London Part One-don
- Jun 25, 2017
- 7 min read
If you are stressed and lying awake at night thinking about how my Capernwray posts ended with Emily McGuire and the Half-Blood Prince and not Emily McGuire and the Deathly Hallows, don’t worry, I am also stressed by this, and will be resolving it later on with a reflective and poignant piece about all the good memories from Capernwray and what post-Cape life is like (spoiler alert: it’s not that exciting, I work at Kroger now. Although one dude who came through my checkout did freestyle rap for me. Also, did you know Hagen Daas is covered by food stamps? Read: anyone wanna hook me up with some food stamps? ) However, first the tales from the great European adventure must be told, and they shall start with not one, but two trips to London! *cheers and applause*
The first trip happened while school was still in session, in February. I went with Anna Rose and Julia for a very brief weekend, the main purpose of which was to see a show on the West End. Because we are peasants of meagre means, we took the cheapest possible transportation, which was Megabus, which will take you from Lancaster to London for £10. And let’s just say you get what you pay for. The seats were tiny and cramped, and the ride long and miserable, but also £10, so the scales, it would seem, remain in good balance. We arrived at Victoria Coach Station around 10 or 11 pm and after a bit of directionless wandering, found our way to the tube, which, I will proudly shout from the mountaintops, I navigated LIKE A BOSS. Nothing will ever dull my pride at being able to figure out a system that thousands of people use every day. I am clearly a genius.
I just need to take a moment to publicly thank family-friend Annette, who not only allowed us to stay with her and her family for free, but picked us up from and dropped us off at the tube station, helped us figure out how to get to all the places we wanted to see, and fed us breakfast and sent us on our way with snacks in our purses. She and her family made our trip so much more delightful and should be highly esteemed in all the most elite social circles.
Anyway, Saturday morning we spent hopping on and off the tube and looking at all the sights: Big Ben and Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace. The night before, Annette had shown us her favorite view of the city, looking out over the river and seeing Tower Bridge and the London Eye all lit up. We also went to Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park, where supposedly anyone can say whatever you want and large crowds will gather to listen. But I guess it was the off season, because the corner was deserted. This was unfortunate, as Anna Rose had wanted to see if she could preach to the masses, and now found herself sans masses. Success was not to be had, but she read some Bible verses aloud just to say she’d done it, and then Julia sang an aria and we stood at a distance and pretended to be strangers enticed by her singing so that she would look like the real deal. None of this was to much effect though, as there were only about five other people within a mile radius.
We then went to see a matinee of Matilda, which I had already seen once in New York, and which was still just as fabulous, except that the kids in the ensemble are always way more talented than the Matildas, and this Mrs. Wormwood was played by someone other than Lesli Margherita. But the choreography was still insane and the part where they sing “When I Grow Up” and swing on the giant swings still made me cry and the Trunchbull was still hilaire. After the show we got Jamaican food, (meat filled pastries and spicy soup) and then went to Harrods to wander around and try on dresses we couldn’t afford. And so passed the first day.
Our return journey mega bus tickets were for just before noon on Sunday, but we had a few more spots to visit before then. First, the Victoria and Albert Art Museum to see the fashion exhibit, where they had all sorts of fabulous dresses from all the ages. We also had tickets for the London Eye, so that was our next stop. If you are thinking that fitting all this in before noon is a bit ambitious, you are right. And that is why we decided to miss our bus. At the time that should have been our departure time, we were high above the city in one of the Eye’s glass carriages, looking out at Big Ben and the Thames, and to heck with the £10 we’d lost.
Now that we’d given up on the original bus, we had to wait until 11:45pm for the next one, which gave us a lot of time to do more exploring. Julia and I went back to the V&A because if an arts and humanities degree took on human form it would be Julia, and so one can hardly resist taking her to all the finest museums and watching her excitement and joy over things like Rococo lace and Renaissance cutlery. Anna Rose decided to opt for a more lively scene, and go to the London Dungeons which are, as you might have guessed, cousins of the Edinburgh Dungeons. Naturally, Julia and I were not particularly keen on joining her, so all were pleased with their destinations and off we went. We had a rather marvellous time exploring the V&A, my favorite moment being when a group of post-modernist performing artists took over an exhibit and started doing all their weird, angsty crap. I absolutely love post-modernists, but for all the wrong reasons. I get a thrill out of the absurd, and the fact that they are taking themselves very seriously and are not trying to be absurd at all makes it that much more glorious to watch, They all had on blue sweaters that said stuff like “System Failure” and “Buffering”. One of them was walking around pretending to talk on a phone, and some were kind of dancing, and others were just doing these sort of awkward walks. My only complaint was the costumes, which were the afore-mentioned blue sweaters and black pants. If you’re going to invade an art museum and force your commentary on society upon innocent patrons, at least wear something with sequins.
We met up with Anna Rose around 5pm and made our way back to the tube station. Unfortunately, Anna Rose had been keeping her tube pass in her coat pocket, where she had also been keeping her hands, and between hand oils and rubbing against the lining of the jacket, the ink on the ticket had rubbed off to the point that it would no longer work in the turnstile. So, instead of doing the logical thing and finding an employee, explaining the situation, and getting a fresh ticket, she told me to swipe mine, and she would dash through after me before the gate had time to close again. And I, who make decisions based purely on what will make a better story for the blog (you’re welcome) agreed. And, I’ll have you know, we did it about 20 times and though I’m sure that at least 5 of those times we were spotted by the gate-guard, only one gate-guard cared enough to yell at us, and when he did, Anna Rose just played the dumb American. The dumb tourist card is a powerful one to have in your deck, I tell you.
Our next adventure was a little dialogue that went thus:
Me, Anna Rose, and Julia have just gotten off a train and are making our way to the station exit
Anna Rose: Anybody want some Oreos?
Me: Where did you get those?
Anna Rose: I found them on the floor of the train.
pause
Me and Julia: Yeah, alright then.
So at this point, we were basically just killing time until bus departed, which meant getting on and off the tube at random stops. We ended up in Chelsea looking for thrift shops, which we didn’t find, but we did find a Lush and messed around with the eyeliner testers there for a bit. (colors of choice are as follows: Julia: sparkly silver, Me: sparkly gold Anna Rose: one eye hot pink, one eye peacock blue). Afterwards, we got some delicious gelato and then it was back to riding around on the tube like vagrants.
Speaking of vagrants, it was about this time that, while waiting for a train, we met Colin, who was drunk, getting on the same train as us, and invited us over to his place for, and I quote, “chicken wings and sex”. (At least he was forthright about it. Too bad about the last bit, because I would’ve been down for some chicken wings. Also, don’t worry, we were in a well-lit, populated train car, and I’m pretty sure Anna Rose could have taken him in a fight, so there was no reason to be concerned for our safety.) As the conversation continued (yes, I am afraid that the conversation did continue) Anna Rose decided to capitalize on this encounter with a soul so clearly in need of a guiding light, and managed to steer the conversation toward Jesus. Man, I want to marry her brain. Yes, it tells her to do stuff like eat train floor Oreos –flooreos, if you will- but also it has the capacity to go into maximum overdrive and explain the gospel and the mysteries of the universe, all in a completely non-opaque way. I wish you could have heard this girl talking about Jesus in that crowded train car in London at 10pm. It was incredible.
Anyway, eventually we did have to get off the train and eat before getting on our bus, so we found a little Mediterranean place and got food before heading back to Victoria coach station for our 11:45pm bus, which, despite having all the time in the world, we still managed to be cutting it close to get to. Then, we almost got left, because we realized last minute that we were standing in line for the wrong bus, but we banged on the window of the correct one and begged the driver to have mercy, and then all was well. We arrived in Lancaster at 5:30am on Monday morning, where –extremely graciously, I might add, Eli, one of the drivers from Capernwray, had come to pick us up since we had travelled long and hard through the night. I believe I covered how lectures went that day in a previous post. For those who don’t remember how lectures went –I don’t either, I was slumped unconscious over my desk. But hey, at least I was there.
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