London

Sunday to Thursday, June 19 to 23

We left the Viking Sea around 9am Sunday morning in Harwich, England, and boarded a bus. The original plan was for the ship to dock in Greenwich. Trips next year will enjoy that proximity, but it was not to be for us.  It took 2-1/2 hours to transport us to Victoria Station, where we joined a lengthy queue (a word and activity we've encountered one heck of a lot in the past month!) for a taxi. We made our way to our hotel to drop off our bags. It was still too early to check in, but we took the time to freshen up and have a cup of tea in the pretty garden (how very British of us) before setting out to explore the neighborhood.

Our hotel and the garden.

Our neighborhood happens to include Albert Hall, a raft of museums and shops and restaurants, a Christie's showroom filled with Picasso ceramics, and a Lamborghini/Maserati dealership just over the wall from our garden idyll--a posh neighborhood to be sure. We walked through the South Kensington Underground station--which has become a second home to us, with us going to and from it two to four times per day--which brought us out onto a crazy busy pedestrian street. Before we knew it, we were in front of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Since this was on our list of places to visit, in we went. We spent quite a bit of time, but only grazed the surface of the collection.

On Monday, we got acquainted with the tube system and bought our Oyster cards. You put a certain amount of money on the card and can top them off as needed. We used the Underground system extensively for getting around.

We went to Trafalgar Square and visited the National Gallery. The highlight for us was, of course, the chance to commune with rooms full of Monet, Renoir, and Seurat. It is a big, architecturally beautiful space. I can only imagine how many visits it would take to make more than a cursory exploration of the place.  The nice thing about both the V & A and the National Gallery is that they are free, so you can choose to focus on one thing or another, knowing you can return for other offerings on another day.

Monday's highlight for us, though, was our first-ever London theatre experience. We took the Underground to Piccadilly Circus, had a very nice pre-theatre dinner, and made our way to the Theatre Royal Haymarket, where we watched "How the Other Half Loves," an early Alan Ayckbourn play. For decades, we have been fans of this playwright. If you've ever seen "The Norman Conquests" on PBS, you'll know why--he's wildly clever and funny and approaches plays in a way no one else does, almost always employing simultaneous but multiple perspectives of the action. It was a very special treat, indeed. We thought we'd take a taxi back to the hotel. But, after 40 minutes of wandering around trying to find an available one, we instead walked back to wild and woolly Piccadilly Circus and took the tube back to our SoKen neighborhood.

A real highlight on Tuesday was seeing Westminster Abbey. We and thousands of our closest friends. It was absolutely jammed. And the way it's set up, you basically move along with a conveyor belt of people, all with audio guides glued to their ears. Still, it's a massive and fabulously gorgeous space, filled to the brim with history. I mean major league history like separate chapels with the tombs of Queen Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots. This is one of those iconic places you've seen pictures of and footage of events that have occurred in it. It was very special to see it, even if we didn't exactly have the place to ourselves. Shortly after we emerged, the Abbey bells went into a ringing frenzy, which lasted 10 minutes. I love the sound of church bells, so that made me very happy. Good timing.

And, of course, right across the street from Westminster are the Parliament buildings and another icon, Big Ben.

We had a "small world" experience at dinner Tuesday night. We went to a little neighborhood Italian place and were seated next to a family of four. Here and there during the course of our meal, we exchanged a few words. When the family got up to leave, they wished us a good rest of our journey. I responded by asking them where they were visiting from--a question that became second nature during our cruise. They were from Portland. Oregon. They live in the Hollywood District just a few blocks from our first Portland home. And they have friends who just moved into a house on our tiny street. Really? What were the chances? In a city of 8+ million people, we bump into strangers that are practically neighbors and, almost as amazing, we communicated enough to unravel that unlikely fact.

Wednesday's highlight was a visit to the beautiful St. Paul's Cathedral, the Christopher Wren masterpiece. Here, the crowds were much more tolerable. It is a lovely space with the most beautiful mosaic ceilings I've ever seen. Here, too, so much history. We usually forgo visiting crypts, but the crypt at St. Paul's is really special, and we're glad we went through it.

Moving from the sublime to the ridiculous (or, if not ridiculous, then at least the substantially less sublime), on our return from St. Paul's we got off at Knightsbridge and stopped in at Harrod's to get a quick sense of the place. Oh my. Coming into a Harrod's door almost immediately after emerging from our tube stop, we entered a world of purses. Prada and Gucci and a host of other high-end purses. Three rooms of high-end purses. It was like being caught in some never-ending loop of purses. Finally, we peeled off and found the food halls for which Harrod's is famed and which we wanted to see. One room is devoted to chocolate and tea and coffee. Another room is meats. Then there's seafood and produce and prepared foods. A bewildering array of foods.

We admired some fresh dim sum and dumplings at one station and figured out that they could be consumed at a counter in one corner of the room. We snagged a couple stools and perused the menu. The prices were high, but we decided to order a few things. This would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, after all. The food was very good. And the tab was breathtaking. 

Our focus on Thursday was going through the Churchill War Rooms. Jerry spent much of our cruise reading a book about Churchill during what is called the "wilderness years," or the years between the world wars. That made the visit even more special. To be underground and see the space used for commanding the war effort, especially during the bombing, was very affecting. We also heard first-person accounts from people who lived and worked in those mole-like conditions. Plus there is a Churchill museum in the space where we learned more about his life. It was a very worthwhile visit.

Eventually, we had to return to our hotel and start the final packing. Never the fun part of a trip, but necessary. Where did all that extra stuff come from? 

We had a nice dinner at a little brasserie that was about a 10-15 minute walk from our hotel. Given the very unsettled weather, including a couple big thunderstorms the day before and heavy rains in the afternoon with humidity at 94%, we lucked out and got to and from the restaurant with only a little mist on us.

Back to the hotel for the finishing touches on the packing. That 5am wake up call and 6am taxi were going to come too soon.

It has been a great trip, filled with new sights and incredible beauty. But home is sounding awfully sweet too.