Side Note: London

Day 3 - In which Kristin, Tarra and I are intensely cultured and excessively diverted

On Saturday morning, Kristin and Tarra and I set out to the Primrose Hill neighborhood of London, a quiet, pretty, slightly more upscale area of the city. Our destination? The Museum of Everything, a recently opened museum of art by self-taught artists. The things on display were quirky and strange and very interesting, reminding me a lot of one of my favorite museums at home: The American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore.

We perused the entirety of the museum, then made our way via the tube to Hampstead Heath, a “large ancient parkland” full of long grass and picturesque, scraggly trees. We rambled around the heath for awhile like many famous Londoners before us (including John Keats, whose house is nearby), showing off our new coats and being silly and girly. One of us remarked that the heath was so ruggedly scenic it looked like a ridiculous artsy fashion shoot backdrop, and the next thing we knew, we had a mini “photo shoot” on the heath.

We continued strolling about until we found a bench where we sat and ate the picnic lunch (sandwiches and fruits from a local Sainsbury’s grocery store) we had prepared. We visited Keats’s house, and then climbed up Parliament Hill to take in the sweeping views of London at the top.

When we had had enough of the crisp fall weather and romantic scenery (it was like being plopped into a Jane Austen novel), we headed back to Kristin’s neighborhood for afternoon tea, which we took at a cute little tea shop called Bea’s of Bloomsbury. We were just a tad too late to get the full “high tea” treatment (where they bring a tiered platter of sweets, pastries, and scones with clotted cream out with the tea), but we did have a nice pot of black tea and some delicious bakery concoctions like cookies and muffins and pumpkin cheesecake.

After tea we went back to Kristin’s flat and prepared ourselves for another night out. Kristin had reserved us tickets to go see Billy Elliot at the Victoria Theatre, and Tarra and I were, for lack of a better word, pumped. The only problem was that the tube line that went to Victoria was down that day, so we had to take a series of buses. We got on one bus, but when we got off of it we were having a lot of trouble finding our connection. It was getting dangerously close to the show’s starting time, and eventually we consulted a map and decided we should probably just hoof it from where we were. We figured we were probably about a ten-minute walk away. How much time did we have left? Five minutes. Not wanting to miss a whole chunk of the musical because we showed up too late, we literally ran through the streets of London until we reached the theater. We missed maybe two minutes of the beginning of the show, but we were seated pretty close to the back of the theater, so we were able to sneak into our seats without too much of a fuss. The show was fun and cute and very entertaining, and incredibly British to boot.

Day 4 – In which I take an epic nap

After the show we ducked into a grocery store to get some late night snacks, since we hadn’t ever had dinner. I had to catch a ridiculously early bus back to London Stansted, so I decided to just stay up until 3:30 or so when a taxi could take me to the bus station. I bade goodbye to Kristin and Tarra (who was staying the rest of Sunday), got in my taxi, got on my bus, and slept all the way to the airport, where security was a breeze and I spent the better part of my time trying not to fall asleep before I boarded my plane.

I arrived in Schiphol, groggy but motivated, as I had a paper draft to turn out before the day was through. I made my way home, showered, unpacked, and ate a little something. I was still feeling pretty sleepy though, so I decided I would take a two-hour nap so that I would be alert to write my paper later. Big mistake.

I fell asleep at 2:00, and the next time I opened my eyes it was dark outside. It gets dark in Amsterdam around 4:30, however, so I wasn’t too concerned. But then I checked my clock - it was 10 pm! I was still feeling super groggy and disoriented too. I stayed awake just long enough to plead for an extension on my paper and finish some reading for class, then I fell back asleep around 2am and managed to sleep for another 6 hours. Traveling really takes it out of a girl.

Side Note: London

Day 2 – In which I compensate for several months of soggy stylelessness with a substantial purchase (and a night on the town)

After a sound night’s sleep on Kristin’s surprisingly comfortable couch, I woke up on Friday morning ready to hit the town. Kristin and I took turns showering and breakfasting and before too long we were ready to go. Kristin had pieced together an admirable itinerary for my stay, and Friday’s plan consisted of visiting an art museum, getting lunch, going shopping, picking up Tarra (who was joining us from Edinburgh) and then either going to another museum or watching a comedy performance.

We started off the day with a visit to the Tate Modern, one of the most renowned modern art museums in the world. There was a special exhibit on Pop Art there that both of us were interested in seeing, but just like at the V&A, they were charging an exorbitant price to get in, so we decided to skip it in favor of seeing the permanent collection for free.

For me, modern art is very hit or miss. Some of it I love, some of it I hate, and some of it I just don’t understand. The Tate Modern had a little bit of everything, so my reactions were decidedly mixed, but I did enjoy wandering around there with Kristin, amusing her (I think) with my “Art Historian Jen” antics of observing, discussing, and occasionally making fun of all the different pieces. According to Kristin I was looking the part of a seasoned art critic with my glasses and patterned scarf on.

After we had finished wandering through, we left the museum to go get lunch and do some shopping. On the way we passed several notable sights, like St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Millennium Bridge – better known to observant Harry Potter fans as the bridge blown up by Death Eaters in the 6^th Harry Potter movie.

We got off the tube at Oxford Street, a major commercial street in London. It had been decked out with Christmas lights in the shapes of toys and presents (and for some reason, umbrellas), to promote the premiere of A Christmas Carol a few days earlier. Kristin and I shoved our way through the crowds on either side of the street until we found the lunch locale we were searching for: Marks & Spencer.

Back during the summer, when I was formulating plans for all of my European adventures and working at an internship where my boss was a strong proponent of networking, I decided I’d consult a friend of mine for some advice about traveling in the UK. After all, this friend, Sarah (one of my fantastic JAs at Williams back during freshman year) had lived in London for a significant portion of her life. When I asked her for some recommendations of things to see and do in London, she sent me back a fun-sounding list. One of the simpler items on the list was eating lunch at a Marks & Spencer (“their pre-prepared sandwiches and other meals are incredibly fresh and classically British”), so in honor of Sarah, that’s what we did.

After lunch, Kristin and I set off with one thing in mind: trench coats. We had decided during the summer that we both needed to add a classy trench coat to our wardrobes, and London, home of Burberry and London Fog, seemed the natural place to acquire such an item. Unfortunately, the dollar is weak and the pound is strong, and Kristin and I are students anyway, so we wouldn’t be shopping at quite as high-class a locale as London Fog or Burberry. Nonetheless, we managed to find some snappy pieces at the local H&M. We were pleased.

We navigated through the rush hour mob to retrieve Tarra from King’s Cross Station and made our way back to Kristin’s flat. There we briefly regrouped, donned our new coats (it had now started raining in earnest) and set out to find somewhere to eat. We stumbled upon Hummus Bros., a little restaurant that specializes in varieties of hummus. We had a delicious, filling meal there (amused all the while by the place mats that detailed different hummus-eating styles) and the headed off to our night’s entertainment: a stand-up show called Comedy Rocket

Comedy Rocket consisted of five or six guys doing stand-up routines in a tiny wood-paneled room above a very typically British pub. The room was small enough that the tiny audience felt intimate instead of awkward, and our affable New Zealander host did an admirable job of conducting the show. He sort of had to, considering who was among our intimate group. In addition to Kristin, Tarra and me, the audience consisted of some tipsy middle-aged ladies, a young hipster couple sitting on a table in the back, an outspoken and increasingly annoying Californian woman and her embarrassed-looking British boyfriend, their increasingly drunk and disorderly female friend, and six or so large Dutch men. Healthy bouts of strangeness, awkwardness, hilarity, and wacky absurdity (including a persuasive pitch for a highly promising television series entitled “Intergalactical Dutch Gangsters”) ensued.

After that, we demurely evaded our cute New Zealander host’s suggestion that we join everybody downstairs for drinks, and went back to Kristin’s flat to go to sleep.