Return to NY
Our last day in London was spent shopping…spending the pounds we had left over from our trip. In the evening we met Ben and Caroline, the first people we stayed with, for dinner. The dinner was all right, but as with most places we ate in London, the service was poor.
Airport security was certainly beefed up..we ended up checking our main bags instead of bringing them as carryon, something I’ll probably have to do on the way to Austin as well. The flight was good, the food slightly better than on the way to London.. I read the first of the books I’d bought for myself, one of the Red Dwarf ones.
On the walk from the subway station to Theresa’s apartment we passed many American flags, and one shrine to one of the victims, presumably in front of where the person once lived. Yesterday we visited the shrine that Union Square has become.. There are antiwar sentiments (“love love love” and “give peace a chance”) written all over the statue of George Washington that dominates the square, as well as a couple of American flags hanging off of him. While we were there, one guy started talking about how they needed to clean that “anarchist graffiti” off the statue.. Posters for the missing really are all over Manhattan, sometimes covering store fronts or walls.. Today we may try to visit ground zero..
London, Sept. 17th
Yesterday we went to the Science Museum.. It was neat, a little strange.. Two very different sections…the Wellcome Wing, with lots of hands-on stuff occupied one end of the building on all its floors. The main building followed more the history of science and had very little in the way of hands-on exhibits. The two connected only on the ground level and the third floor..on the first and second floors the two were separate…weird… We saw the T-Rex movie in the Imax theater there…it was all right. There were way too many shots of the main character’s face as she looks around in amazement.. And the T. rex only took up about 6 minutes of film time, which was kind of frustrating.
Today we’re going to do the rest of our shopping, and maybe head back to the two science museums.. I still want to see the rest of the paleontology exhibit at the Natural History Museum, and Theresa wants to see the rest of the food exhibit at the Science Museum. Maybe we’ll split up or something..
London, Sept. 16th
Yesterday we finally got to the science! We went to the Natural History Museum, which turned out to be huge..we spent almost four hours there and didn’t see everything we wanted to. It had some of the most innovative layouts I’ve seen in a museum, especially of natural history. The dinousaur exhibit was two-layered, with a walkway over the exhibit with complete skeletons suspended from the ceiling, level with the walkway. There were even animatronic dromaeosaurs (like Deinonychus, Velociraptor) on top of some of the exhibit cases, threatening people on the walkway. There was also a special exhibit on predators, with more animatronics..a great white shark, a chameleon, and a type of funnel web spider. The latter two were actually interactive! They had a video camera in each eye of the chameleon, and controls for the eyes along with monitors displaying what the cameras saw… so you could control where the eyes looked on the actual exhibit, and see what they were looking at on the monitors…and if you made them both look at a target in front of the chameleon, it would shoot out its tongue and act like it caught a fly! The funnel web spider had little cables running to where you stand..Theresa and I spent a while trying to get the spider’s attention by tapping on the cable..finally this dude gave a gable a good hard pluck, and the huge animatronic spider turned towards him, and reared up to attack. It would attack in the direction of whatever cable got its attention…
Today we’re going to do the Science Museum, which has an Imax, and hopefully we’ll be done there by 4:30 so we can go back to the Natural History Museum (admission is free after 4:30) and finish looking around..
There’s some other unrelated news that I can’t quite talk about yet ’cause it’s still too unlikely to work out…
London, Sept. 14 and 15
Friday started out as usual, with sunny skies and us waking up at 8:30 and getting ready to leave by 11:00. We visited the British Museum first. This is a huge museum, full of cultural artifacts Britain has collected over the last 300-odd years. We looked at Egyptian artifacts, Greek and Roman artifacts, Korean ones, and we tried to get into the special Japanese exhibit but it cost extra. I generally don’t much care for cultural artifacts. There were, however, some interesting fossils in the rock they’d used for flooring in the museum. One of the Egyptian rooms in particular had a floor of shell hash, mostly brachiopods and what were either gastropods or nautiloids. Theresa got kind of embarrased because while everyone else checked out the exhibits, I was squatting down staring at the floor. We did see the Rosetta stone, which was kind of cool.
We broke for lunch at a good noodle shop. This is, I think, one of the only restaurants we’ve been to thus far with good service. Usually we have very surly waitstaff… We returned to the British Museum to look at their Islamic collection, which, for some reason, didn’t open until 2:30. After that I stopped by a comic store, and found nothing I couldn’t find in the US. sigh.
For dinner we went to a part of town that is supposed to have lots of good vegetarian restaurants. What no one tells you is that they’re creepy. We finally went to one extremely hippie vegan place, and began the worst meal of the trip. Even Theresa didn’t much care for what I got… We were also offered drugs while wandering around this neighborhood. Go figure.
Yesterday we meant to get an early start and perhaps hit the science museums. Instead we slept in and went to a food market for a while. We returned at 1:00 to pack because at 2:00 we were supposed to call Sheena, our new host, and move out to her home. The move was painless, and now we’re pretty well settled in at Sheena’s flat. Last night was Sheena’s brother’s birthday, so we went to his house for a little birthday party. I ended up putting on a little show, my new clubs’ maiden voyage into the world of performance. It went all right. Angus (Sheena’s brother) took some pictures with his digital camera and printed a few out for me. They are by far the strangest juggling pictures of me I’ve seen…he somehow timed the camera to perfectly catch an awkward pose or facial expression..looks insane.. Dinner was Chinese food. yum..
London, Sept. 12 and 13
The 12th started with a visit to the Tower of London. We explored the grounds, skipping much of it except for the armory and the crown jewels. There are four or five rooms of buildup before jewels, where they show footage of the Queen’s coronation or descriptions of each of the pieces on these big screens. When we finally got to the actual jewels, there were moving walkways on both sides of them; no lingering, just view them as you’re carried past.
After that we tried to get into Westminster Abbey, but it turns out our London Passes only give us acces to the cloisters and some other building, not the main Abbey. So we took a picture of the outside and headed on. We finally caught a Catamaran Cruise on the Thames, something we’d tried to do on several other occasions but had missed out on. The cruise included a recorded tour guide describing what we were seeing, along with cheesey music. It started to rain for the first time since our arrival in London during this cruise.
We left the boat and made our way in the slowly worsening rainfall to the National Gallery. Wandering through the Baroque section I spotted a painting I had included in my Memento Mori comic! It was Zurbaran’s “St. Francis Kneeling.” I bought a postcard of it in the gift shop.
Mornings have always been sunny, tricking us into thinking that the weather will stay relatively nice through the day. Yesterday we started with a visit to Buckingham Palace. We sort of saw the changing of the guard; through the huge crowds and fences we could sometimes glimpse the band. We heard them play the American national anthem… We decided to skip the rest of the ceremony and make our way inside. The tour of Buckingham Palace was nice, following a very specific path. They have a thing for clocks..there is at least one, usually several in just about every room. Chandeliers also abound, with as many as five in one room. I needed to use the bathroom through most of this trip, but they don’t give visitors bathroom access in the palace..
Finally, we went to Hampton Court, another palace, former home of Henry VIII. We toured his rooms, the queen’s rooms, and some amazing gardens. We entered the maze of bushes outside, and shortly thereafter it began to rain again. Theresa and I made our way through the maze before we got soaking wet, and left.
This morning, one of our hosts stopped me on my way to the shower, and handed me a package. It was addressed to “Matisse” care of the residents here. This confused me somewhat because I hadn’t given anyone the address here… It turns out that the package was from some other guests in this house we met earlier in the trip. I gave a little juggling show for everyone, and they were impressed. I only had room in my bags for balls, so these people found and sent me juggling clubs.
London… sept. 10 & 11
The weather has been kind to us.. relatively warm and sunny, which means partly cloudy and cool. Theresa and I went to Kew Gardens yesterday, where we saw lots of plants, some birds, and, strangely, two aquaria. (aquariums?) There was a peacock with no tail feathers, some quail/turkey-esque birds, and something like a long-tailed, bright yellow and orange chicken. On our way out, we saw a whole elementary school troupe carrying peacock feathers. hmmm… On our way back from Kew Gardens, we boarded the wrong train and ended up somewhere in London’s waste disposal district. We got back into downtown, but not before we missed our planned boat tour of the Thames. So instead we went to the Brass Rubbing Center of London and did a couple of brass rubbings. They’re supposed to be easy, but I don’t believe it.
Today, we started with the London Aquarium (our fourth for this trip, counting the ones at the zoo and Kew Gardens). They had tiger sharks and a pool where you can pet rays.
We stopped by an arcade where our London Passes got us free tokens. I tried to play Tekken, found the controls slightly more difficult than on the ps2, and got my ass kicked. I tried House of the Dead, and died four times. Theresa tried a slot machine, but they didn’t accept our tokens…guess she’ll have to get her gambling fix elsewhere. hehe
We ate at the cafe in the Tate Modern, and then rushed through the museum itself in less than an hour. Mondrian’s work is small..don’t believe the posters.
We went to The Globe (Shakespeare’s theater) and tried to get tickets for tonight’s Macbeth, but the cheap ones were all sold out. We were getting ready to ask about shows later in the week when this dude came up to our ticket guy and talked to him, and then our ticket guy told us the news about the World Trade Center and Pentagon. No more shows for us…we headed straight back to our friend’s house and are chilling here for the evening.. good lord…
London..
I’ve really enjoyed the first two days of London.
We flew into Heathrow Airport, got through customs, and made our way to the Picadilly line of the Undedrground Railroad. Compared to New York Subways, London Underground is like a bunch of toy trains. The cars are a little smaller, with a slightly curved ceiling, padded seats with armrests, and all the handhold bars are bright blue or yellow. Every car has maps of that train’s line all over it, so you can read a map from anywhere in the car. Plus, they all have screens with scrolling text.. Our first train’s screen said “This train is for COCKFOSTERS” I thought it was some sort of joke, but a glance at the map showed the last stop was, indeed, Cockfosters. Of course, the screen in the next train was worded “this train terminates at..” so maybe it is a joke…
We met up with a friend of my sister’s who is living with his girlfriend in a flat below her parents’ house. The entrance to the basement flat is through a closet, so we shove through coats every time we go between flats. Theresa and I are both sleeping in the parents’ flat. We stayed up all of yesterday, even though it felt like 3:00 AM when we arrived in London. Sleep on the flight hadn’t been easy..
We went shopping around Oxford and Regent Streets, which was very crowded and a lot like a shorter, less ugly New York.
Today we walked across a heath, saw the Kenwood House which acts as sort of an art gallery..they have a Rembrandt and some other fun stuff.. We tried to go to another art gallery, but it was closed. We got back in the car, and were deciding where to go when an old lady parked her car right beside ours, boxing us in, and proceeded to get out and start grocery shopping. Theresa’s friend managed to chase her down and convince her to, if not find a parking space, at least let us out..
We then went to the London Zoo. Fun, your usual zoo.. We also went to a rose garden, where I found out that I’m probably allergic to some sort of rose.
Day 2..New York
Day 2 was relatively uneventful. We tried to get travelers checks and failed, and we looked for a London guidebook and didn’t buy one. Theresa coerced me into taking her BodyBalance Modern dance class. This stuff is not for me..an hour of trying to keep up with the other students as Theresa instructs us: “Now demi plie from parallel, then second position, then parallel…” Of course, she can’t interrupt class to explain to me what the heck these positions are, I just have to watch and try to imitate everybody.
Tonight our flight leaves for London. We’ll try to sleep on the plane, we’re supposed to get there in the morning, London time, so we’ll try to overcome jet lag by staying up the entire day.
Meanwhile, this is a laundry morning.
Day One
I made it to New York okay… Southwest Airlines apparently won an award the last two years for the most friendly flight attendants, and now I know why. They are insane. They would sing to us about Southwest Airlines being cool, to the tune of songs like that Glory Glory Hallelujah one. “Mine eyes have seen the patrons lining up at the plane door, they will leave the plane so we take off and fly around once more…” Stuff like that.
The train ride from Islip (where I landed) into New York Penn Station takes about an hour and a half. Of course, the train schedules there were completely different from the ones posted on their website, so I ended up at the train station around 5:30 with the next train going to Penn Station at 7:13. My sister expected me at Penn Station at 7:30, so she ended up waiting there for an hour and a half. We had made plans to eat dinner with some friends of hers, and they were nice enough to postpone the meal for us. It was great Japanese food, and I got to try natto (for all you Iron Chef fans..)
Today is a busy preparation and shopping day, our plane for London leaves tomorrow evening, I’ll try to post something tonight as well..
-Matiss
