Basses and Mountains: Marathon Journey and First Day in London

On Labor Day in mid-afternoon, an airport shuttle arrived in front of our house and we hustled out for our trip to SeaTac. We got there in plenty of time, checked our luggage, went through security, and got to the gate with about 2 hours to kill before the boarding time. We met our traveling companions, walked around and around the South Satellite, bought some drinks, sweated (it was hot), and finally boarded our 767 in row 32. I say row 32 not only because it is 20 in base 16, but also because I now know it is a very unlucky row indeed.

First off, we were joined in our immediate vicinity by an entire English soccer (football?) team composed of teen aged English boys with their coaches and a few parents. All in all they were well behaved, but being teen aged boys hi-jinks necessarily ensued. There was much laughter, neck holds were practiced in the middle rows, and the cabin smelled a bit like a locker room. Excess teen aged testosterone? You tell me.

In flight, when we turned our reading lights on, every minute or so they would go out for a few seconds. Not everyone's. Just ours. Eventually, we got sick of it and turned them off but then they flashed ON every few minutes for a couple of seconds. That was even more annoying. We complained but apparently nothing could be done. We have the same seats on the flight home - I hope it is a different airplane.

What with the herd of boys, flashing lights immediately above our heads, and coach class seats (my knees are still in recovery mode), sleep time was short and fitful. Optimistically we got perhaps 2 hours of sleep.

Arriving at Heathrow, we had to gather what wits we still possessed to collect our luggage, operate an ATM, buy underground passes (mysteriously called Oyster passes), and find the train into London. The train ride was about an hour and we alighted (as they say here) at the underground station near Kings Cross railroad station and made our way to our hotel.

We are on the third floor according to the manager, but in England that means it is what we would call the fourth floor. The stairs are very narrow and very steep and since we were hot and EXTREMELY tired by then, humping our bags up six flights of the damn things was not fun. At all.

I won't even go into the cell phone problems we are having. Suffice it to say we can text each other and that is the main thing.

We got here around 3:00 PM and after a short rest we went out to pass the time until bedtime. We wandered this way and that until we came upon the British Library only a few blocks away. It is a great place in a beautiful building and has some amazing books and other items displayed. And, like all public museums in the UK, admission is free! Friends, this is what I call a civilized country. We saw Jane Austen's writing desk and a copy of Persuasion (opened to Captain Wentworth's public proposal to Anne Elliot) in Austen's OWN HANDWRITING! We saw an original copy of the Magna Carta! Original Shakespeare plays! Letters written by Dickens, Trollope, Virginia Wolf (I think - memory is getting fuzzy due to the extreme fatigue last night)! Paul McCartney's hand written lyrics to Yesterday! Words fail. Deciding we should eat something, we settled on a middle eastern place nearby where we had falafel and hummous on pita bread. Not great, but it filled the void.

Arriving back at the hotel around 6:00, we tried to stave off sleep as long as possible to get started on local time. (Note: we are very close to 0 degrees longitude here so local time is Greenwich Time! Pretty cool huh? I had fun counting down the longitude on the flight tracker as we approached London). We held out as long as possible and I passed the time reading internet items to CJ but gave up when I fell asleep in mid sentence and we went to bed at 8:00.

After about 10 hours of sleep and just lying in bed we got up and after some entertaining time figuring out how to use the shower without getting water on all of the clothes intended for AFTER the shower, we had breakfast (eggs over easy, corn flakes, and beans (?)) and headed for the British Museum on foot since it is fairly close.

The Best Museum I have ever seen

Apparently, it has been extensively remodeled since we were last there in 1985 and we were a bit confused at first. We soon got the hang of it though and visited many, many things. Here is a less than comprehensive list: the Rosetta Stone (now encased in plexiglass - not so in 1985), the Elgin Marbles (as thrilling as ever), the Three Neriads (formerly known as the Three Breezes), a giant head from Easter Island, countless mummies, equally countless medieval treasure hoards from various locations in England, Assyrian stone wall reliefs of battle scenes and royal lion hunts, and a complete Greek temple purloined from Turkey.

My Favorite Neriad

Greek Temple

We also saw an unexpectedly great exhibit on the history of the museum's collections and who collected them. As in 1985, our lunch was tea and scones bought at the museum in the rotunda.

After we had worn ourselves out and rested a while, we walked to Trafalgar Square via Charing Cross Road our mouths watering all the way at the many succulent book shops on that famous street which await my full attention next week. The Admiral still stands atop his column in the Square with his hat worn athwartship as Jack Aubrey would say. We stopped in at the National Portrait Gallery gift shop and bought a few postcards and then headed to St James Park, Westminster Abbey (incredibly expensive - we decided to admire it from the outside this time), and Big Ben. In 1985, BB was being cleaned and look at it now! So clean and handsome. By the way, it does not really lean East. That's just how my little camera rolls for tall buildings.

Yes, this is Big Ben. Note the London Eye in the background.

We then headed back up Charing Cross Road where I did some more book slavering as I noticed Cecil Court, another book (and map) buying Mecca I remember from 1985. According to info on the web it is still thriving in spite of Amazon trying to kill the book business. I will carefully investigate its status next week so expect a full report.

We stopped off again at the British Museum (closed this time) where we sat and ate ice cream for a while in the acreage in front of the building. A little later, the museum security people chased everyone out as they eventually do every day it seems. We went to a little sandwich shop where we bought our dinner (Surprise! We bought sandwiches) and walked to the nearby Russell Square, an urban paradise if I ever saw one. Luckily,we found an unoccupied bench and ate our dinner with a cool breeze and the feeling of a day well lived.

Russell Square

By the way, in Russell Square and central London in general, London Plane trees are everywhere. Some of them dwarf the one in our front yard and I would bet that no one complains about the leaves in the fall. As happens in our neighborhood. As I mentioned earlier, this is what civilization looks like.

And as a second side note: