London, Day 9

The Party's Over
The morning came up too quickly, one because I hadn’t had enough time to sleep off Saturday night’s binge, and I had a headache; two because it meant leaving London. But the morning wasn’t going to cease its progress, and so I got up.

Within 45 minutes we three were all showered and dressed, and we headed down for breakfast, which seemed a lonely affair, as we were the only people from our group in the restaurant. At least my headache faded.

We finished and headed back up, closed up our suitcases and dragged them downstairs, and we checked out. The South Kensington tube station was sparsely populated at 9:45 on this Sunday morning, so getting to the platform and onto the train were effortless. The ride to the airport took just a little longer than I had hoped, and the walk to the ticket counter from the Terminals 1, 2 and 3 tube stop was much longer than I had anticipated. Checked in without any difficulties, we moved along through security with gate 16 our eventual destination, though the ticket agent said it could turn out to be a different gate, and that we should be sure to check the monitors.

Heathrow Airport has been cleverly set up with an eye for marketing. As you clear through security (they have a separate screening line where the only thing they’re checking is your shoes; you take them off and put them directly on the x-ray belt!), you are set free into a vast duty-free shopping area, with alcohol directly in front of you. And believe me, with the US Dollar as weak as it is against other currencies, duty free in England is no bargain!

We did hit the souvenir racks for one last go, and then we made our way to the gate. There was some minor confusion as we looked at one of the Departures monitors and saw a flight to Chicago at the correct time of 12:40 p.m., departing from gate 18. Final call! We walked very quickly to the gate despite the fact that it was still 11:50. I was quite certain United Airlines wouldn’t be boarding the plane nearly an hour before departure. We arrived at gate 18 only to learn that the Chicago flight was an American Airlines plane. Almost in a panic we rushed to gate 16 where, lo! and behold, our fellow passengers were leisurely waiting for the boarding time to arrive.

Soon we boarded and were on our way home. I usually don’t watch the movies on the plane, but I wasn’t particularly in the mood to write, and the guide’s description of something called “Hot Fuzz” intrigued me. I watched it and laughed my ass off! More on that in a later post…unless I forget.

I did indulge my writing hobby after the film. It is here that I must confess, as one who reads this – THE one who reads this – will probably have figured out by this point, that I wrote most of this journal much later than the events actually occurred. There just wasn’t time in the day to cover all of the London that we covered, and then write about it. The high-speed internet rate at the hotel was so exorbitant it was ridiculous, but the nearby internet cafes all closed at 11:00 p.m., leaving no time to write, choose pictures, upload them and post. So I’ve done most of that in the days following my return. I hope my reader will forgive me that.
The flight was like a traveler’s dream. Okay, I didn’t have a sizzling rendezvous with a voluptuous flight attendant in the back of the plane, but maybe your travel dreams are different than mine…. The flight departed on time, didn’t crash on take-off or landing, arrived early, the passport line moved very quickly, luggage was already on the belt, and Customs didn’t consider us a threat.

A’s parents met us outside Customs, his dejected sister pretending that she missed him. We traded brief stories about all the things that happened, and soon we were inching away, needing to get ourselves home. Finally, we said our good-byes, and we were a couple again.

Of course, a trip as pleasant as ours, from the day we left for London until the day we returned, can’t go completely without frustration, and this one waited until we were at our most tired, and at our most desirous to be home to strike us. Mrs. Farrago and I decided to take public transportation home. Usually that doesn’t call for an ominous overtone in the soundtrack. My only concern was lugging the suitcases onto and off of the Blue Line train, through the turnstiles, up two escalators and onto and off of a bus.

We wheeled the cases through O’Hare airport and, just before we got to the pedestrian tunnel a young black man in City of Chicago work clothes said, “The Blue Line is closed. Two cars derailed at Rosemont. You have to go to the shuttle center and catch a CTA bus.”

I said, “You’re kidding!” but, like sheep, we headed for the Bus and Shuttle Center. We got there and saw a huge crowd of people lined up at the door of a CTA bus, and I wasn’t about to try to get two fat suitcases onto it. So we went into the nearby Hilton O’Hare Hotel and asked the bellman to call a cab for us. He did, and he told us that cab number 3795 would be there in 10 minutes, but “wait inside here. It’s too hot outside.” In about 5 minutes a cab, number 3775 pulled up to the door of the hotel. It was too suspiciously close typographically to our cab’s number, and by the time I got past the urge to believe it was just a coincidence some people climbed into it and were whisked away. I decided to wait outside and, 10 minutes later I was more than convinced that our cab had been “stolen.” Mrs. Farrago suggested that we just take the next bus.

Just as I agreed, another bus pulled into the Shuttle Center lot, and there were very few people waiting for it. It kept rolling forward as a CTA assistant waved him on toward a parking spot. We caught up with it and, as the door opened, the assistant said, “They turned the Blue Line back on. You should take that. It’ll be faster.”

My frustration frothed. “We just came up from there!” I griped.

The assistant said, “Well, you can take the bus. It just goes three stops down the line, and you gotta get back on the Blue Line past where the problem was.”

“Yeah,” I groaned, “but with my luck, the bus will break down!”

The assistant just shrugged his shoulders.

Mrs. Farrago and I lugged our bags back down to the train station, through the turnstiles and onto a waiting train…which waited…and waited…and waited…for a full 35 minutes before the train driver announced on the P.A. that as soon as two incoming trains got into the station, ours would pull out. She kept making that announcement for the following ten minutes while people kept boarding and boarding and boarding to the point where our car was jammed in worse than sardines.

Finally the train began to move, but we crawled most of the way to the first station, where even more people got on. At the following station yet more boarded. It became apparent to me that the crowds were the result, mainly, of fans headed to the Cubs v. New York Mets at Wrigley Field. At virtually every stop between O’Hare and Addison Street (there are seven) no one left the car, and at most stops at least one more person wedged into the throng. I felt myself seething at the whole situation.

At long last we pulled in to the Addison Street station, and suddenly the car was bearable again! The next stop, Belmont Street, was ours. Fortunately the station attendant opened the wheelchair gate for us, so we didn’t have to deal with the suitcases at the turnstiles. At street level it was quickly obvious there would be no bus for a long time. Three other people were hailing cabs from a better vantage point than ours (though every cab was occupied!), but, thanks to the good, quick eye of Mrs. Farrago, we got one that dropped a passenger off at the mouth of the escalators, nearer to us than to the other taxi hopefuls!

In all it was a full three hours after we got off the plane before we finally got home. A quick trip to the bird-sitter’s and back made us one little happy family once more!

The End!


...A Parting Shot












You know something is worth a photo if the Asian tourists are taking pictures of it!

London, Day 8

The Last Repast
Saturday morning we were up by 7:00 and actually down to breakfast before they were open! Time flew by, though, and by 9:30 we were running behind our schedule. We wanted to be down to County Hall, across the river from the Westminster tube station, and ready to take in the Star Wars exhibit there as well as what the aquarium had to offer.

















The Star Wars exhibit was a collection of what I can only assume were actual costumes, miniatures and models that were used in the making of all six films, and it proved to be quite captivating. A, who is a serious Star Wars nerd, was in heaven, and I, not quite the level of Star Wars nerd as A, but enough of a film nerd to be nerd enough, thrilled to the inside look at some of the secrets to how the Star Wars saga was brought to our eyes.


























Once out in the bright sunlight again (the weather has just been fantastic. I think all the stories about dreary London and her constant cap of clouds is just froth by Londoners to keep the tourists out!) we were at a crossroads: A wanted to buy a new watch, and A wanted to see the aquarium. It was becoming apparent there wouldn’t be time for both, so A chose to go shopping for a watch, and we would catch the aquarium later if we could.

We couldn’t. We walked for about a half hour, crossing the Charing Cross Station foot bridge over the river and meandering through the streets in an effort to find Covent Garden. I had us generally headed in the right direction, but not directly. We eventually got there and discovered that certain streets in Covent Garden are exclusively booksellers and restaurants/pubs. Other streets are exclusively theatres and restaurants/pubs. We walked past the marquises (?) for just about every hot show for which we saw posters plastered all over the tube stations and double-decker buses all week. “Avenue Q.” “Chicago,” “Queen” (about the rock group, not the …uh …queen), “Spamalot”… It was getting ridiculous. Finally, after asking a few people where we might find good watches, not the £4.99 ones, we were on the right track. Of course we walked right past the Swatch store that nobody bothered to mention as they sent us on our way to a store they thought might have watches but didn’t, only to eventually discover it and go in. A found a watch he really liked, and the deal was done. And there was no time for the aquarium.

We walked around just a little bit more, and then we hopped on the Picadilly tube line from the Leicester (pronounced “Lester”) Square back to the South Kensington (pronounced “South Kensington”) station so we could get back to our room and get started on our packing for Sunday’s travel, and to get ourselves ready for our dinner date at 6:00.

…which wasn’t actually until 7:00, as we found out via voice-mail on our room phone, left by my boss at 10:45 a.m.

It doesn’t mean we could have seen anything with enough time to enjoy it at the aquarium, but at least we had a little time to relax before packing and changing clothes.

The final, farewell dinner was at a little restaurant called Wodka, a few minutes’ walk from the High Street Kensington Station. As happened more often than I can recall, as we descended the stairs to the District- and Circle Line platform at the South Kensington tube station, there was a District Line train – our train – sitting at the stop, and we had enough time to hop aboard. Or was it the right train? It was crowded, and as I peered through the raised arms – and, hence, the cloud of B.O. – at the train line diagram I realized we had indeed hopped aboard the wrong train. Whereas the District Line does stop at High Street Kensington, a mere two stops from South Kensington, it doesn’t do so in a direct line, but rather dipping south, reversing, doing a loop-the-loop, and coming back. It’s the Circle Line that goes directly to High Street Kensington! I realized it in time to see that we could hop off at Gloucester (pronounced “gloster”) Road and wait for the Circle Line train that would no doubt come momentarily.

We did that, but the electronic sign that tells which train is coming next just wasn’t making sense. Mrs. Farrago figured it out; we were on a platform for the District Line only, and we had to run up a flight of stairs, over the tracks, and onto the next platform over. That done, we waited an unusually long time, as several other District Line trains came through. Finally a Circle Line train pulled in on our side of the platform, and we got on. This train was also very crowded, but at least it didn’t have any air-conditioning! They may have been working on their teeth in the past few years, but Londoners still seem to have trouble finding the deodorant aisle in the grocery store!

We were at the Gloucester Road tube stop with only a ride to the next stop to hop off and walk to the restaurant. About a quarter of a mile down the track and into the tunnel we slowed to a smooth stop, and we sat there. For a long time. The driver’s voice crackled on the P.A. through the train car: “Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to inform you that, due to a signal failure at the High Street Kensington station, this train must return to Gloucester Road. I do apologize for the inconvenience. I must walk through the train to reach the car at the opposite end, so please do make room for me as I come through your car. Thank you.”

In Chicago, the announcement, if at all intelligible over the CTA rail P.A. systems, would have been, “Yo, we gotta go back to the last station. Get out the way when I come through!” So polite, the London Underground Railway System drivers are!

So we hoofed it. It turns out just about everyone from our company who shares our hotel was on that train, so a long procession of people ambled through the streets of Kensington to Wodka.

Wodka is a very tiny, quaint restaurant with a tiny, quaint menu. Our group, however, is not tiny, and quaint we ain’t! Throughout the evening we were being shushed by the wait staff, as other patrons couldn’t hear each other talk. We could barely hear our own tablemates, but shouting helped. Until we were shushed again.


While we waited for our food, a mess of guys in costumes like these
walked by. This guy noticed me taking their picture and did what any
red-blooded ...uh... Englishman would do... be worthy of note!
(I think the blur in the background is The Flash)






The food was awesome! I had the sea bass this time, and Mrs. Farrago had the rump of lamb. A was seated in the basement with most of the other kids…and a couple of adults, where he had the risotto entrée. He said it was very good.

Again, as now seems the norm, Mrs. Farrago and I were prevailed upon to choose the wine for our table, and we delivered, choosing a nice Margaux (and we haven’t yet found a Margaux that was not nice), and a mediocre California Pinot Noir.



Our Margaux of the evening, in case you'd care to enjoy our
meal vicariously by wine.







Those drinking the California red seemed to like it just fine…until they tried the Margaux. When people started clearing out, there was still a half bottle of the California Red left. We drank it. Then came the shots of vodka on huge trays. I don’t know if it’s just part of the meal at the restaurant, or if Big Boss ordered the round, but it came either way. In all I tasted four: two berry flavors, one of which was rather tart and gritty, and the other was sweet and tasty. The other two were not flavors one would expect in a vodka: horseradish, and black pepper! Little Boss had the misfortune of shooting one of the black pepper shots and nearly lost an eyeball trying to keep his head from exploding. And the horseradish was just…wrong.

But the evening wound to an end, and we three walked with a family of three from our group, through the pleasant summer evening air toward the High Street Kensington tube stop. As we walked I came to the realization that the three glasses of wine and what amounted to a total of a mere shot of vodka were having their effect on me, and the farther I walked, the fuzzier I got.

Fortunately for me there were no train problems, nor navigational difficulties, and we made it back to the hotel without any problems. And, also fortunately for me, for all of us, I did remember to set the wake-up call!

London, Day 7

The Time of the Green Witch
Friday we had intended to get up earlier, however I neglected to set up the wake-up call Thursday evening, so we slept until past 9:00. On this morning we were again treated to the burlesque show across the way, and this time I had Mrs. Farrago's zoom lens handy! I got into trouble with the missus, though. Apparently it's okay for me to take pictures of a naked man showering, but not to take pictures of a naked woman showering.











We made up for the time through breakfast and getting ready, and we were down to the Westminster Pier by 11:20, with just enough time to buy tickets for and board the Greenwich boat to … uh… Greenwich.

It struck me that, with all of his questions about nearly everything he saw, heard or smelled, A never once did ask why it’s pronounced “grennitch,” but as it’s spelled, the oblivious would pronounce it “green witch.”

The boat ride was nice, with a funny commentary by the driver about the sights along the way. Unwittingly, we arrived in Greenwich with just enough time to make the leisurely walk up to the Royal Observatory and witness the red ball dropping on its spike to signal to the world that it was 12 noon, Greenwich Mean Time. It didn’t receive quite the hoopla that a similar event does in January in New York City, but at least no one died of gunshot wounds.
















The Royal Observatory is no longer that, but is now the Time Museum, a collection and educational experience that tells the story of the quest for accurate longitude. Long story made short: prior to radio communication and Ground Positioning Satellites, in order to find your exact location on the globe, you needed to know what time it was in a pre-determined location (Greenwich, England) so your measures of the sun’s position at sea could be referenced. That measurement gives you degrees of longitude from the zero point (GMT). You therefore needed a clock on board your ship with the time of day in your launching point, or, as the world later agreed to, in Greenwich, in order for the measurements to make sense. Clocks of the 18th century all operated with use of pendulums (pendula?), which were rendered useless on a swaying, tilting ship at sea, and there was a great struggle not only to create a clock that would operate at sea, but one that kept accurate time. So, apparently, it turns out that the Vikings merely lucked out when they landed at the shores of the Anglo-Saxons and plundered the land and assimilated a new culture. They were just looking for warm beaches and a place to party!














The author of this blog representing his city and sucking up more light from another.

The museum has each of the three prototypes that the eventual successful inventor, a man named Harrison, I recall… George, was it? Perhaps not… built on his way to his fourth and quintessential timekeeping device that was deemed the most accurate clock of its time.

It truly was an interesting place.













Mr. and Mrs. Farrago astride the Greenwich Meridian. She's to the west, and I'm to the east of the line that officially divides the world into longitudinal hemispheres.










The view of London from Greenwich, with two people in the way...


Afterward we walked back down the hill and wandered about the town, which is still a part of London, I believe, and through a bazaar full of little stands from which people sold all sorts of used and/or worthless crap. …except for the cute little earrings Mrs. Farrago bought there.














A couple of shots from the boat ride on the Thames back to Westminster...












Back at the Pelham for only a few minutes, we then walked just past The Hoop and Toy to Kwality, a contemporary Indian restaurant for dinner - a place of which I did not get a photo - and free entertainment by our waiter who was slightly more funny than he was creepy. The food, however was outstanding. And it didn’t give me gas…or worse.

London, Day 6

The Long And Winding... Staircase?
Thursday morning we slept in again, later this time than Wednesday. While showers were being taken we had another free nudie show via the hotel across the way from our window, this time certainly with a woman on the bill! No camera in hand, though, so there were no photos to document the moment. The restaurant in our hotel began clearing their continental breakfast items before we were done eating. With nothing to do at any particular time until evening, we made a leisurely meal of it, and then we headed out with loose plans to visit the Natural History and the Science museums… musea?…

We meandered a bit along the road, having missed our turn, and we asked directions of a nice, older gentleman, who pointed us back to our path. This put the Victoria and Albert Museum in our way, and we went inside for a look-see. Aside from a dazzling sculpture in the entry foyer, which looked rather like a psychedelic stream of vomit (and I mean that in the good way!), there wasn’t really much to speak of. However, with the convenience and the capacity for over-indulgence allowed by digital photographic technology, there was plenty worth taking dozens of pictures of!






































This thing is so ugly it's cute!














We never made it to the Natural History museum before lunch. On our walk from the hotel in the morning we had passed a pub called “The Hoop and Toy,” just a mere 50 yards from the front door of the Pelham, and since it was a known in a vast world of possibilities, we decided to go back there to eat.

A had the Chicken Kiev, which he quite thoroughly devoured. Mrs. Farrago and I had ale, she the Young’s, and I the Old London…or something like that. The pub had just a bit of that old tavern smell, which was kind of cool…reminding me of The Old Cheshire Cheese which we had tried to visit on our first day, but was closed, so all we got of it was the smell.

We returned to the museum area and went into the Natural History Museum. We were now pressed for time because of our dinner date at 6:30, so we whizzed through, during which I found particularly interesting the cut of California sequoia tree, which was dated back to the dawn of time…okay, the Roman Empire.





















Exiting there we made our way to the Science Museum where A wanted only to see the airplanes. We had made our way in only a few feet to a short set of marble steps where a small boy was playing and hanging from the hand rail. He dropped his feet down onto the top step, took a step forward and missed the edge, and toppled “ass-over-tea-kettle,” as Mrs. Farrago so eloquently phrased it, down the steps. It happened right next to me and, though he would have rolled down only three more steps to the bottom, I reached down and stopped him going more than one, though he had already rapped his head on the stone. Of course he cried, and I looked at a woman I thought was his mother, but she just gave me that “it’s not mine” look we all know so well. Fortunately the boy’s mother’s sonar picked up the tone of his cry through the droning din of other screaming, chattering and crying children in that zoo… er, museum…and she came walking back. I made a lame attempt at ensuring to her that it was the boy who made himself cry rather than this big, strange American who could very well have been fondling him by the look of it, for all she knew. She didn’t appear to care either way, but only said something to the effect of “It’s part of his daily requirement as a boy to injure himself at least twice,” and dragged him off to his next misadventure.

We made our way to the cleverly hidden aviation exhibit, and I was pleasantly surprised to see they had an actual jet engine from a WWII German Luftwaffe Messerschmidt 262, the first jet airplane to see service in the world. I could bore you with a brief history of the plane, but aren’t you bored enough already? Let’s just say I’m a bit of a geek about it and leave it at that, shall we?

It proved to be quite an interesting exhibit, and I was sad when we ran out of time and had to go.








Here I am looking frightfully like my father!!














We walked back to the hotel via a souvenir shop irreverently placed in the neighborhood of our hotel, and we made ready for our dinner date in Covent Garden.

The restaurant Boulevard Brasserie was, I gather, in the heart of the Covent Garden section/borough/neighborhood of London, a modern, bustling, vibrant part of the city. Modern, bustling, vibrant that is, except for the tube station. As the anonymous throng exited the train with us at the Covent Garden tube stop, it seemed an inordinate number of them were following the signs that read “To The Lifts,” which, while I know that “lift” in Great Britain means the same as “elevator” in the USA, I assumed meant “escalator” in this instance because every tube station I’d been to since I arrived had escalators, no matter what they’re called in Great Britain. But no, we arrived in the middle of the throng at two small doors to what I could only assume were two small elevators. I couldn’t make out why so many people were waiting to cram themselves on them, and so we three decided to take the stairs.

We arrived soon at a quaint little (large, actually) spiral staircase and a sign that read “Way Out,” with an arrow pointing at the stairs. And so we climbed. And climbed…. and climbed… The thing about a spiral staircase enclosed in concrete is that the view never changes – it’s stairs above your head and beneath your feet until a hole appears at the top of the stairs and you’re free. And we climbed… and climbed. An interesting thing about the London Underground Railway system is that, similarly to that of Paris and even Washington D.C. some of the tunnels are dug quite deep, some seemingly as much as six stories! Some of the London tube stations were used during WWII as air raid shelters.

And we climbed …and we climbed… Did I happen to mention yet SIX FREAKING STORIES?! I wasn’t quite sure if I hadn’t actually had a stroke from the climb because I had no feeling below my hips! I felt about ready to lose the dinner I hadn’t eaten yet!

So it turns out that the lifts are actually quite large despite the deceptively small doors, and had we ridden one we would have saved the four-and-a-half minutes it took to climb the stairs, and the 7.29 years shaved off the ends of our lives.












Dinner, on the other hand, was great, though not as French as the restaurant name “Boulevard Brasserie” would imply. I had the Entrecote Steak, Mrs. Farrago had the Sea Bass, and A had the steamed mussels.
















Afterward we strolled leisurely through the Covent Garden area toward the river Thames, passing through a large group of Russians on a twilight tour who clogged the walkway on the bridge, stopping to snap photos of the river and the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament, and then weaving our way through the Russian throng again as they had passed us while we snapped photos. At least I think they were Russian tourists. One of them was waving a flag, so maybe they were claiming the oil and mineral rights of England.

We made our way back to the Westminster tube station and headed back to the Pelham.

London, Day 5

Wacsimiles
Wednesday we slept in. The late evening Tuesday left us pretty tired, so we just let most of the morning go on without us. When we finished breakfast we headed out on the Circle Line tube to the Blackfriars station and up to ground level, with Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in our sights.


Some famous rich people (I heard a tour guide say a name, but I don't remember it) set out to build an exact replica of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, and do it using the same tools and techniques used in the 17th century.







We walked along the river a ways, with intentions of seeing the play “Love’s Labours Lost,” however we had no interest in spending three hours doing it, nor in spending $110 on the tickets (£54)! So we walked back along the river for another few minutes, and crossed at the Millennium foot bridge. It was originally nicknamed by the locals as The Wibbly-Wobbly Bridge, but they fixed it.


































We hopped back on the train and got out at Baker Street, and we came upon some sort of excitement at one corner. We followed the crowd into a building and discovered that we had lucked into a party where celebrities were hanging out all over. And, though not very talkative at all, every one of them graciously stood still for photos with people hanging on them and touching them.


















































It took us a few minutes before we realized that the pasty smiles and refusal to speak were less pancake make-up and unfriendliness, but the fact that they were all made out of wax! Some brothel madam named Tussaud had apparently whipped up all these fakes on her own, and had been fooling people like this for years!

Seriously, though, some of the wax likenesses were incredibly life-like. True, there were some that looked nothing like their supposed namesake, but when they nailed it, they really nailed it!












The whole experience at Madam Tussaud’s, though not guided, is steered through a directional flow through room after room on several different floors. At the end, in a waiting area for the final event, a lame Aardman animated film in an Imax cinema, there is an interesting little attraction where you can make a wax form of your own hand…for a price, of course!
















A wanted to do it, so we let him pay for it with his own money. It came out pretty well. How many souvenir shops offer anything where you can make a cast of a body part that preserves what you were like at a certain age? It was fun.

We left, A’s three hands in our keep, and headed to Sea Shells restaurant, on the recommendation of the Pelham Hotel’s concierge, for authentic, traditional fish and chips. They were pretty good. We had two different kinds of fish (cod and haddock), and A had calamari…which, in my opinion, wasn’t very good.























From there we headed back to our hotel where we downloaded photographs and sent e-mails.

In Between

An apology for the sporadic posting. Time slips by so fast, and with the exorbitant cost of iinternet access in the room, getting to the Internet Cafe before 11:00 p.m. gets difficult. Also, I apologize for the scattered nature of the layout. In scrambling to get the posts out, the pictures go wherever the coding says they go, and I don't have time to dicker with them. I'll try to get more done tomorrow, though I'll stuill be two days behind!