London

Day 2 - AM

I should have started this on day 1 but alas. I’m sitting here in the Morris’ living room in bliss… we had quite an interesting journey yesterday…

the flight was delayed and long but luckily it was half empty so we had our pick of seats and we could stretch out to sleep… the first few people that spoke to me made me giggle because i love their accents so much but then i realized “Nik, you are the one with an accent”… i am so fascinated with accents… i remember when i was a kid, i picked up a British accent from a camp counselor in 1 week! I know i’ll pick up some of their phrases, timing, pronunciation, and accent whether I try to or not… but i digress… actually i think i’ll be digressing a lot… we took the Gatwick Express (got an e-ticket but they never collected it), then the Tube (the lines were so long to buy a ticket!), then the train to Shepperton… we landed around 9:00 AM and arrived at the Morris’ home around 1:30 PM!!! Quite a trek but we were lucky enough to have packed light and were not as tired as i expected to be…

the train to Shepperton was lovely… driving through the countryside was surreal… all of the houses are cozy with gardens in the back… everything is green and lush… Mary was waiting for us at the end of the line and we drove to their home in one of the many tiny cars on the street… if we could only import one of these cars… the streets are so narrow that these toy cars are a must… one of these in NYC would be a dream but we Americans need to big larger than life… everything about the Morris’ home is adorable… cozy… the houses are small and so everything in the houses are small… the fridge, the beds, the shower (it’s like a closet in the hall way)… i love it… and the garden is like a dream… Mary fed us as soon as we got to the house and after we chatted a bit, she made me go lay down… i wasn’t tired but i did take a nap and felt refreshed… Ric woke me (accidentally) with a kiss and we went to the Barley Mow for the first (surely not the last) time…

The Barley Mow is a local pub with a lovely and colorful cast of regulars, Gwyn being one of them… since there’s no smoking in the pub, we sat out in the garden for the night… we spoke to Leslie and Bill and Louis about everything from bad jokes that still made us laugh to racism in the States to the origin of phrases like “touch and go” and “the whole nine yards”… Gwyn, like us, is admittedly full of useless information and we got on wonderfully… Leslie was disgusted that the Brits were talking to us about their travels in the States… the drinks kept coming (Ric had 5 pints of “real ale” and I had 1 pint and 3 G & Ts which are gin and tonics for those that were confused)… we finally headed home and i honestly don’t remember the walk home… but i do remember the lovely meal of chili con carne and garlic bread and LOTS of water while watching Jaws 2… i was shocked by the influence of American culture – music, movies, politics, musicals are littered everywhere… i say littered because it feels to me out of place… Jaws 2 (not quite great cinema) on BBC??!?! Odd at best… Mary is right in lamenting that British culture and history (or of any other country) isn’t taught in America… our egotism has become institutionalized and so has our invasion…

This morning, i awoke around 6 and immediately was confused but quickly comforted… i thought “Where am I?” and then remembered “I’m safe”… we are so blessed to be able to stay with The Morris’ and they feel like family… Mary has fussed over us like her little chicks and Gwyn has welcomed us as his friends… we’ve already said we’d love to return with our children to meet them… The Morris’ are wonderful people and there is nothing like this level of comfort…

I need to check out this singer that I saw on BBC… Yvonne Lyon – Fearless…

Day 2 - PM

Today we saw some of the sights in London – Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar Square, National Gallery, Covent Gardens… had a few other stops we wanted to make but we were nackered, as they say… we got around no problem… they didn’t take our ticket on the train AGAIN! I’m starting to think that we are wasting our money buying tickets… the downtown area we walked through reminded me a bit of SoHo: smaller streets lined with shops and cute restaurants, folks milling about, lots of tourists… we met the nicest guy who said he worked at the Abbey and showed us around… he just came up and started telling me the history of the Jewel Tower as i was reading a plaque about it… he even gave me a old silver six pence on a key chain… he had about 4 teeth in his head but he was funny, even though some of his jokes were a bit offensive… he told so many off-color jokes that i was just waiting for him to slip up and say something about black folks… any way, he seemed very knowledgeable and told us a lot of the history we wouldn’t have ever heard…when he said goodbye, i just knew he was going to ask for money (Ric and i had already discussed that we would give him a little something for his trouble) but he didn’t… i’m still not sure he was just doing it out of the kindness of his heart but he didn’t dawdle or make any comments that made us think he expected a dime… i think he was just proud of the history and how much of it he knew… but i did find a Starbucks in London and i’m hoping to explore a bit more tomorrow… after dinner, we headed back to Shepperton… Ric wants to go out and see Stonehenge which is about 1.5 hours away… Gwyn has offered to drive us out there and Mary suggests we go to Windsor Castle, too… the weather sounds like it might not cooperate but we’ll see…

Day 4 - AM

Oh, NOW you want to turn on!!! Excuse me... i'm talking to my laptop... But i’ll get to that later… Once again i didn’t get around to writing up my blog for the third day until today… yesterday was so hectic… Mary drove us to the Stains train station and we headed up to Windsor to see the castle… we got the full tour with an audio guide and the level of opulence in Windsor Castle was amazing… i am always in awe of being in the presence of such greatness and history… we took a bunch of pictures but unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take photos inside the castle… i almost bought a set of Faberge egg cups that were the pinnacle of opulence to me… i mean, i don’t even eat soft boiled eggs and i doubt that I would ever use them but they were gorgeous… i didn’t buy them but now, i wish i had just to have a touch of that opulence…

From there, we hopped on to the First Class compartment of a train to Waterloo with a Bulmer’s (cider) in hand… i love that you can walk around with open containers!.. we walked through Green Park and over to Buckingham Palace… from there we took a double decker bus about 4 blocks to Harrod’s at my Nana’s request…we had afternoon tea at The Georgian with lovely pastries and sandwiches… the only downer was that it took them about 40 minutes to bring us the check because they had a ton of women in the fanciest burkas i’ve ever seen complete with designer scarves, sunglasses, handbags, make-up and perfume… we bought a garlic cellar and Union Jack cutting board (both very British)… then we stopped for some gelato that we ate sitting on the stoop next to Harrod’s… there were a bunch of luxury cars that rolled by including a Ferrari we took a shot of…

we almost headed home but thinking that we wouldn’t have a chance to get back into the city, i convinced Ric that were should drag ourselves over to the other side of the city… we ran over to the Tower of London and Tower Bridge to take photos in the evening… tired, hungry, in need of a pee, we headed back to Waterloo to head back to Shepperton… now here’s where things got really interesting…

Sometime during the day, we realized we didn’t have our itinerary so we didn’t have The Morris’ phone number so we couldn’t call to let Mary know to come pick us up from the train station… then i had the idea to fire up the laptop and get the info, but it was dead (thanks) and then Ric remembered all but 1 digit of the phone number so we couldn’t dial directly… i couldn’t remember my parents new phone number to call and get the number from them… then we used the credit card to call Ric’s sister, Sharon, and she was in Orlando, of course without the itinerary… so we decided to hop on the train and figure it out when we got there… in Shepperton, we asked the conductor if he knew a number for directory assistance (not like it would have helped since we didn’t have the address either) but he didn’t know it… then we thought to take a cab but there weren’t any in sight… so we decided to walk it… together we figured out how to get there – when Ric was confused, i knew what i was doing and vice versa… of course when we got to the Morris’ after midnight, Mary had been sitting up awaiting our phone call (it was close to midnight by that point)… we felt so bad having her stay up for us and being worried… but we are more resourceful than we realized… we stayed up for a bit having a drink to relax and went to bed… the plan for the next day was for Gwyn to drive us to Stonehenge, the one place Ric and subsequently i wanted to see most in England…

I didn’t wake up until almost 11 and woke Ric up so we rushed to get ready but when we got downstairs, Gwyn thought it was too late to go… apparently the drive to Stonehenge is almost 2 hours each way… so we were trying to figure out what to do with our day instead… we didn’t leave to go to the Shepperton station until around 2:00 and we still didn’t know what we wanted to do… when we arrived at Waterloo, we found out that it was too late to get the train to the bus to go to Stonehenge plus the cost would have been over 60 pounds! So after we finally got over the fact that we weren’t going to see Stonehenge we decided to make the most of the day…

We headed to Vinopolis, a place in Southwark which has a wonderful tour of wine regions with tastings… according to our guide book from 2006, it was open on Tuesday but alas, it was not… instead we hit the bar adjoined and had 2 great drinks – Ric had a champagne cocktail with cherry liquor and mine had Bombay Sapphire, strawberries, green tea, cucumber and lemonade… we ended up going to the Clink Museum which was next to the bar... the museum is located at the site of the original Clink prison (where the term comes from) but the original building burned down... the original floors and some of the walls are still remaining... the residual energy in that place was very strong and disturbing... they had original torture equipment (rack, chastity belt, chopping block) and being in that place really effected me...

after that we walked towards the London Bridge Station (by the way, London Bridge is one of the most boring bridges I’ve ever seen) so we stopped briefly next to a pub that had a sign claiming to have famous fish and chips… two women where walking out of the pub agreeing with the pub’s claim… asked them their opinion which was positive so we decided to go in for a pint of Guinness and fish and chips (i wanted to try real fish and chips)… we weren’t disappointed… Shay (Ric’s friend) suggested we have a Guinness and it tasted so much better than it does in the States… with our bellies full, we made way back to Waterloo for a Cornetto (an ice cream treat we learned about watching Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz) and a ride back to Shepperton… of course we fell asleep arm in arm and got woken up by the engineer… even though the day didn’t go as planned, we did make the most out of our day…

Pennies in the pond, see where the ripples go… - Gwyn