to the hotel to rest up and get ready for the evening out. I took the opportunity to do some unencumbered sightseeing and went to Trafalgar Square, the Portrait Museum, and Big Ben. When I got back to the hotel I had just enough time to freshen up and hit the pub for a pint before meeting the girls at the theater.

It turned out to be a lovely evening out at the theater. Wicked is the untold story of the two witches from the Wizard of Oz, Glinda and Elphaba. The story is superb and the performances that evening were spot on, even though I was a bit disappointed with the music. It didn’t have that flowing musical euphoria that has you humming the tunes the next day. There was also no euphoria—or anything else—in the $8 ice cream we bought at intermission. Just the Big Smoke whispering more sweet nothings in my ear.

English Lesson #8: Traveling With A Harem

There are two types of travelers in this world. There are those that go places for the experience of being there, immersed in the culture and one with the surroundings. Then there are those that bring their surroundings and culture with them in a defiant “I am here, make way” approach. I consider myself the latter, which is one of the reasons why I love not just visiting places as a passing tourist, but actually living there or at the very least, seeing a place with a local. My visitors for the past two weekends are more of the former: they arrived triumphantly and, by God, England would hear them roar.

Maybe triumphant isn’t the right word for their arrival. On their nearly twelve hour flight from Los Angeles, my sisters-in-law and their friend (hereafter referred to as ‘the girls’) were without power to their seats: no light, no flight attendant call button, no radio, and, that’s right, no in-flight entertainment. What is it with this family and televisions not working? On top of that, they didn’t sleep on the plane, although all three insisted they were not affected by any kind of jet lag. At one point during the first couple of days I remember hearing the phrase “we’re not jet-lagged, it’s just that our feet are tired”. Who knew a year ago that “until death do us part” really meant “you will deal with three jet-lagged, disgruntled women with lots of suitcases—and they’ll be in denial”.

Our first adventure was to Stonehenge. Actually, our first adventure was to the store to buy a hair dryer that worked on 220 volts, THEN we went to Stonehenge. I essentially repeated my driving excursion from the previous weekend with a visit to Stonehenge for photos then on to Salisbury for dinner at a pub and some aimless wandering through the town. This time I did not have to dine alone and the weather was actually decent. Cheers to the girls for that. It turns out I shouldn’t have blown the pub wad so early. We’ll get to that in a moment. The next day it was off to London, the Big Smoke. This was a day full of lessons.

Before we left, I advised the girls that it might be a good idea to consolidate their luggage as much as possible since whatever they brought would have to be transported downstairs to the taxi, from the taxi to the train, from the train to the tube, and from the tube to the hotel. Citing the possibility of a date with a prince, in their own very polite way they told me to shove it, after all, their suitcases all have wheels. I packed my backpack and called the cab. The first thing we did after the taxi dropped us off at the train station was climb about two dozen stairs to the platform. Good thing all three of their suitcases have wheels. After we bought our overpriced tickets to London (more on that later), I checked the train schedule and discovered we needed to be on the opposite platform. We climbed another two dozen stairs, crossed over the tracks, then walked down two dozen more. Somewhere around the first step I heard someone say “could there be any more stairs?” The sight of the three girls lugging their heavy suitcases up the stairs was enough to move me. I took out my video camera to capture the moment. I’m surely their favorite brother-in-law now. On the train we had our first lesson in “blending in” and all the students failed miserably. The four of us—and their luggage—were strewn out across several rows of seats. The conversation, somewhat above a whisper, sometimes involved phrases to the effect of “these places are so run down”. I tried to make a quiet speech about keeping a low profile, that we (Americans) are not loved by all the world and we were not currently in America. They weren’t scared, and didn’t care that I was. It was going to be a long week. Our hotel was conveniently located right in Victoria station where we arrived. That’s about the only good thing I can say about the hotel (a Thistle in case anyone wants to know where NOT to stay). We dined that afternoon at the Shakespeare pub across the street, our second visit to an English pub together. We took the Tube to Covent Garden, a tourist mecca replete with bars, restaurants, street performers, and more than a few shops. We did some window shopping and met up with my coworker Mark who had also journeyed to London for the weekend. The girls wanted to see the famous blue door in Notting Hill from the movie with the same name, so after we rendezvoused with Mark, the five of us took the tube to Notting Hill.

If I didn’t mention it before, this was a holiday weekend, equivalent to our Labor Day holiday in the states, essentially celebrating the end of summer. To commemorate the occasion, Notting Hill throws an annual Summer Bank Holiday festival. The first thing that greeted us as we got off the tube was an army of police officers closing down the station in preparation for the parade—and the millions of people that were beginning the celebration. Days later I found out that going to Notting Hill during festival is like going to the Bronx. I also found out about the shooting that occurred, thankfully the day after our visit. We never did find THE blue door, although we heard from someone that it’s not even blue anymore. Makes me feel kind of silly about all the pictures I took of random blue doors just in case.

We rounded out our evening by walking a million miles to the nearest open tube station and taking the train to the Embankment where we had a lovely stroll along the Thames River before ordering some pizza at an Italian restaurant. Embankment is where the majority of the stereotypical London sights are: Parliament, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and the one I was most looking forward to, the London Eye…which closed just as we arrived. I could feel a slight tingle as the Big Smoke reached out to the Road Scholar in me and whispered “thanks for coming”.