Globe Theatre

Traversing the channel by Eurostar provide the limited excitement of twenty minutes of darkness. The slow ride through rural south London on a bright morning was enough of a pleasure to outweigh the annoyance of an overly talkative school group that shared the adjacent seats. I remember seeing advertisements in London later on that displayed train tracks leading right to the feet of famous Parisian or ‘Brusselsian’ monuments with the tag line: ‘Direct to the heart of Paris’ or ‘Brussels’ depending on the monument of course.

With no where to go initially upon my arrival, the Tate Britain provided not only a free stop to store my blue back pack but also several hours of tours and gazing into the “Turner Vortex”. I would later return to see the Anthony Caro retrospective exhibition, which was not completely installed at that time. A security guard reprimanded me for crossing the ‘do not cross’ line while inspecting one of Caro’s more intimate table-top metallic forms in detail. I found out after a brief discussion that guards are prohibited (even when solicited) from offering their opinion on the art that is exhibited. I thought that their endless rotating half an hour shifts would engender a unique understanding of the art but I never found out.

Four samosas at the Indian take-out restaurant across the street kept me delectable and short company while I waited for my most hospitable cousin to return from work. I hoped his unspoken disaffection was not indicative of my overstaying my welcome and after enquiring, he assured me it was not. I left the tacit causes alone although it was clear that preparing his staff for his absence during a pending two-week trip to Italy would be enough for 80% of his stressed-out annoyance. I had a chance to visit with my aunt who would accompany him to the leaning tower of Pisa when she arrived in London from Vancouver late that week.

Greenwich Observatory

I resolved to stay with good friends of my parents for the remainder of my time London. I would wipe my shoes on their ‘Welcome to the Balham Hotel’ door mat for the next three weeks or so. They kindly welcomed me as a family member and I had an enjoyable time comparing their habits to my parent’s: I have difficulty imagining my mother so enthusiastically enjoying sledding down a gradual slope in Wimbledon Common on a day with less than an inch of snow. Nor can I imagine my dad reviewing expensive cookbooks and troubling himself over the finer preparation points of a mushroom philo-pastry tart!

Monday saw me walk the open green fields and the Prime Meridian at the Royal Greenwich Observatory. With the amount of ambient light given off by London at night, the old 1675 Sir Christopher Wren octagonal Flamsteed House would offer little star-gazing return to its founder King Charles II and his royal astronomers today. It was still a delight, however, to see the sundials, atomic clocks and telescopes, not to mention all four of John Harrison’s ground-breaking timekeepers that provided the answer to the 1714 £20,000 Longitude problem.

Ag, Blob, Wilf and Ira with some Georgian Architecture, Bath

Amazingly (and I admit not so innocently), my now expired international student card still seemed to inspire the discounts that are so necessary in London: My two £45 tickets to each part of a National Theatre’s adaptation of Phillip Pulman’s ‘His Dark Materials’ Trilogy were only ten pounds each – a significant saving. I even saw the Patrick Stewart and Joshua Jackson live at the Apollo theatre in ‘A Life in the Theatre’; a contemporary ‘Julius Caesar’ at the Swan theatre in Stratford; a convincing and swinging ‘The Rat Pack’ at the Strand; and an awfully dark ‘Festen’ at the Lyric.

After a captivating back-stage tour of the National Theatre, in which we saw everything from the painting studios to the wood and metal workshops to the makeshift puppetry station, I visited the faithful reconstruction of the Globe Theatre. There I learned in a brief half an hour all about the authentic timber framed construction complete with a modern day sprinkler system and the common use of uric acid as a stain remover for well-worn and expensive 16th century clothes.

Roman Baths

I’d bus to Ledbury to visit relatives with whom I would see the Mappa Mundi (a really old round map), Hay’s bluff, and the S.S. Great Briton before bashing my head badly on the low doorframes in their house. While in the West Country, I’d also spend some time with friends in Slaughterford, a small town of 35. The Roman baths, cathedral and Georgian architecture in Bath would fill the day before we visited Salisbury Cathedral, Stonehenge, a Saxon church made in 700 CE, the Magna Charta, Wells Cathedral, Glastonbury Tor, Farleigh Castle and a salvage yard in the next few days.

I finished my last week in London with a refreshing Andy Goldsworthy exhibition and another meeting with a potential supervisor at London Metropolitan University.

Tags: travel