London Called - Part 1

After years of dreaming of Depeche Mode, Sherlock Holmes and football hooliganism, I proposed a trip to London and Joe agreed. It was our first foray into Europe and the best place to start since my French would probably get us beaten.

The trip proved to be exciting from the start as we departed from the new Terminal One at Pearson International. It has the spacious, generic look of any number of other international airports around the world. Exciting duty free shopping prevented us getting bored. In fact, we were so caught up in the shops that it wasn't until the PA system called a reasonable facsimile of our names ("Joe...Sinbad") that we realized that boarding for our flight was already complete. We ran to our gate and boarded the plane without any line-ups or delay. The whole experience was so exciting that I have learned nothing from it and will continue to board last minute in the future.

We arrived on time in London and took the Tube to our hotel. Right away, we were amazed by a number of things: how small the Tube train was and that escalators and elevators are not always an option. "Small" and "hardcore" became recurring themes of our trip.

Day 1 - Westminster & Royal London

We started our tour of London with a bang. Coming out of the Tube station, I looked to my right and saw Big Ben. It was shocking to finally see in person something that was so familiar to me. Equally shocking was how small the clock tower was. I had expected it to be twice the size it actually was.

Next was another well known London landmark: Westminster Abbey. After paying £10 each, we were duly humbled by the size of the place and the history it contained. After about an hour of wandering amongst all the random and ancient memorials to the valour of rich men and the piety of rich women, we became blasé. Like Honest Ed's, Westminster Abbey was filled with slightly creepy knick knacks. One highlight was the funeral effigies on display in the museum; life-like dummies shown to the peasants to remind them who the corpse on parade used to be. Thereafter, we referred to Westminster Abbey as "God's garage sale".

After Westminster Abbey, we rushed over to Buckingham Palace to see the Changing of the Guard at 11:20am. In spite of the rain, the streets were crowded with tourists. We decided to leave when it became obvious that the ceremony had become solely an auditory experience because the mob was not transparent. We consoled ourselves with a lunch of fish and chips served by real Cockneys.

Our next stop of the day was Tate Britain. Perhaps we were suffering from jet lag or perhaps it was because our feet and backs were killing us, but we did not enjoy the gallery. The majority of the collection were the usual respectable paintings. One of the few contemporary sculptures on display was When Humans Walked the Earth by Jake & Dinos Chapman. The Chapman brothers' previous works included mannequins of children with genitalia in place of facial features. Unfortunately, their latest work was a lot less fun, simply consisting of found object assemblages.

However, Joe enjoyed the vivid colours of two John Millais paintings enough (Ophelia and Mariana) to buy the corresponding postcards. Joe then held the postcards up to the originals and said optimistically, "These postcards will remind me of what the original paintings actually look like." Just like Tiny Tim, that Joe.

In a daze of confusion and pain, Joe and I marched on to two landmark department stores: Harvey Nichols and Harrods. We passed through Harvey Nichols very quickly when it soon became apparent that we could afford nothing on display. Harrods kept our attention longer with oddities like the Dodi and Diana memorial ("Innocent Victims"), wedged between the escalators. The claustrophobic Egyptian escalators also had to be seen to be believed.

We wandered blindly back to our hotel afterwards and decided to have some of the highly touted Indian food. We ate without complaint before we resumed griping about our feet and backs.

End of Day One.