Saturday
My flight from Munich to London certainly elevated my opinion of British Airways. Though the flight was short, the seats were great even in economy, I had a very nice salmon sandwich and the staff were not just polite, but genuinely pleasant. I used the couple of hours I had on the plane to read up a little on all the events that were about to start in the UK. Although I had come to visit my friend Lalith, it certainly didn�t hurt that the Queen was celebrating her Golden Jubilee with a vast spread of public events and parties. I wasn�t sure whether or not people would take it all seriously or not, but would soon find out. I took the Underground from the airport across what appeared to be the majority of the city. It was quite a few stops away on the map, but in Cologne a subway stop is usually only a few blocks. In much of the London tube system, it appears to be several kilometres and I began to picture London as a huge sprawling city before actually getting above ground to see it. When I finally arrived at my station, I got my first taste of the �other side of the road phenomenon�. Of course I knew that one drove on the left side of the street here, but it had never occurred to me that this custom often applies to walking as well. The path from the subway platform up to ground level is divided in half by a railing, and as tried to make my way along the path, bumping into people here and there and wondering indignantly how everybody could be so pushy, I realized that I was essentially walking up the down lane. Apparently this is a common problem with tourists, evidenced by the fact that the city has kindly spray painted �look left� and �look right� directly onto the pavement at street crossings throughout London.
When I finally emerged from �the Tube� (which actually is a train shaped like a tube unlike Germany�s bread box trains) I made a quick phone call and was presently greeted by a waving, sandal-clad figure that could only be Lalith. We went back to his flat which is conveniently right beside the station, and I met his two before settling down for a home-cooked chicken dinner.
Shortly after dinner, we decided to take in the classical concert that was being staged in the Queen�s honour. Now, the concert itself was invitation only and held in the gardens of Buckingham palace, but it was also being broadcast live on large televisions in London�s downtown public parks and so we soon found ourselves crowding into Green park. You might think, well, we were essentially watching it on television, why not just stay at home and not worry about getting grass stains and sitting in beer puddles, but it was really a lot of fun. There must have been thousands of people gathered under the stars, and people still cheered and clapped. Some people even took to singing along loudly and off key with the Opera singers, but that was more disturbing than entertaining.
Sunday
On Sunday morning, I sat down to breakfast with Lalith and went over our touristic plan of attack that we�d drawn up after the concert the night before. I wasn�t going to try and tear around the city trying to see everything humanly possible. I�ve always felt it better to enjoy a small part of something rather than kill myself trying to take in the whole picture, but nevertheless I wanted to make the most of my trip. Our first stop, the Tower of London.
I remembered vaguely that the Tower of London wasn�t really a tower, but was still surprised to find it a rather large fortress and palace on the bank of the river Thames. The fortress actually served as the residence of the royal family for a number of years and is nearly a self-contained little city complete with church, housing, soldiers and even a resident doctor. The buildings that make up the Tower of London are quite impressive on their own and actually include thirty-two towers, but what really made it worth visiting was the fantastic tour. Our guide was a tower guardsmen, properly called a Yeoman Warder, and possess perhaps the loudest voice I have ever heard. He never seemed to lose his composure, but the sheer volume with which he delivered his hour long tour could only come from an effort that I will call controlled yelling. He was very good though, beginning with the origins of the tower in 1066 when William the Conqueror landed in England. I date I remember because, as our guide noted, it was nearly 900 years to the day later that England one the World Cup. We learned of the unfortunate lack of foresight which saw the moat around the tower dug 15 feet deeper than the surrounding waters, meaning that much of the city�s sewage collected around the building for a century creating a grotesquely foul smelling cesspool. We also learned of the hundreds of people who were imprisoned and executed at the site over the years, and of the generations of families royal that called the tower home, and entrusted it�s guards with their lives and the Crown Jewels which remain housed there to this day. The Crown Jewels really are amazing, an unimaginable concentration of wealth and power, all on velvet pillows. I must say that I�ve never really seen a lot of diamonds up close and in real life, but I now agree that nothing sparkles with quite the same brilliance, and the royal family is certainly in no shortage of them.
After leaving the Tower of London, we walked across the Tower Bridge to the other side of the river and went for a walk before meeting some of Lalith�s friends for a picnic lunch in Hyde Park. I kept looking over my shoulder to see if the tourist board were following us to take pictures. Here I was in London, walking out of Mark�s and Spencer�s with a bag full of treacle on my way to have a picnic in Hyde park on a Sunday afternoon. It was great fun though and a good way to relax a little. I realized that this was the third city I�d been to in about as many days and it was nice just to sit down and talk a little. The food was great and the six of us talked until it began to cool off outside and we split off on our separate ways. I stopped for a drink with Lalith and a friend on the way home and called it a day.
Monday
Although in reality I had stopped my job with AIESEC the moment I left the office on Wednesday, the first of June was my first real Monday away from work and I relished the fact all day while making my way across London. As luck would have it, both Monday and Tuesday were holidays for the Jubilee, and so Lalith was also free to show me around the city. We began the morning by taking the Underground downtown. We walked past Big Ben and the houses of parliament, crossed the Thames, passed the London Eye, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace and the Royal Stables before reaching Trafalgar square and the National Portrait Gallery. Our walking tour allowed me to realize that although most of London�s landmarks are familiar in that they�re world famous at a glance, I actually don�t know anything about them. I had previously had no idea just how big parliament actually is, I hadn�t realized that the red double-decker buses aren�t just for show, but are actually the exclusive bus model in the public transit fleet and used by ordinary commuters, and it had never occurred to me that policemen actually wear those hats all the time. Walking through the portrait gallery I also became aware of quite a few gaps in my knowledge of British history.
After stopping back at Lalith�s for a nice dinner, we prepared ourselves for a quick summary of British pop music history. Tonight the Queen was playing host to a pop concert with twenty odd artists set to perform the music of the five decades of her rule. As the press called it, the biggest lawn party of all time. The set up was the same as for the classical concert, all the action would take place inside the grounds of the palace, while the common folk watched from the surrounding parks on large screens. However, the audience turnout was quite a bit higher than the day before. We were unable to squeeze our way into the overflowing Green Park, and so hurriedly back tracked to join the hundreds of thousands already in Hyde Park. The show was a lot of fun, and we really saw everything, quite literally in the case of the couple of guys in the crowd ahead of us who went the Full Monty while dancing along to Tom Jones� �You Can Leave Your Hat On�. But really, they had a huge line-up right from Brian Wilson to Shirley Bassey, to Ricky Martin. Even Ozzy Osbourne was there. Imagine, somebody quipped, the lead singer of Black Sabbath playing for the Queen, who heads the church of England!
Tuesday
During our walk around Buckingham Palace on Monday I couldn�t believe how many people were camped out with tents and the whole family. People had apparently been waiting for days to keep their places to see the Queen when she passed in the famed Golden Coach. Considering the fact that the coach would only be visible from any one point for a few moments along the parade route, that all the good vantage points had been squatted out well in advance, and that we were all very tired from the pop concert we opted to watch Tuesday�s Jubilee ceremony on television. We witnessed the coach carry its royal occupants from Buckingham Palace downtown to be greeted by the lord mayor of London, and then on to St. Paul�s Cathedral for a ceremony of thanksgiving. Once the ceremony was over, we headed into town to check out the huge parades that would be taking place complete with people representing all the nations of the commonwealth. On our way to the parade route, we passed through Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square and staked out a place not far from Nelson�s Column. Lalith and I watched teams of brightly clad singers and dancers march past us and onto the Mall on their way to the parade�s end at the gates of Buckingham Palace. The Mall is a long, tree lined boulevard leading straight to the palace, and proved to be able to hold more than a million onlookers. When the tail of the parade had passed, we joined in their wake and stormed the Mall to try and get closer to the palace before the planned flyby which proved to be fantastic. The RAF brought out nearly one of everything for the day, right from fighters to AWACS, even the Concorde took part, accompanied by an escort of fighters trailing red white and blue smoke in their wakes. After all that it seemed that continuing our walk towards the palace might be a little anti-climatic, especially since we had already seen the Queen duck back into the palace on one of the giant television screens. But, much to our surprise she came out for a second, and even a third appearance, by which time we had been fortunate enough to have scrambled through the palace gates and just close enough to pick out her bright orange dress with the naked eye. It wasn�t a personal audience, but we had still seen the Queen.
As we walked away from the palace, we heard a growing booming sound coming from a nearby park and curious to see if there was a concert on, we walked over. What we found, was none other than a group from the Notting Hill Carnival Roadshow led by Anton Black. I can only describe it as a dance party on stage. A lot of people doing their own thing in front of their MC, Mr. Black, and a trio of DJs hustling about trying to keep up with his unpredictable calls for more music. They were starting to draw quite a crowd, but then the rains came and the party quickly wound down.
The skies didn�t stay dark for long though, and I walked across town with Lalith to a Portuguese themed restaurant he liked. On the way we passed through the Rose Garden in Hyde Park which looked simply fantastic with all the flowers in full bloom and covered with fresh rain drops, and shortly thereafter reached Kensington palace and the Royal Albert Memorial. Saying that London is an interesting city to walk through is a bit of an understatement.
Wednesday
Wednesday morning we started the day off in a British way. Beans for breakfast at a local eatery. Then we retraced the Queen�s steps of the previous day and visited St. Paul�s cathedral. The great white dome is impressive from the outside, but it is on the inside where the visitor is really taken aback. The interior is a gorgeous mixing of stone and wood. The large dome rises up over the altar and is decorated with a series of mosaics. The whole visit seemed a little surreal after having seen the self same building filled with the royal family on television the day before, and now empty of everybody but the tourists like ourselves who had braved the rains outside to get here. We walked up to the top of the building and took in the view of the city outside, sprawling to the edge of the cloudy horizon in every direction. From there we could see the towers of Canary Wharf rising up and marking our next destination, Greenwich.
Greenwich, home to the Royal Observatory has the distinction not only of being a very fashionable London suburb, but also the very beginning of longitude and time as we typically define it. Greenwich Mean Time has been the standard measure of time in all of Britain since the late 19th century and is defined based on the observations of the daily movements of the stars from the Royal Observatory. We were a little late making it up to the Observatory and so had to be content taking a few pictures from the outside, but that�s because we spent our time looking through the actually very impressive naval museum, and the beautiful old buildings that are the Naval Academy. Particularly of interest in the Naval Academy is a grand painted room. While relatively plain architecturally, it is elaborately painted from floor to ceiling including columns and trim.
Thursday
Thursday morning Lalith had to rejoin the real world and go back to university and so I set off on my own to visit the British Museum. Now this building really looks like a museum. As one enters the courtyard from the street, a sculpture of a face rises out the ground to greet it�s visitors. Beyond the face, great stone pillars jut up from the solid stone steps to support the roof that hangs over the grand entrance way. It is dim just inside the main doors, but then one walks out into the inner courtyard which has recently been covered over with an impressive span of clear glass by renowned architect Norman Foster. The effect is a beautiful. The Great Court as it is called consists of a circular building in the middle which houses the reading room, and the entrance ways to the two main wings of the museum to the west and the north of the centre. I arrived just before the museum opened so as to have as much time as possible, but as lunch time drew near and I walked towards the exit to meet Lalith for one last time, I had barely scratched the surface of the museum�s collection. I told Lalith about the huge collection of ancient Egyptian relics, from whole sides of buildings, to the walls of tombs and bodies of kings, the collection is amazing. I made time to see the famed Elgin marbles from Greece and of course the Rosetta stone that unlocked the secrets of the Egyptian hieroglyphics. That all this could be displayed for free public viewing really made my day. Unfortunately I soon found myself saying goodbye to Lalith, and shortly after the city as I collected my luggage from the museum coat check and boarded the next subway to Heathrow. What a great vacation though.
