London trip

All around the cathedral the saints and apostles look down as she sells her wares. (10 points)

So, London was good. It was a weekend of disappointments, though. First, on Saturday morning we went to find 221b Baker Street, where Sherlock Holmes was supposed to live. The plan was just to get my picture taken standing outside, and then find the nearest 'smart red pillar box' (aka round, red mail-box) and take my picture by that, since that should be where Danger Mouse lives (er ... lived). However, we couldn't find any smart red pillar boxes there. In fact, there seems to be some confusion about where Danger Mouse does live, after all. In the cartoons, they say that he lives "somewhere in Mayfair", but when they show his pillar box, the sign behind it says "Baker Street", and Baker Street is not in Mayfair. Hmm. Sounds supsicious.

Well, after getting over my disappointment about Danger Mouse (which took a whole 2 minutes, I think), we then headed to find Temple. This is a section just off the north shore of the Thames and barely inside the City of London (which is only one square mile), where the seat of law in England has been since about the 17th century. It was named largely for the Temple Church, which was built by the Knights Templar in the 12th century. Unfortunately, when we got to Temple, we found it closed. Checking the guide book, we then realized that the Inner Temple and Middle Temple are closed Saturday and Sunday, but that the Temple Church was supposed to still be open to visitors. Now we just had to find a way in. We eventually did, and then wandered around a bit till we found the church. However, we then learned that the church was closed to visitors that day only. Shucks! Well, we got some good pictures of the outside of it and then found our way out again. That was a bit tricky, since we got in someplace where we apparently weren't supposed to. But, we did find our way out again, right on to Fleet Street, where we were greeted by the majestic Royal Courts of Justice. Amazing building! Wow.

By this time, we thought it was time to head back toward the hostel and the British Museum, right across the street from each other. The British Museum was well worth the trip. It's the grand-daddy of all museums, and just what a museum ought to be. Lots of great stuff from Egypt, Assyria, and Greece. They had lots of other great stuff, too, but that was the wing JoAnna and I were interested in at the time. (Oh yeah, I nearly forgot to mention that we got to see the Rosetta Stone, too. It was much smaller than I had expected.)

After the Museum, we then found 48 Doughty Street, where Charles Dickens lived for a while. While there, he finished Pickwick Papers, wrote most of Oliver Twist, and then wrote all of Nicholas Nickelby. It wasn't quite as interesting as I had hoped, although there were some neat artifacts. The displays left something to be desired, though, for the most part. I was very close to joining the Dickens Society, but then I realized that I would have to have them change my subscription (for The Dickensian) from domestic to international in the middle of the year, and they cost different amounts, and I just decided that I would wait until I get home to America and then do it.

By that time, we were both very tired and cold, so we ran back to the hostel for a while to warm up and rest a bit. While there, we checked out the guide book, trying to decide if there was something else we wanted to see while there. But nothing caught our attention at the time, and then I decided I needed to do some email about ward business. We found an internet cafe, and I sent my emails, and then we went back to the hostel again to get ready for the theater.

Right about here is where things get confusing to me. See, somehow, we lost an hour of our time. We neither of us know what happened or where that hour went, but it seems that when we got to the theater to collect our tickets, it must have been 7:30 already -- the time when the show was supposed to start. However, we thought it was 6:30 and that we had another whole hour to kill. We briefly considered finding our seats right then, but we figured with a whole hour, we might as well go find something to eat. So, we wandered around Piccadilly for quite some time trying to find good chips. Let me just say, Piccadilly is not the place to find chips. Unless you want to sit down and have a full dinner. We eventually asked the bouncer at a pub, and he told us someplace to find some. As we sat eating our chips, I mentioned to JoAnna what a nice feeling it was to know that we didn't have to worry about our seats, since they were reserved, and it wouldn't matter if we got there only 5 minutes before the show.

Eventually, we went back down to the theater, arriving at quarter past the hour. We thought we were doing quite well, with 15 minutes to spare. The usher rushed over to us to ask if our tickets were for that night, and we said they were. He told us he would take us to our seats, and then proceeded outside. I wasn't sure what was going on, since it looked like there was a door just off to our left that would have taken us where we needed to be. Anyway, as he led us around the side of the building, he commented that the show had already begun.

"What do you mean?" we asked. "What time was it supposed to start?"

"Half past seven," he said.

JoAnna and I were lost. "Yeah ..."

"It's quarter past eight," he told us.

"What?!" I checked my watch again, more closely this time, and found that it was, indeed, quarter past eight. We were both flabbergasted, having just been informed that we somehow lost an hour of our time.

Anyway, we got inside just at the beginning of The Music of the Night, and we had to stand at the back and wait for the song to finish before the usher would show us our seats.

The show was good, but to be honest, I didn't love it as much as I had expected to. Maybe it's because I was late, or because I had heard it built up so much, or because the stage was so much smaller than I had expected, or because I wasn't feeling too well (I kept shivering all the way through the show, despite the warm atmosphere). In any case, the acting and choreography just seemed terrible to me. Raoul was cute, but he seemed to be more angry with Christine than in love with her. Christine's voice was wonderful, but she was a little too old, and she also seemed to be more frustrated with Raoul than in love with him. There was far too much shouting, and not enough feeling. The sets and costumes were amazing, but most of the actors were far too melodramatic for my taste. The Phantom was far and away the best actor there, but that's rather to be expected for a man who's been doing the role for almost four years -- he knew his role inside and out, and it showed, with very little stagnancy coming through. It was his last show that night, and we got to hear his farewell speech, which was kind of cool. If I ever went back, though, I'd be willing to pay a few more quid and get a seat in the Royal Circle, which would have made for much better viewing than where we were.

Well, the next day we went to church at St. Paul's, and that was the highlight of the trip for me. The cathedral is definitely the best I've ever seen -- absolutely breath-taking. Unfortunately, they have been cleaning the ceiling and had scaffolding up in half of the Whispering Gallery, so we didn't get to test out the whispering from 100 feet away. The worship service, which was Anglican, was also nice. We sang "Fight the Good Fight" for the last hymn, which made me very happy. However, most of the service was sung by the choir, and most of it was rather ... well, boring, frankly. The sermon was preached about Paul's description of God as the "God of all comfort" (2 Corinthians 1:3). Interesting insights.

After church, we wandered down Fleet Street toward Temple, thinking we might try and see Temple Church again. However, we learned that they wouldn't be open for another 45 minutes or so. We thought we might try and see something else in the area, but nothing that was open on Sunday sounded interesting enough to us. So instead, we ended up having lunch at The George, a very famous pub across from the Royal Courts of Justice, where lots of famous people have eaten througout the years, including Dr. Samuel Johnson and Madonna. I had bangers and mash (read: sausages and mashed potatoes), which was excellent. Many scholars believe that this is the pub where Sydney Carton takes Charles Darnay for supper after his London trial in Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities. It's one of my favorite scenes, and the whole time we were eating, I kept thinking about lines like, "Do you think I particularly like you?" It was great.

After that, we just hung around London a bit. We took the Underground to Paddington Station, just to see Paddington. (We'd both heard about it quite a bit, what with Paddington Bear and Agatha Christie's The 4.50 From Paddington.) Then we took the tube back down to Westminster to see the Ritz Hotel, again just for the sake of seeing it.

By that time, it was close to the time for our train to leave from Euston, so we went up there, found our friend Denise, and all took the train home together. It was torture, just as it was last weekend. What with all the work going on with the tracks up here, it takes forever on the weekends to get between London and Lancaster. But we did get home all right, and we had a good time chatting with each other, so that was nice, too. I now have lots of pics of London, but I don't have time to put them up on my site yet, so you'll have to wait.