Innocents abroad: London

Follow the travel diary of Val and Rosney (The Man) as they travel to the UK via Vancouver one way and San Francisco on the return trip. The self-drive ‘innocents abroad’ expedition was planned in celebration of The Man’s 70th birthday to walk in the footsteps of their ancestors.

London

I won’t say I fell in love with London from day one, as we were very time-lapsed. We’d been awake for 27 hours before we got to bed. We’d been told it would be easier if we adapted to sleep/eat at the new time zone. It worked and the next day we were all adapted, and I fell in love.

Everything was exactly as I thought/hoped it would be, history pouring out, the ambience, the people, the rush the bustle, the old buildings, the cobblestones, the statues and especially Hyde Park! But even with the bustle most people did return a smile, which was not the case in Vancouver. Our accommodation was perfectly situated, on South Bank right close to the Millennium Wheel, and a short walk across Westminster Bridge to Big Ben.

One of the first ports of call was the CBD and Harrods. I did not like Harrods. I did not like the class-orientated, snobby-opulence, I felt like a scabby-kneed urchin completely out of place. The Man was happy to walk around mocking the overpriced goodies, but it wasn’t for me. He suggested we should have lunch there so we could say we ‘ate at Harrods’, but one look at the prices and I was out the door. We found an old-fashioned café up the road, it was crowded but we squished in a corner and I fell in love again. This time with a long crusty bread roll, served with huge slabs of ripened goat-camembert cheese, finely shaved ham, with whole cranberry sauce. One bite and I was in goaty-cheese heaven – stuff Harrods!

I did have a pee in Harrods luxury loos. And shame on me. I didn’t tip the toilet attendant. We don’t have tipping in NZ and I never quite got the hang of it. The hotel in Vancouver have discovered my missing clothing – geeze wot a dodo!

Favourite places and things to do: Tower of London. Ferrying up and down the Thames. Covent Gardens. Hyde Park. Just walking, and walking . . .

We stopped for a beer at an outdoor bar, Southbank on the river Thames. There was a smartly dressed, most attractive couple aged in their mid-thirties sitting at a table next to us. And I mean really attractive, a smiling handsome Prince Charming and Cinderella stuff. They were physically wrapped up in each, staring into each other eyes while beaming with love, kissing, touching, drinking, rubbing legs together, then more kissing, the fact they were on public display was obviously immaterial. Her cell phone rang, and she answered it. A serious expression flashed across her face, she rose to her feet and paced while still talking. After a few minutes of this, she handed the phone to Prince Charming, whose facial features also hardened. Cinderella popped her coat on, he handed the cell phone back to her, and without so much as a farewell, she literally stomped off in one direction and then he in the other . . .

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Our week in London is nearly up – we organised train tickets for the journey to Salisbury, where we will stay the night and pick up a rental car before journeying on. London has been perfect in most respects; the main difficulty has been finding somewhere to eat in the evenings. All visions of relaxed dining in a real English Pub went by the wayside when come late afternoon the population of London appeared from the cracks in the masonry and flooded the streets, eating houses in particular. We found a delightful Turkish restaurant where there was an area put aside to smoke the hookah, and the indoors was like an Aladdin’s Cave. I loved it. We dined there for two nights (Yum), the second night they treated us to an authentic Turkish coffee, but the carnivore had a yearning for steak and kidney pie, and roast beef, and felt we should explore more of the eating scene, so we moved on. Not successfully I might add.

The final night we crowded into the Slug and Lettuce with the rest of London, supped beer until a table became vacant, ate our meal being jostled by peoples squeezing past trying to get from table to bar and back again. The food wasn’t flash and it was noisy, later we both suffered indigestion. We did eat at our hotel one night, and while the food was perfect the price was too high for our budget. Last minute things to do meant going back to tell the team at the Methodist Mission Café that as far as I was concerned they made the best coffee in London . . . it was cool stuff, they all cheered. Other highlights: The Markets at Greenwich (total yum), and naturally the millennium wheel, which surprise, surprise I managed to negotiate getting on and off with a smidgeon of dignity (it doesn’t stop).

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Our big suitcase died on the walk to Waterloo Station (broken back, and its wheels wouldn’t turn), it near killed The Man having to haul it up the considerable steps to the railway platform, no elevator in sight, and no one offered to help. The train left for Salisbury right on time, and the on-board entertainment was a group of women going to visit a ‘friend’ who was dying. I’m sure by the way they were loudly going on, and their disparaging attitude she wouldn’t be delighted to see them.

To be continued….

By Val Bird

Read more of Val and The Man’s adventures here.