Well, here we are. The end of the road. Full circle, and all that.

I’m sitting here, writing, back in Minneapolis. I turned my Pandora radio on (a station I called, “Soft, Slow Classical”), and the second movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 8 began playing, quite apt considering that the publisher dubbed the work Grande sonate pathétique because of the emotionally moving music that it is.

Back to reality, then, but not before a final few trips around London.

Following the remarkable experience atop St. Paul’s Cathedral, viewing London from an incredible vantage, all in the open air and not in the suffocating confines of the London Eye that was much too expensive, I met up with Mum again where we sought out what is claimed to be the best fish and chips in London. We did have something to compare it to, after all, when last week we ended our final night in Ilminster ordering fish and chips from a takeaway place. (And we weren’t very impressed.)

Poppies, though, a wonderful fish and chips restaurant in the Camden neighborhood of London (the’ve also got one in Spitalfields), surely did not disappoint, and we were right to be unhappy with the quality of the takeaway fish and chips in Ilminster.

Poppies is a wonderfully nostalgic little place, their decor very kind of 1940s/1950s, a long narrow frying area separated from the dining space by a shiny metal and glass warming buffet for cooked fish that was atop a counter in light blues and creams with chrome slats, men dressed all in white busy frying away behind the counter, waitresses bustling about in black dresses designed with cherries and apples and other red fruits, wearing bold, red hats that sat askew to one side on the head, rock music from the 1950s blaring overhead (could’ve done with turning the volume down a bit, even though the music itself was fantastic, my mother herself familiar with all the tunes they played), and all the while tables busy with people eating and chatting away.

This is another one of those places (in addition to climbing all the way atop St. Paul’s) that you simply must go out of your way to find and enjoy some really quite wonderful food, quite wonderful atmosphere, quite wonderful staff, and quite wonderful times.

Following this, much in the way we went out of our way to see Piccadilly Circus because it’s one of those areas you just have to see, we went out of our way via Charing Cross to see Trafalgar Square, with the famous four lions that sit at each corner of Nelson’s column, the Portrait Gallery situated smartly behind the monument. And, as usual, it never fails: I’ve visited Trafalgar Square twice, now, and each time I thought of “The Dalek Invasion of Earth,” the montage scene where Jenny, Barbara, and Dortman are trying to make their way across London without being seen by the metal monsters, that fantastic percussive music of drums and anvils playing in the background, Dortman in his wheel chair, Barbara elaborately coifed with an entire bottle of hair spray, and Jenny with her ridiculous balaclava.

By the next morning, it was quite difficult not to live in the moment and appreciate the time we had left when the following day meant departing back to Minnesota and to reality. Still, we made the best of it, checking off a few more landmarks essential to any visit to London, after considering possibly going to the British Museum, but instead vetoing that in favor of letting our minds continue to rest from assimilating more gobs of artifacts in minutiae and appreciating some final, famous spots all on their own without the detailed museum placards.

So, to the old BBC Television Centre we went. And how surreal it was to finally see that building in the flesh, as it were.

The BBC has since closed the centre down after moving things to other facilities, but the centre is still a wonderful place to visit, where they made such wonderful shows like Doctor Who, Blue Peter, and Fawlty Towers. To stand outside the building and to know that within those wall those programs were filmed, that if I were to choose a Doctor Who episode at random, watch it, and marvel at the fact that it was most likely filmed or taped in that building is magical (keeping in mind, of course, that sometimes they went on location or filmed at Ealing, Riverside, or Lime Grove). Even still, in a word, fantastic!

It was sad to see the building without the BBC of the BBC Television Centre label on its walls, but it was fantastic to see those immediately recognizable brown bricks that make up the majority of the building, the curved donut section with the rectangular glass windows, the atomic, white dot design on the western side of the building, and the red and white barred gates by the front security booths outside. It’s nice to know that they will still be calling it Television Centre following the refit (which is why they didn’t move those letters from the building’s label) and converting it into a hub for entertainment, offices, and homes.

Moving on, then, we made one final stop to visit, the site of the Battersea Power Station, which, again, will always remind me of “The Dalek Invasion of Earth,” where the Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Susan land in a future London taken over by Daleks, and while the Doctor and Ian search a nearby warehouse to search for a blow torch to cut through a heavy metal girder that fell in front of the TARDIS doors preventing them from entering and leaving, Ian looks out a window, notices Battersea Power Station with its iconic four towers at each corner of the large, rectangular building, and remarks, “What’s happened to those two towers?” because two of them were nearly totally gone, fallen over due to disuse or blown up by who knows what.

As we marveled at the building, we also noticed the typically brown, brown waters of the River Thames, wondering whether fish could at all survive in such a horribly dirty river where garbage floats by, from tennis rackets and tennis balls to empty plastic bottles and deprived, square boards of styrofoam, and chip bags and strange blue pieces of unrecognizable bits of something formerly whole wash ashore and stick to rocks and boulders of concrete. Fortunately, a nearby placard gave us our answer (even outside a museum we couldn’t escape a placard), that apparently as late as the mid 1960s, no fish could survive in the water due to the horrid state of the polluted water (the “Great Stink,” as it was known), but thanks to some serious cleanup, fish and other wildlife (including seals!) have returned to the river. And, apparently, it’s the cleanest city river in all of Europe, which would be difficult to believe if you judged by the appearance of the river alone and didn’t read up on the true state of things.

We made our way across the Vauxhall Bridge, a characteristic bridge of London with several arches of vibrant red and yellow, to cross the Thames by foot one last time until next time, boarded the Underground at Pimlico, made our way to Russell Square to visit a Waitrose (it’s like a fancier, cleaner version of Cub Foods, but cheap, and not as snotty as a Kowalski’s) to buy some biscuits (that’s cookies, mind) generally coated in chocolate, admired a festival outside the Waitrose where you could buy confectionaries, used books, and other things (but we weren’t hungry and didn’t have any more space for anymore souvenirs to bring back), and then grabbed a loaf of bread from our hotel room we bought days earlier and wouldn’t be able to finish before we left, and made our way back to where it all started: Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park to feed some birds (even though signs tell you not to, but everyone does it anyway).

Aaaah, yes. Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, at sunset, silhouettes of birds against quickly darkening water, squirrels that come right up to your feet and look up to you with longing eyes, their pupils hiding all trace of the iris, because they see the plastic bag you’re carrying that probably has something in it for them to eat (but some of the squirrels will be slightly choosy), geese and swans and ducks that come right up to you from out of the Long Water or the Serpentine and eat directly from your hand, pigeons that might actually land on you if you’re still enough, children running amongst flocks of birds that disperse in a flutter but quickly return within seconds to enjoy some more scraps of bread and other junk, bikers biking by with their flashing lights and ringing bells, gorgeous runners in short shorts sweating away as they make their way around the park, lovers lying in the grass beneath trees, and (if you don’t miss it) a sculpture called The Arch by Henry Moore, a tall structure resembling giant, dense bones that frames a setting sun.

And that is London. At sunset. On the eve of a sad day.

And William Hartnell said it best, in that all-time classic serial, “The Dalek Invasion of Earth,” as he closed the TARDIS doors, spoke to his granddaughter Susan before leaving her on Earth for her to start a new life (forgive the very slight paraphrasing, but I think you’ll like it):

“One day, I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back. Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs, and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine. Goodbye, London. Goodbye, my dear.”

As you read this post you may find it has a bit of a melancholic air about it due to the fact that I’ve started writing this on the eve of the day of our return back to Minnesota, and I finished it on the airplane ride back to Minneapolis. I have never wanted a holiday to last longer than this one, and the impending inevitability of its ending has hung heavily and ominously these last few days.

Still, some more spectacular sites to get you caught up on. Things have started slowing down a bit though. After some pretty intense days of traveling and seeing really quite a lot (from Stonehenge, Fawlty Towers, Kent Cavern, Westminster Abbey, the Fire of London Memorial, the Tower, to Madame Tousaud’s, in addition to so many other ancient churches and sites and streets and country lanes) our minds and bodies needed a break. There’s only so much seeing your eyes can do, only so much walking around your legs and feet can manage, and only so much your mind can assimilate and process. We’re definitely feeling a bit of sensory overload, as if you’ve been antiquing for 16 hours straight, searching for the perfect teapot to go with your perfect tea towels that have embroidered on them by your great grandmother yellow tulips and purple pansies, but you just haven’t managed it, despite all the wonderful teapots you see around you, because they’ve all started to look the same even though one has red polka dots on it and another has bees on it. It’s all the same. So, these last three days have definitely been the twilight of our travels. And it’s a bit sad.

Still… St. Paul’s Cathedral!

What’s immediately striking about St. Paul’s Cathedral, especially after viewing so many old and ancient abbeys and churches and castles in the countryside and in London, is how new St. Paul’s felt. Seriously, though! For a moment it felt like I was entering St. Mary’s Basilica in Minneapolis or St. Paul’s Cathedral in St. Paul (very new structures indeed, all things considered).

What’s also striking about St. Paul’s (the one in London, that is) is how spacious, organized, uncluttered, and uniform the whole thing is. Westminster (and this isn’t meant pejoratively) seemed more a frantic mishmash of little bits added over the years (as was the case, although not in a frantic way; it just seemed frantic because we got to view the culmination of hundreds of years of different people making decisions about the space in one glance or two; of course, this doesn’t refer to the structure as a whole, with its tall, Gothic arches and windows all forming a compete semblance of a whole; but rather instead all the different tombs and memorials and statues that were slowly added to all the different chapels, making each one of those feel especially cluttered and disorganized, gave Westminster that kind of frantic mishmash feel). But Westminster seemed more representative of all the churches and abbeys we saw in the countryside, as well, with their small little additions of various memorials and tombs, changing aesthetics over the years represented in one great space.

St. Paul’s, though, is clearly the design of one man: Christopher Wren. And all of the memorials and additions to the main church floor all seem to blend in with their surroundings. St. Paul’s felt very, well, American (wide open spaces, shiny polished newness), while Westminster was very clearly English (lots of space but all built up and filled in with something ancient, and everything was all a bit dusty). Again, these aren’t criticisms of either structure in the least, as they are both really quite outstanding and staggering examples of very fine architecture that invoke different responses for different reasons, neither good nor bad, just different.

(Although, I still think the audio guide narrator at Westminster took himself way too seriously while the one at St. Paul’s didn’t.)

The first thing you’ll notice on the ground floor when you enter is a giant baptismal font, a great, elaborate stone bowl raised up on a kind of circular stone dais, the bowl itself raised even higher by its own majestic pillar, kind of like those raised glass platters for displaying cakes. The audio guide talked about how important baptism is, even though all it is is pouring some water that an important shaman (or whatever) waved his hands over, muttering something important in a bored voice (at least I think that’s how holy water becomes holy, although he might use a magic wand with a unicorn hair at its core) over an unsuspecting baby or a suspecting adult.

Onwards to your left of the giant bowl, you have a chance to marvel at several things at once, and it is the dome that causes your eyes to look aloft, your neck tilted back to aid in viewing (as is often the case in giant buildings like these with elaborate paintings and mosaics on the ceilings and tall, tall walls). The dome itself is painted with eight (if I’m remembering correctly) separate moments from Paul’s life (he was the one who used to be called Saul, then Dionysus (I mean, Allah, I believe; I might be mixing up the religions; sensory overload, remember) allegedly spoke to him in a desert, if I’m remembering correctly, who said, “Why have you forsaken me?” and then Paul says something like, “Oh! Um… sorry…” and POOF! he’s a Christian called Paul who spreads the word that that some referred to as “good”) all done in a monochrome of a kind of brownish-grey.

There are also three quite striking mosaics above the quire area (the part of churches like these where boy singers in white robes with red collars sit with their backs to the cathedral walls in benches that run perpendicular to the stone table, er… I mean, high altar, and make you think of, “Oh, Lord! Oooo, you are so big!” from “Monty Python and the Meaning of Life”), each situated in a kind of concave circle in the ceiling (not quite a dome, just a large inverted bump) and each depicting scenes from “Star Trek II”: Khan placing those worm things in people’s ears; Kirk taking over as captain of the Enterprise; and Khan detonating the Genesis device.

No… wait… sorry…

The mosaics depicted three scenes from the Bible’s Book of Genesis, rather, not Star Trek II.

Sorry… got that mixed up.

They were really quite wonderful to look at, these mosaics. The one that really stuck with me was the mosaic that depicted the creation of fish and other sea life, because these mad looking whales framed the circle, and they were blowing water into the ocean that was teeming with marine life of all kinds.

Following marveling at the dome and the quire, you get to make your way around the main altar to a kind of mini chapel, and I was quite surprised to see what we found there: a small chapel area with an altar thing, all dedicated to American soldiers who fought and died during World War II. Behind the altar was an elaborate screen with an American bald eagle situated at the top, and behind that tall stained glass windows displaying various animals and icons of the United States. The altar was also fenced in with gorgeous, golden metal bars, and between some of the bars were small rectangular plaques, one with an inscription in Hebrew for fallen people of the Jewish persuasion, one that was blank for fallen non-believers, and other plaques for other persuasions.

It was all, of course, very touching, especially a giant book encased behind glass that listed all of the dead American soldiers in an overly serious script, and each day someone turns the page so that everyone’s name is visible a some point at regular intervals.

Sadly, our time at St. Paul’s was cut short, because ministers and other teachers from a nearby school were indoctrinating young teenager students into the faith with some sort of elaborate rehearsal for a ritual involving long processions with banners and children reading boring texts. So rather annoyingly we had to skip the Whispering Gallery and all 500+ steps to the very top of St. Paul’s. It was all really frustrating.

So, we very quickly made our way through the crypt which isn’t a crypt like you would expect in Indiana Jones with rats and spiders and cob webs and skeletons in little wall inlets like shelves that are big enough for human bodies, but rather a kind of smaller version of the main cathedral except with much lower ceilings. It is here, however, where you get to visit the tombs of Nelson, Wren, Wellington, and (unexpectedly, as I didn’t know he was down there) Arthur Sullivan. Really very pretty neat.

As we made our way out of St. Paul’s after buying way too many souvenirs, we went on a quest to find St. Peter’s Hill, a location that will always remind me of an iconic shot from an episode of Doctor Who called “The Invasion”: a large group of Cybermen descending the steps of the hill, St. Paul’s behind them, while a curious, pulsing, repetitious, electronic sound that could only have originated in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop fills the air with a hypnotic wave to control all humans. The steps on the hill are a little different from the steps that were there in the 1960s, as they’ve added some elegant ramps that meld into newer steps, but it’s still fun all the same to pretend you’re a Cybermen descending the steps of St. Paul’s to conquer London. The hill also allows for some marvelous camera opportunities for some wide shots of the cathedral.

If you continue onwards down the hill, you’ll have a chance to walk across the Millennium Bridge, which provides some stunning views of the Thames and also a marvelous glimpse of the Globe.

As we felt our time running out, we hopped onto the Piccadilly Line to stop at, naturally, Piccadilly Circus (which always reminds me of “The Catherine Tate Show,” the skit with the easily surprised woman who screams loudly whenever her husband places his teacup quietly on his saucer until she finally complains, “Christ! It’s like Piccadilly Circus in here!”), as no trip to London is compete without visiting this crazy intersection of tangled vehicle, bike, and pedestrian traffic with its iconic curved screen like a giant television set with attention deficit disorder that hugs the northern buildings and that displays constantly changing ads for various businesses, and where you can play a game and try to take a picture of the screen at a moment when McDonalds is NOT represented in the madness.

We also wanted to visit Waterstones, too, a fantastic bookseller over here and whose largest branch, or so they say, is located in Piccadilly Circus, but I have no reason to disbelieve their claim, as they’ve got five whole floors filled with books and a sixth floor with a quite posh cafe very dissimilar from a Starbucks you find in a Barnes and Noble, complete with important looking people with greying hair reading books with glasses resting on the edge of their noses.

It was at Waterstones where we discovered an author called P.G. Wodehouse, heralded by signage as the most hilarious British writer of them all, with all his books with quite colorful jackets displayed nicely on a round table. My mum and I opened up to any old random page in any old random book, and we found ourselves laughing out loud right then and there within a matter of seconds of opening up one of the books. It was really quite remarkable.

When we made it back to our hotel after buying some more souvenirs at Waterstones, I lamented to my mum that I was really bummed that we didn’t quite make it to the top of St. Paul’s and that I couldn’t decide whether I should make a return trip while we were still here before we left or whether I should wait until I return to London another time. She essentially ordered me to go, and I’m so glad that I did.

The following morning, I returned to St. Paul’s all on my own (and THAT was really fun, traveling about London all by myself) re-entered the cathedral, took a moment to marvel at the large dome, and then made my way straight up the stairs to the Whispering Gallery.

It’s called the Whispering Gallery because of some phenomenally awesome acoustics. The gallery itself is about a third of the way from the bottom of the cathedral floor to the top of the Golden Gallery, and it is a kind of five foot ledge with a stone seating area that runs around the entire circumference of the main rotunda, all enclosed by a dark metal barrier of iron bars about five feet tall. If you are on one side of the gallery and a friend (or a stranger, I suppose) who is on the exact opposite side whispers into the wall, you’ll be able to hear the whisper even though you’re separated by a 100 foot diameter. I didn’t get to try it myself, but others did, and if you place your ear close to the wall, you’ll hear all these ghostly whispers entertaining your ears.

Needless to say, of course, being a third of the way up towards the top of St. Paul’s, my fear of heights again triggered weak knees, but not nearly debilitating like at the 1666 Monument where there was only a foot or two of space for walking. Whenever I’m confronted with great heights I always experience these awful intrusive thoughts where I fear I might lose control of my conscience at any moment and throw myself over the edge at any second, and the sheer drop alone is just so staggeringly scary, it’s difficult to control these thoughts. Still, it was a breathtaking view of the cathedral floor below, and the gallery gave you a chance to have a closer look at the gorgeous monochrome paintings of moments from St. Paul’s life.

Following the Whispering Gallery and following a trek up some winding, metal staircases and through cramped corridors wide enough for non-obese people, you reach the Stone Gallery, which is outside in the open air and provides some nice views of the city, but is only about two-thirds of the way to the top, and isn’t nearly as exciting as the Golden Gallery, by way of some more winding, metal staircases and through more cramped corridors wide enough for non-obese people.

It is at the Golden Gallery where you can experience the finest views of the city, finer than the 1666 Monument and certainly finer than the London Eye.

(By the way, do it in this order: London Eye [or skip that altogether {no, really… just skip that altogether}]; the 1666 Monument [certainly don’t skip this]; and then the climb up St. Paul’s Cathedral [absolutely don’t skip this, even if you have to come back the next day because they had to close the cathedral early].)

But seriously and honestly!

What! A! View!

It was rather appropriate, doing this towards the end of our time here in London, as the views of the entire city (wind in your hair and everything) just made me fall in love with the city all over again.

The greatest city in the world! Seen from an incredible and irreplaceable vantage! And it was during the off season so the balcony wasn’t crowded with people! And the extreme height didn’t trigger my fear of heights because the great, lead dome obscured any immediate and sheer drops!

All you could see was London! As far as the eye could see! A seemingly never ending, restless ocean or vast mountain range of buildings! Old and new! Glass and stone! Metal and mortar! Side by side!

With people from all over the world! Speaking all types of languages! Practicing all types of beliefs!

This is my city, and I want it! I will live here some day. That is now a certainty.

I love this city unlike anything else or anyone else I’ve loved before. It’s really quite remarkable.

And so, there it is. At this point I’ve got just about a day and a half to catch you up on a trip that I will treasure forever. I’m finishing writing this with a little under an hour to go before we land back in Minneapolis.

And I’m already planning my return, not as a visitor, but as a resident.

I’m not sure when it will happen, but hopefully and boldly much sooner rather than later.

N.B. Next post I’ll recommend to you the best fish and chips in London, and I’ll fill you in on our final explorations of a really quite remarkable city. (Good word, that. “Remarkable.”)

A new Doctor! A new companion! A new title sequence! A new monster! And it’s in color! And all filmed on film! And UNIT’s back! With the Brigadier! And it’s a script by Robert Holmes! What could be better!

Not much! Jon Pertwee’s first outing as the Doctor, “Spearhead from Space,” is probably the second best to all debut serials of a new Doctor, second only to Patrick Troughton’s “Power of the Daleks,” the all time greatest debut serial for a new Doctor.

(No, no. Don’t argue. I’m right, and you’re wrong.)

What reminds me of “Spearhead from Space” today is that we headed towards Madame Tousaud’s waxworks museum in London, right off of Baker Street (yes, THAT Baker Street, of Sherlock Holmes fame, 221B, to be precise), and in “Spearhead from Space” exists a newer process of creating realistic, lifesize replicas of famous people using plastic rather than wax.

Why is plastic so important to the story? Well, because an octopus-like creature known as the Nestene Consciousness can make all kinds of plastic come alive, from toys, inflatable furniture, and even plastic replicas of real people at Madame Tousauds. And they all come alive, armed with a gun that appears out of the end of their arm after the hand drops down with a hinge at the wrist.

Imagine not only these Madame Tousaud’s replicas coming to life and slaughtering any passing human, but shop window dummies, too! So, if you were already afraid of shop window dummies, Doctor Who gave you another reason to be afraid. They could come alive at any moment, breaking through the glass of the display window, and with no warning at all.

No wonder kids hid behind sofas or watched Doctor Who between their fingers. Scary stuff indeed!

Fortunately, no waxwork replicas of famous people came alive at Madame Tousaud’s, and the Madame Tousaud’s we saw in Doctor Who (lots of overly serious people wearing furs while looking at replicas of bored dignitaries with nothing behind them except an overly serious curtain that looks like it’s made of some kind of overly serious velvet) was very different from the Madame Tousaud’s we saw in real life. (The Madame Tousaud’s we saw in the program, though, was much more scary place for plastic dummies to come to life, though, of course.)

Before you even attempt to enter Madame Tousaud’s, though, buy your tickets ahead of time as you could possibly wait up to 2 hours in line if you don’t and just decide to show up at the door. Buy ahead of time and you’ll be inside within minutes.

As you enter, you’ll be overcome with vibrant, red walls and a great, glassy chandelier at least 8 feet tall with long tendrils of elegant crystals of glass hanging in the center of a room with two curved staircases on either side that hug the wall and that take you to lifts to the beginning of the exhibit.

And then the real fun begins with the first section of Madame Tousaud’s, where you get to meet a whole bunch of film stars including Johnny Depp, Emma Watson, Helen Miren, Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, Patrick Stewart, Colin Firth, Jim Carey, and many others.

They really do look lifelike, though. It’s really quite incredible. While the room is quite spacious, there is quite a crowd, but you never have to wait too long to take a picture of yourself within one of these lifelike waxworks. You could very easily fool someone into thinking you met a famous person by showing them a picture of you standing next to one of these models.

At the end of the first exhibit is an American style movie theatre food stand where you can buy popcorn and pop (fizzies, if you prefer) and candy. Just for a moment it feels like you’re back in the states at any old movie theatre, but then you look around and hear people speaking languages of all types and people speaking predominantly English with various British accents, and the illusion is broken, and you realize you’re back in the UK (but how fantastic is that!)

I’m forgetting the order of everything after the first exhibit, but other exhibits include a Hollywood exhibit where you get to meet John Wayne (and my goodness he was a tall man!), Whoopie Goldberg wearing a nun’s habit, Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe, and others; a sports exhibit where you get to meet people who I didn’t recognize at all; a pop stars exhibit where the only person I recognized was Justin Timberlake; a Royal Family exhibit where you get to meet, naturally, all of the Royal Family as well as Princess Diana and replicas of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and Mary Queen of Scots, and I took a photo with Charles I where I posed while making a chopping motion with my hand over his neck; a “Culture” exhibit where you meet Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, and Oscar Wilde (and my goodness he was tall, too!); a world leaders exhibit where you get to meet Obama (although he was the only waxwork that didn’t quite look like the genuine article), David Cameron (who I really don’t like at all), Ghandi, Martin Luther King, and the Dhali Llama, who I just ADORE with his characteristic smile and geeky glasses. What man to aspire to be!

Of course, remember, too, that I’m leaving lots of people out that I can’t remember.

What’s funny about viewing all this at Madame Tousaud’s, though, is that sometimes you are so completely surrounded by people that you frequently find yourself standing next to a very still man thinking that they’re real only to be startled a bit to discover that they’re not, and it works the other way, too, where someone might be standing still admiring the work of a certain replica, and all the sudden they move and you’re startled a bit, commenting, “Oh! I though you were a waxwork!”

Following all this is a rather frightening exhibit that takes you through various torture methods throughout the ages (but not before you get to meet Alfred Hitchcock), where one of the most terrifying things you see is a waxwork model tied to a giant, spiked, wooden wheel, his back facing down with spikes driving into him, his head upside down, his face locked in a terrifyingly gruesome moment of absolute pain.

Also while down here, You also get to read about the French Revolution, too, and view replicas of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette (as well as, terrifyingly, replicas of their heads impaled on stakes), because that’s how Madame Tousaud got her start in all this. She made waxwork replicas of the French Royal Family as well as other poor unfortunates who were killed during this time. After leaving her husband, she realized that she stumbled on quite the money maker, this talent she had, and started opening her own exhibits and passing down her methods to others.

Everything continues on with a kind of haunted dungeon affair where waxwork people stand about in a darkened area with lots of prison bars and corridors while real life people jump out or slink out of dark corners and scare you. And how they did exceed!

Lastly is a really quite jolly ride, where you step onto one of a long line of London taxis on a with room for two about half the length of the real ones, all moving along a track, and a bar closes you in like on a roller coaster, and you get to watch the whole history of London acted out before you by animatronic waxworks surrounded by the architecture of the day, from London’s Roman beginnings, the Great Fire, to the present day, a ride not all that dissimilar from ones you might experience at Universal Studios in LA like the ET ride (except much better), and rather done in a way that reminds you of House on the Rock in Wisconsin (except done better and the moving animatronics don’t look like they’ll fall apart at any moment). Towards the end, the ride takes a picture of you, and so naturally we bought two copies of the photo!

Your whole time at Madame Tousaud’s concludes with a Marvel Comics exhibit, but we skipped that.

Seriously, though, I didn’t think we would enjoy Madame Tousaud’s as much as we did! My mother was curious about it because she had heard about it all her life, and I was curious about it because of hearing about it in “Spearhead from Space,” so we went to go check it out, not knowing what to expect, and we came away thoroughly happy from having enjoyed ourselves so much! If you find yourself in London, do stop by. It’s fantastic!

Incidentally, Madame Tousaud’s is really close to Regent’s Park, and so we managed to visit all five of the main large parks in London (Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, Green Park, St. James’s Park, and Regent’s Park). While all five of them are absolutely fantastic, by far the best of the lot is Regent’s Park, so if you only have time to check out one of the parks, do visit Regent’s Park, but they’re all rather somewhat equally splendid in their own right (and if you visit Buckingham Palace you’ll see Green and St. James’s Parks by default).

Regent’s Park, however, is a very posh park, as within it is Regent’s University, Queen Mary’s Gardens, and Open Air Theatre. The gardens, too, are very classically British with little strips of grass bordering well trimmed hedges in shapes of perfect squares or long, long rectangles, complete with roses and geraniums and all sorts of other flowers carefully placed and manicured. And don’t miss the Triton Fountain while you’re here, an elegant fountain with a man blowing a conk shell and whose surrounded by fish and mermaids.

We also found ourselves surrounded by the largest and most diverse group of birds yet as we walked by the Boating Lake, pigeons, swans, geese, ducks, and other water birds of so many varieties. One pigeon actually landed on me, and one of the geese actually took food from my hand, and one duck nipped away at my hand because I didn’t have any more food to give.

The park also provides you with some fantastic views of the headquarters of WOTAN, the evil computer that controls the War Machines in a serial of Doctor Who called, er, “The War Machines” (otherwise known as the Post Office Tower, as I always forget what the name was changed to). I can’t remember if I’ve described the building before, but it’s a kind of space age tower, very glassy and shiny and metallic, shaped like a long cylinder that keeps changing its circumference as if the tower was built by placing slabs of metallic and glassy circles of different sizes all on top of each other.

Flowing this, we made a quick side trip to the FDR memorial statue outside the US Embassy, a rather bored, rectangular monstrosity of a structure that wouldn’t be out of place in DC made of concrete and glass but that has an elaborate golden bald eagle with wings spread at the very top of this 6 story (or so) building, compete with flags of all 50 states right towards the front of the building in a long line that stretches from one end of the building to the other. We found Minnesota’s flag, took a picture, and moved on to another side trip to Twinings to buy some of the best tea ever to bring home with us (I hope customs won’t mind, but I imagine they won’t).

And so with that, another busy day taking in the sites of London comes to a close. And as I write this, I find myself becoming melancholy because I don’t want to go back to Minnesota at all. London is absolutely wonderful, and I wish I could transplant all my friends and family and their pets to over here, where we all could live in such a fantastic city that provides so much for everyone. I feel at home here in a way that I quite haven’t felt in other cities, Minneapolis included. I always knew London was the greatest city in the world, and this trip has now loudly and confidently confirmed that!

And the weather has been absolutely fantastic as well! It hasn’t gotten above 20 Celsius, and it’s rained off and on every day! Absolute bliss! This weather is MY kind of weather and London is my kind of town!

My next post will take us to the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral, where there may be Cybermen lurking beneath in the sewers! Beware their hypnotizing sound waves, unless Patrick Troughton rigged up some sonic protection for you!

N.B. I managed to have an internet signal while atop St. Paul’s, so this post comes via the Golden Gallery.

“The ravens need new batteries,” is what I will always think about when I see the ravens on the green in the Tower of London, with thanks, of course, to Doctor Who. That’s because tens of millions of fans worldwide celebrated the 50th anniversary of the television series last November, and one of the opening scenes of that momentous episode saw Kate Stewart (that’s Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart’s daughter) comment that the ravens seemed a bit slow and that they needed new batteries, just one occasion of countless other occasions where Doctor Who has revealed that not all things (even everyday things) appear to be what they seem to be.

The Tower is a massive attraction to see. It’s not just one tower, obviously, but for the uninitiated: did you know the Tower of London is several towers and several buildings? Well, you do now.

The Tower actually sometimes feels more like a mini Renaissance fair, except without the carts of food, the countless performers, the fake buildings, and the tacky things to buy round every corner.

Hm… I guess it’s actually not at all like a Renaissance fair at all, but it easily could become one. All you’d have to do is add those things it’s missing (well, try to continue to sell nice stuff and not tacky stuff), and you’d have a fantastic Renaissance fair surrounded by authentic buildings throughout the ages.

But that would cheapen the whole thing and would actually be quite disrespectful to some of the more delicate areas where some really terribly sad things happened. So just keep it as it is and don’t even think about turning it into a a Renaissance fair whatever you do. I don’t even know why I even decided to talk about the idea or even make the comparison. Forget I ever mentioned this.

So, anyway… the Tower. As with everything else save the London Eye, it’s absolutely marvelous, one of those things that visitors to London simply must see. And due to the Tower’s sheer size, I recommend arriving close to when it opens, as we spent five hours at the Tower, but sadly missed some key areas because the doors close very early (as with all other places like this) at 5:00 or 5:30 (I can’t remember we for sure). So do seriously plan on spending the whole day here, having lunch here and everything in their cafe that’s within the grounds.

One of the first exhibits you’ll come across is the Coins and Kings exhibition. It’s really a quite fantastic little exhibition, as it’s housing some really rare coins. There are currently some especially priceless coins on loan from the British Museum, requiring extra staff on duty to look after the exhibit.

One of the staff was very friendly indeed, telling us all about some of the especially important coins in the collection, his own coin collection from Tudor times and earlier, and also about some of the history of the monarchy, in particular the Civil War and what led to the re-establishment of the monarchy.

If there’s one thing I noticed about the English is that they seem to be extremely, incredibly, and resolutely proud of their monarchy. The staff we talked to emotionally explained about how Oliver Cromwell didn’t have a clear successor, someone who was as charismatic as he, so they welcomed back Charles II because he was charismatic and they just didn’t know what else to do.

The poor dears! Just a relatively short time later, the wonderful French will manage what the English couldn’t.

So, if there are three things I don’t understand about the English (as much as I ADORE them) it’s: marmite, having beans for breakfast, and the monarchy. There you have it.

Sorry… I seem to be having difficulty controlling my tangents as I write this post…

Um… where was I? Oh yes! The coins!

A wonderful exhibit and a wonderful staff member who was full of lots of stories. In fact, he was full of a few too many stories, as he just kept going on and on and on and on. I thought of “Monty Python and the Meaning of Life” when Death comes for the English and Americans who are dining at someone’s house in the English countryside. They all died at the same time because of bad salmon mouse. And Death tells the Americans to be quiet, and he mocks them, saying something like, “You Americans! All you do is talk and talk, and you say, ‘I wanna tell ya something’.”

Anyway, so in addition to the fact that the English can be loud and obnoxious, too (like the ladies on the train we had the misfortune of listening to on our way from Bath to London), so, also, can they talk and talk and talk. Another stereotype smashed.

Moving on from the Coins and Kings exhibit, we decided to do the Wall Walks, which is exactly what you’d expect from a title like that: a walk on the upper part of the outer walls, which also takes you through several towers. One of the more memorable towers is the lodgings of Edward the Confessor, whose quarters have been restored to what it might have looked like, with elaborately painted walls with green vines and purplish flowers and his separate altar area was done up with a shiny floor of green and red and gold tiles.

As you make your way from tower to tower, you’ll have wonderful chances to step out into the open air, walk along the wall, and take in more spectacular views of the Gherkin (I just love that building) and other newer buildings, such a bizarre contradiction in architecture with ancient and new sitting back-to-back, shoulder-to-shoulder.

Another exhibit along the Wall Walks includes glimpses of old crowns, and while all the jewels and ornaments are removed from the genuine articles, you can still imagine what the crowns would have looked like when fully decked out, including the little crown that Queen Victoria wore with her widow’s veil.

A rather moving exhibit along the walk is a photography exhibit. As it’s the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the First World War, this exhibit took old photos of soldiers training for battle within the walls of the Tower, all photos from a hundred years ago, except done up with modern color versions of the exact same location laid over the black-and-white originals, and then within the original version, modem inserts of someone recreating a pose of one of the soldiers from the old photo. A very touching tribute to the brave men who fought in a terrible, terrible war.

Also around the Wall Walks is an exhibit aimed clearly at the children, a fun little affair where you get to learn about the various animals housed in the Tower (all that remain today are the famous ravens). Kings and queens would compete with other kings and queens by garnering the most exotic animals possible, and some of the animals throughout history had some curious habits indeed, including a monkey who smoked a pipe, of all things! Sadly, many of these animals were mistreated or the caretakers didn’t know how to properly take care of them, and sometimes they were used rather like in the Roman Coliseum: animals fighting animals to the death so humans could watch if for pure enjoyment. Terribly sad…

As I said, today only the ravens remain. And it’s said that should the ravens leave, the Tower will fall and with it the kingdom. Or so it’s said. In place of the other animals that are now long gone are gorgeous, metal statues on display around various parts of the Tower including monkeys, bears, lions, tigers, and an elephant. Do make sure you spot them all while you’re here.

As we finished the Wall Walks, we made for the Crown Jewels, which, naturally, is a must-see exhibit. And the pride the English have for their monarchy shines through in this quite large display of various artifacts. Before you see the actual jewels, the exhibit first acquaints or reacquaints you with the history of the monarchy, and when you come to the part of history that must remind you of the English Civil War, the theme or the exhibit turns from royal purples to dark blacks and browns, and then after the English make the wrong decision restoring the monarchy, the exhibit declares in large letters, “Monarchy Restored,” and the whole affair returns to the colors of royal blues and purples. It’s really quite funny.

It’s very clear, though, that the British ADORE their monarchy, and, alas, that’s one thing about this country that I shall never understand, along with marmite and having beans for breakfast. Still, it’s always fun to marvel at all the ridiculous things they created for them.

Speaking of which, after becoming acquainted with the Royal Family’s long history, you at last get to view the genuine articles of the Crown Jewels. The oldest item in the collection is a golden spoon, made sometime in the 1200s, if I’m remembering correctly and I’m probably not so make sure you look that up, and then a whole bunch of comparatively newer items from the later 1600s (because they had to make new ones following the restoration of the monarchy because the old ones were melted down) including some swords, that scepter thing, that orb thing, and the various crown things.

Following this, you have a chance to view some really quite elegant golden items made for grand feasts following the coronation ceremony including an overly giant punch bowl with an overly giant ladle, platters and plates of all sizes from the overly huge to plainly manageable, and ornate containers shaped like mini churches to hold salt. One of the last things you view are the royal vestments, a kind of long, heavy robe affair all done up in colors of gold and adorned with roses, thistles, and shamrocks.

After viewing all this, it’s difficult not to look at all these things and think, “Honestly! Haven’t they got better things to spend their money on?” in the same way that we Americans waste so much money on our elections, spend way too much on defense, and allocate way too much on expanding the sizes of our roads where it could be better spent on trains. But, oh well. In the same way that I become frustrated with religion, it’s still quite a treat to view all these things that the monarchy inspired, even though I find the monarchy frustrating, too.

Following the Crown Jewels, we made our way to the Scaffold Site, where sadly and oftentimes wrongly men and women throughout history were executed by beheading. At the site is a moving memorial to all those lives lost, a perfectly round slab of maybe about two meters in diameter of some dark stone set into the ground surrounded by a brick walkway that encircles the stone, and above that about a foot off the ground is an elegant circle of glass inscribed with some of the names of those executed here including Anne Boleyn and others, and atop the glass table, as it were, sits a, um… well, it looks like a glass pillow? I was sort of confused by that, and when I have better internet, I’ll look that up…

Still, it’s a really very moving memorial set at the site where so many were executed. The grass, as ever over here, is so green, and to imagine the horrible things that happened at this site is somewhat unbearable.

Across the green that surrounds the Scaffold Site is another green, and upon it sat two ravens. They were so still, and they moved their heads and wings so infrequently that for a moment I thought that maybe some of the ravens really were fake and powered by batteries, but before long they started hopping about the grass, and they proved to be real after all (or are they?)

From here we entered the White Tower where you get to view the Line of Kings, essentially a chance to marvel at the various armor created for various kings over the ages, including armor made for not only 4-year-old princes but also for horses as well. Some of the armor was quite ornately finished with elaborate golden etchings while others were just the smooth, polished, shining metal. Henry VIII’s armor was especially imposing. He was quite large after all, but his armor made him appear even larger still.

Sadly, we were quickly running out of time (which is why I suggest you arrive at the Tower as soon as it opens so you have a whole day to spend here), as the various staff members told us that the upper levels of the White Tower would soon be closing. So, rather annoyingly, we had to speed up and look at things more quickly, which goes very much contrary to how my mum and I enjoy looking at things: much more slowly to admire every single detail of every single thing.

What stuck with me about the upper floor, though, was an exhibit that displayed the chair and gun used to execute a certain German spy called Josef Jakobs during the Second World War. It’s a really frightening setup: a plain wooden chair the poor man sat down in, and in front of that a long rifle on a stand pointing directly toward where his head would have been. To think that things like this still occurred in the 20th century (let alone the horrible Holocaust and then now the horrible atrocities committed by the ridiculous so-called Islamic State today) is all very unpleasant and makes you lose hope in the future of humans.

Alas, we’re out of time. While we quickly gazed at the Traitors’ Gate (that infamous entrance, a pair of heavy doors with wooden frames and bars of metal, the doors half submerged in a small underground channel of green water that leads to the River Thames) we lamented that we were going to miss the torture exhibit in the Bloody Tower, and we missed the Beauchamp Tower and Fusiliers’ Museum altogether. So, another time, then…

We were fortunate, however, to view the Tower at a time when an absolutely touching installation was in progress: hundreds of thousands of red ceramic poppies, each one representing a fallen dead from the First World War, spilling out from one of the Tower’s walls via a net to keep them in place, and then slowly making their way throughout the dry moat, river-like as if a stream of blood gushing forth, reminding us of the sacrifices brave men made during such a horrible time.

If there’s one thing about London, it’s this: not only is it dense with people of all kinds from around the world, it’s also dense with so much history, so much so that I’m having a difficult time keeping up with these posts as they become longer and longer just to parse through the layers and layers of time and history we get to experience with our own eyes and our own hands. It’s really quite remarkable.

So. even though I don’t understand why the British still have their monarchy, or why they like marmite, or why they have beans at breakfast, I still absolutely ADORE them and their countries. I especially enjoy London. In my mind, London really is the greatest city in the world, and without thinking twice and within a heartbeat, should the opportunity arise, I would move here and live here at a moment’s notice. I would. It would be fantastic.

In my next post, beware Autons bearing gifts, as we make our way to Madame Tousauds!

What’s awfully remarkable and overwhelming about London is that there is so much to do, so much to see, and so more to adore. When you’re deciding what to do for the day, it’s often quite difficult to decide exactly what you want to do because all the options are so enticing, and you also just don’t want to miss anything.

So, frequently choosing what to do feels a bit like a chase through eternity, and you have to just choose something while knowing that something else might get left out. But, at the same time, whatever you do choose will be absolutely splendid and fantastic and wonderful.

There are the essentials, though, for anyone who comes for a visit, and they include in no particular order: the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Buckingham Palace, and the Houses of Parliament. We’ve seen Buckingham and Parliament, and while we’ve seen the outside of Westminster, we didn’t go inside, because it happened to be closed on the day we visited.

So, the time finally came to see the inside of Westminster. And I highly recommend a visit. Sadly, you can’t take pictures on the inside, so my memory won’t be as clear as with everything else I’ve seen thus far, but I’ll try my best.

I do also highly recommend that you take the free audio tour. Your narrating tour guide takes himself way too seriously, but it’s an informative tour nonetheless. And while I find the whole religion thing overly ridiculous, it’s difficult not to admire the magnificent structures that the entire business inspired. But, more importantly, Westminster is a marvelous place to visit some obviously important memorials and entombments of some obviously important people.

The first tomb you visit as part of the audio tour, after walking towards the main front doors and past the tombs of Henry Purcell, Ralph van Williams, Benjamin Britten, and Gustav Holst (and I was annoyed they didn’t get mentioned in the audio tour), is a tomb of the unknown soldier, who lies beneath a giant black stone framed with red poppies. There’s a serious calm about everyone about you as you visit the grave of someone who served their country and whose name we don’t know, much in the same way the same thing happens when you visit the unknown soldier’s tomb at Arlington outside DC. It’s clear that everyone around you understands that this is no ordinary tourist attraction and that calling it a tourist attraction feels a little wrong. Westminster is more of a pilgrimage for the masses that now transcends whatever one believes. And there’s something awfully powerful about visiting the burial sites of so many important people throughout time.

Following the unknown soldier’s tomb, you make your way toward the Nave, an area with a smallish biggish altar situated before an elaborate screen (added in the 16th century, if I’m remembering correctly) of immaculate gold, several pointed apexes adorned at the top with crosses, all done up in a way to blend in with the overall aesthetic of a building that took hundreds of years to build from when construction began in the 13th century.

After passing through the Nave, you view the Quire, and I couldn’t help but think about “Monty Python and the Meaning of Life” when all the school children were in church, falling asleep, looking bored, while Michael Palin, playing a minister, leads them in prayer, “Oh Lord! Oooo, you are so big! Gosh, we’re all really impressed down here, I can tell you!” mainly because the Quire seemed so similar to whatever church they filmed that scene in. It had the characteristic benches running parallel to the abbey walls, smart lanterns with red shades sitting on long desk things in front of the benches, with various books and hymnals sitting on music stands and on the long desk/table things.

Past the Quire, you enter into several smaller chapels that house tombs of lots more important people, including those of King Edward I (the tall one they called Longshanks) and several others called Richard and Henry, but their numbers are escaping me at the moment.

Two chapels I have a much firmer memory of, however, are those where Queen Elizabeth I and Queen Mary I are buried and where Mary Queen of Scots is buried. What’s remarkable about Elizabeth’s tomb is that her sister Mary, the devoutly Catholic one who killed countless Protestants, is buried immediately below her sister Elizabeth, the devoutly Protestant one who killed countless Catholics.

Naturally, of course, I can never think about Queen Elizabeth without thinking about Miranda Richardson’s absolutely hilarious performance of Elizabeth I in the BBC comedy from the 1980s, “Blackadder II.” And while I know that the real Elizabeth didn’t screech and talk in a high pitched mouse-like voice and make jokes about cutting people’s heads off, it’s still terribly fun to pretend that the real Elizabeth did.

But, on the other hand, I also think about Cate Blanchet’s stunning turn as Elizabeth I in the film, “Elizabeth,” and it was that film that my interest in the silly English monarchy that I wish would go away began to become something more serious beyond knowing that Elizabeth I always had pearls around her neck (and I only knew that because of watching Blackadder). It’s really a terribly fascinating story, the whole English monarchy thing, especially the Tudors, the Hanoverians, and the current day Windsors.

Anyway, I’m losing track of where I am…

Oh yes! Bloody Mary buried directly beneath her sister Elizabeth, two sisters so directly opposed to each other, yet there their bodies lie so close to each other.

In the chapel just opposite the one where Elizabeth and Mary’s tombs are (which house their bodies! Isn’t that weird! What do they look like, I wonder! Wouldn’t you just LOVE to dig them up and see!!) is the body of Mary Queen of Scots (and what does HER body look like? Aren’t you curious? That’s all I think about when I go to cemeteries and old abbeys like this. I just wanna dig their bodies up to see what they look like!)

If you don’t know (and you really should, as it’s terribly fascinating, not just the politics, but all the executions by removing the head), Elizabeth had Mary Queen of Scots imprisoned in the Tower for 19 years to stop her from spreading Catholicism before Elizabeth finally cut Mary’s head off, and then when James I became king after Elizabeth I who was childless died, he made sure Mary’s tomb in Westminster rivaled that of Elizabeth’s. So, on one side of the abbey you have Elizabeth’s elaborate, marble effigy, lying down with palms pressed together in prayer, and on the other you have Mary’s elaborate, marble effigy, lying down with palms pressed together. To add more drama and just to reaffirm the drama of it all, Elizabeth’s sister Mary is directly below Elizabeth. Even in death, such rivalry that you can still feel in the abbey today.

(But what do their bodies look like right now?? I want to know! I need to know!)

Anyway, so much to say about Westminster, as its so dense with so much history, and I know I’m probably leaving stuff out.

A curious tomb in the back of the abbey behind Henry VII’s Lady Chapel which is directly behind Edward the Confessor’s shrine which is directly behind the main Sacrarium, is that of Oliver Cromwell.

Oh Oliver Cromwell! How I adore you!

I mentioned Oliver in my post where I talked about our visit to Old Sherborne Castle, but to refresh your memory: he was Prime Minister following the Civil War that abolished the English monarchy for 11 years following the execution of Charles I. When Oliver died, the monarchy was restored with Charles II (yes, I know; the poor dears; they couldn’t manage a country without a monarchy like how the wonderful French will manage following their revolution and the execution of their last king, Louis XVI; still, then we wouldn’t have gotten Mad King George III, who lost the American colonies and all that interesting history that comes with it), and so they decided to dig Oliver’s body up, hang him, and then cut him up to humiliate him even in death.

But, there his tomb remains: empty, but a powerful reminder of great people with great foresight into better ways of running a society.

Moving on, though, after all the tombs of famous kings and queens and their children, you get to enter Poet’s Corner, where a number of literary greats are either buried or immortalized in stone. It was all started when Geoffrey Chaucer was buried in the south transept in 1400, and since then other poets and novelists joined him in the nearby area, where you can also view a stunning memorial for William Shakespeare, who isn’t buried there, but whose memorial of marble is elegant and wonderful to behold. A little further on you can see where Handel is buried, and who, even though German, made most of his living writing oratorios for the English in England in English (hence why his text setting is sometimes a bit, well, awkward).

You finish with the audio tour at Poet’s Corner, but there’s still much to explore, including the Pyx Chamber (a place where they stored their gold in huge wooden chests), the Chapter House where you can currently see on display the vibrant paintings of Hughie O’Donaghue commemorating the 100th anniversary of the start of the Great War, the Abbey Museum where you can view remarkable effigies of various monarchs from Elizabeth I, William and Mary, to countless others in addition to the coronation chair of Mary II (because they needed two that year since she and William III ruled jointly), the College Garden (a cute little elegant garden with a modest fountain surrounded by the greenest grass, various flowers and shrubs, ancient stone walkways, and great arches), the Cloister Garth (a larger version of the College Garden except with no fountain), and around the Cloister Garth you can visit the graves of many others including, unexpectedly, that of Muzio Clementi, who was born in Rome but who died in Evesham.

Then, as you make your way out of the abbey, one last treat to see is THE coronation chair, used since the 14th century, if I’m remembering correctly, for all the monarchs since, Elizabeth II included.

Really, though… Westminster Abbey is a must for all visitors to London. Undoubtedly you’ll notice things I didn’t, or maybe you’ll make a point to see and do the things I did. Either way, a spectacular experience.

Following Westminster, we made our way to the 1666 Fire of London monument, and it is this monument I recommend you visit rather than the London Eye. For one, fewer tourists tour here, for another, it’s much cheaper (especially if you purchase the joint Tower Bridge and Monument ticket, which is what we did), and, for a third, it provides a much more exhilarating experience, wind in your hair and everything.

When you arrive, you’ll notice the great pillar and atop it a majestic gold adornment. The very bottom of the monument is a great, stone foundation, almost a perfect cube, inscribed with its memorial message to such a tragedy to befall London.

Then, prepare yourself for quite a climb, up over 300 steps of a long, spiraling staircase (but you can do it, as my 70-year-old mum with bad knees proved), a staircase that you can look up and down, right up and down its center. It’s really quite dizzying.

Then, when you reach the top, there’s a platform not wide enough for two people except at the corners, with an elaborate, metal railing, and above that, a fancy chain link fence that houses visitors in safely.

But for those of us with a debilitating fear of heights, you’ll find yourself clinging for dear life as far away from the edge as possible (which is only about two feet or less) against the stone wall behind you.

Nonetheless, as I said earlier, I found that this monument provided a much more exhilarating view of the city, complete with views of the Shard, City Hall, the Tower and Tower Bridge, Canary Wharf, the Gherkin, and St. Paul’s, and all with fewer people and in a way where the wind was in your face so you felt much more connected to the city.

Make sure you take a picture of yourself next to a Pudding Lane sign at the bottom of the monument while you’re over here, as, after all, that’s where some baker allowed some bread to burn starting all this terrible fire to begin with (or so they think). In the world of Doctor Who, however, the Great Fire started due to alien weaponry exploding in a certain building on Pudding Lane in a serial called, “The Visitation.”

The Doctor left the weaponry behind, though. “Won’t it confuse the archeologists?” Nyssa asked.

I’m sure it will…

After all this, we did, however, make one, last final stop around town, and that was to the Earl’s Court station, where, rather lovingly, you can see a police box.

And how fantastic is that! A chase through an eternity of history and countless visitations to so many important memorials and tombs, and you can end your day visiting a marvelous icon that also kind of serves as a memorial to obsolete objects: a silly, old, battered, blue box that today serves no purpose beyond being the exterior of the most famous time machine ever, but in its day in reality an important communications hub.

I want to continue writing about our visit to the Tower, but I think I’ll leave it for my next post. Like Westminster Abbey, the Tower, too, is full of such dense history that it deserves a post dedicated almost entirely to itself alone, in the manner that this one did for Westminster.

Unfortunately, there are no fast return switches here to speed up the time between my posting this post and the next, but hang tight. It’ll come soon.

The thing about being an Anglophile, especially an Anglophile with an encyclopedic knowledge of a certain BBC television series called Doctor Who, is that London at any moment will conjure images of the silly old program. For example, the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Bridge will always remind me of “The Dalek Invasion of Earth,” Saint Paul’s Cathedral will always remind me of “The Invasion,” the Underground will always remind me of “The Web of Fear,” Butler’s Wharf will always remind me of “Resurrection of the Daleks,” the Post Office Tower (it’s called something else now, and I always forget what it’s called now, but it will always be the Post Office Tower to me) will always remind me of “The War Machines,” and…

Well, do I really have to go on?

And so that’s the way it is with me. And it never fails. And it will never go away.

Being back in London has been absolutely fantastic. It really has. It’s been so satisfyingly and wonderfully fabulous in a kind of sublime sort of way.

On the train back to London from Bath, however, a certain British stereotype was smashed. It happened to be a very busy train, and I overheard others comment that it was busier than normal. Fortunately my mum and I were able to get seats next to each other, but others weren’t so lucky, and some others were unluckier still with standing room only. Unfortunately, there was a group of three ladies who had to sit separate from each other. But what became so incredibly annoying about them, is that they talked to each other loudly over other passengers’ seats! One lady sat to my immediate left, and two others sat immediately behind me. The lady to my left constantly chatted away with the others who constantly chatted away, sitting at the edge of her seat, legs in the alleyway. They talked loudly and laughed loudly, and they even opened up a bottle of champagne on the train to celebrate one of their member’s birthday. They even began commenting that they started feeling a bit tipsy, and it wasn’t even noon yet.

So, there you have it. The English can be loud and obnoxious too. So next time I hear that stereotype that Americans are loud, I will remember this story. I so wanted to lean over and tell her to be quiet, but I’m a guest in this country, so I didn’t, but even this kind, older gentleman sitting across the alleyway next to me, who (after one of the ladies apologized for talking through the alleyway, but continued on regardless) was also clearly annoyed, said instead, “No bother. Quite all right.”

The lier, that man! Terribly English of him to not cause a fuss, though.

All things considered, the train ride was otherwise uneventful. And as we arrived back into the hustling and bustling city of London, it seemed especially hustling and bustling after spending a week in the sleepy English countryside. But I instantly felt at home, eager to explore a hub of all different types of people from all over the world speaking all types of languages.

The last time I was in London was only for a brief amount of time. I went on one of the sightseeing bus tours and toured the Tower, but otherwise I didn’t see much else, even the Underground missed my presence.

This time, though, has been a completely different affair altogether, as we’ve had much more time soaking in all the sites and sounds. And so I was absolutely enthralled with riding the Underground for the first time, being jostled about by loud trains, watching the famous blue circle with red rectangle logo of the Underground zoom by, watching and listening to the people of all races and creeds and appearances from around the world, listening to the wonderful recorded voices telling you to mind the gap. (And I’m still not tired of heading it, and I don’t think I ever will tire of it.)

Really, this is absolutely fantastic! I can’t say that enough!

After we road the Underground to our hotel by Russell Square, checked in, left our bags in the room, I just couldn’t wait to get out and about and see the city. Since it was already relatively late in the afternoon and most things in this town close at 5:30 or 6:00, we decided to just hop back on the Underground to see “The Dalek Invasion of Earth,” er, I mean, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. There’s an Underground station called Westminster, and it takes you right to Big Ben’s doorstep. Quite literally, not figuratively. You climb the stairs after disembarking from either the District or Circle lines, and right in front of you is that famous clock tower. It’s really quite remarkable. There it is… right in front of you… that famous, famous clock tower. So iconic, and one of the first things you think of when someone mentions London.

Just around the corner is, um… is, ah… “The Terror of Westminster Abbey Androids”? Hm… I don’t think Westminster Abbey has any links to Doctor Who, unless you count “The Chase” where the Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Vicki watch Elizabeth I on the time-space visualizer, which might make you think of Westminster Abbey because the queen’s buried there. Maybe not…

Anyway, there Westminster Abbey is, situated as if it’s back is turned away from the Houses of Parliament, it’s rear buttresses (I couldn’t resist the pun) right across the street from parliament. The abbey is another one of those iconic buildings, maybe not so famous as Big Ben, but still instantly recognizable all the same.

A walk east along Westminster bridge will allow you to pretend to be Daleks crossing the Thames in search of people who might still be in hiding and fleeing from them, and when you reach the east side of the River Thames, there is a staircase where you can pretend to be Dortman, Jenny, and Barbara as they hide from the Daleks, and to the left is a giant circular transmitter used by the Autons in a failed attempt to take over all the plastic in the world, er, I mean, the London Eye, a giant circular Ferris wheel that allows for staggering views of the city.

Now, we did ride the London Eye, but I must admit that I left it feeling a tad underwhelmed. And this is the first time I’m going to recommend you not do something we did. I mean, if offered some fantastic views of Canary Wharf and the Houses of Parliament and countless other sites, but it all was just a bit, well, meh… certainly not worth the £20 per person or whatever we paid to ride the thing. It’s probably nice for people in wheel chairs or with crutches who can’t manage stairs very well, but otherwise the Eye is a bit… well, boring.

I think my issue with it is that you go up and around, but you’re not in control of how long you can stay up in certain places. And the wind isn’t in your hair and you can’t smell the city or even hear it. It seems a very impersonal way to experience all the icons. So, I guess my recommendation is to skip the London Eye and save your money and spend it more wisely on something else more exhilarating that promises staggering views of the city and that I’ll get to in a moment.

This brought us to the end of our first day back in London. It wasn’t a full day, of course, but the next day brought to me some wonderful moments indeed!

Having seen much of the western part of Central London with the Westminster area and then Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park on our very, very first day in England, we decided to head to the eastern part of Central London and visit Tower Bridge and the Tower itself.

What’s really remarkable about London, and I can’t stress the enough, is that the Underground is so easy to use, and it takes you everywhere. No need for cars here. I don’t know why anyone bothers.

When we arrived to Tower Hill via the District Line, the Tower itself becomes immediately visible as you ascend the staircase, as there right in front of you sits the White Tower with its iconic four towers. We decided to take a walk around the Tower on Tower Hill and Tower Bridge Road to take in the sites, sounds, and smells of the city, catching some marvelous views of the Gherkin (that space rocket-like tower) and the Shard (that, well, large pointed shard of glass-like tower that the Doctor used his anti-gravity motor bike to ride up the side in an episode called “The Bells of St. John”). And as we made our way south along Tower Bridge Road, there it was: Tower Bridge, just right there… in front of us… just there. we couldn’t believe our eyes. It’s as majestic as it ever could be, as recognizable as it ever was, and a site to behold as we all our required to behold on a trip to London.

We continued walking south, using the Tower Bridge to cross the Thames as we did the previous day except using Westminster Bridge. And then we crossed the street on the south end, returned back north along the west side of the bridge to purchase our tickets of the Tower Bridge exhibition.

And how fantastic that exhibition is! You first get to watch a short video of the conception of the bridge, with actors of Queen Victoria and others coming to life in ornately framed portraits, argue over how the bridge should work, why so much iron must be used to ruin the stone aesthetic. (I think the iron works just fine, but you know those Victorians… especially the queen…)

Then you get to walk across one of the upper spans, totally enclosed in glass, where you get to read more about the bridge, read more
about other famous bridges from around the world and why they’re famous, and also catch some marvelous views of the city, Canary Wharf included.

Then once on the northern edge of the span, you make your way downwards, but not before viewing a video that shows the bridge being built in quick, sped-up animation. When you reach street level again, you get to walk back south to the engine room, where you can read about and see these wonderfully marvelous Victorian engines: large, slowly spinning wheels painted green and black amid silver barrels and more large metal machine bits also painted green and black with great rivets.

What’s amazing about places like Tower Bridge and its excellent exhibition and wonderful views of the city below is that hours can go by so quickly, to the point where you don’t have enough time to see the Tower and Tower Bridge in the same day.

So, instead, you recognize a landmark from “Resurrection of the Daleks,” scout it out, and re-create your favorite scenes.

The streets and buildings around Butler’s Wharf were used heavily in this television serial from Peter Davison’s time as the Doctor. I managed to find those really cool diagonal bridges that connect one warehouse to the other, the very same bridges that the camera draws our attention to at the beginning of the episode, the camera pointed directly upwards, panning slowly downwards to reveal the street, and then the camera moves forward and then scans left to reveal a sad old man lighting a cigarette, all before rebels come bolting out of the warehouse, fleeing from some futuristic henchmen disguised as 1980s London police officers.

And yes… I took my iPhone and filmed this exact same shot. I shall call it, “Re-creating ‘Resurrection of the Daleks’,” and the video my mother filmed of me filming the re-creation I shall call “The Making of ‘Re-creating “Resurrection of the Daleks”‘.” I’ll post it all later.

And yes… I also found the location where the TARDIS lands and the Doctor, Tegan, and Turlough gaze at the then disused warehouse, the Doctor commenting, “Such neglect! A hundred years ago this place would’ve been bustling with activity.”

Fortunately, it now is bustling with activity, with many, many restaurants reusing the space. So lovely to see this re-envisioning of obsolete spaces. No tearing down old buildings here. Completely unimaginable.

Anyway, so cool to see this location, a location that, to most of the people around me, probably had no extra resonance whatsoever. But for me it did, and that’s all that mattered!

We continued onwards away from “Resurrection of the Daleks,” west along the River Thames, gazed at the HMA Belfast, marveled at how the City Hall building shaped like an askew orb as if stumbling drunk didn’t just fall over, enjoyed a Whippy from an ice cream truck, then walked towards the London Bridge station to catch an Underground to Green Park.

What’s marvelous about visiting Green Park on a Sunday is that Constitution Hill and the Mall are closed to motor traffic, so to can enjoy marvelous views of Buckingham Palace uninterrupted by honking cars and squealing tires. Sadly, you can’t get as close as I thought you could to the famous guards in their red uniforms and tall bear fur hats and try to make them laugh by talking about penises really loudly.

Still. Buckingham Palace very much reminded me of seeing the White House in Washington, as it’s fenced off in imposing gates, and onlookers stare through the bars, marveling at the queen’s home, taking pictures.

A monument to Queen Victoria is also right in front of Buckingham Palace, just directly east, it’s marble Grecian design of large, mostly naked god- and goddess-like figures reclining and more large, mostly naked god- and goddess-like figures riding horses situated in a giant circle around a central pillar of more figures, and up top of the pillar a magnificent golden angelic figure with wings outstretched and reaching towards the sky, and below the ornate gold, facing east, sat a marble statue of Queen Victoria herself, sitting in a throne, wearing her famous widow’s veil, looking a tad bored but still queenly and monarchish.

A walk west along Constitution Hill allows you to gaze at ancient trees that I image Queen Victoria herself once admired and perhaps other monarchs before her, a newer Commonwealth Memorial and an even newer memorial to airmen of the Second World War and at the west terminus of Constitution Hill the Wellington Arch, all of these all done up in Greek aesthetics of marble and majestic pillars with the RAF memorial complete with great metal statues of the seven men involved with piloting and manning bombers.

But don’t miss the Canada Memorial before you make your way hay far west. It’s a more modem design that reminded me a bit of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. It was two, great slabs of granite that together formed a kind of diamond, situated on an incline, but the two pieces were separated by a walkway where on one end the incline of the granite started at ground level and by the other end the granite slabs were as nearly as high as a tall child. Over the granite ran a slender wisp of water, whispering its way down the granite over bronze maple leaves inset into the granite, now turned a brilliant green to represent life and renewal.

What’s interesting about these monuments is that I kept thinking about Washington DC’s monuments and how much some of us Americans talk endlessly and loudly and redundantly about freedom and liberty and the cost of it, when the English do exactly the same, too. Just supplant “Canadian volunteers” for “US volunteers,” or “Royal Air Force” for “US Air Force,” or “Queen Elizabeth” for “President Roosevelt,” and the rest of the text about duty and honor and freedom and liberty would be right at home on the Korean memorial or the World War II memorial in Washington.

It’s difficult for me to not talk pejoratively of how much Americans talk loudly about freedom and liberty mainly because I think that many of us think we’re the only country that has those things or that we’re the sole country who invented those things. But, in the words of Sarah when she left the Doctor in an episode of Doctor Who called, “The Hand of Fear,” she remarked, “You know… travel really does broaden the mind.”

“Yes, it does,” responded the Doctor with his instantly recognizable toothy grin of Tom Baker.

And yes, travel really does broaden the mind, as it reminds us how similar we humans all are to each other, as frequently foreign countries provide not only windows into other worlds but more often than not mirrors of ourselves as well, sometimes as welcome, beautiful, reaffirming reflections of ourselves but also sometimes as chalky bitter pills of truth. But it’s cold hard truth and there’s nothing you can do about it.

So there you have it. In my next post I shall reveal what I think you should do instead of the London Eye, and I shall also discuss our excursions inside Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London.

It’s all really quite terribly fantastic!

Would you like a jelly baby while you wait for the next post?

Alas, our car driving days have come to a close. And here are how they ended…

In my last post, I cheated the chronology a bit because I was so excited to write about the lovely man we met at the Dolphin in Ilminster. I actually misremembered a couple things, too. Following the day we saw Dartmouth Castle and St. Proxis Church, we didn’t head to Ilminster where we met the lovely man. Instead we still had one more night at Fawlty Towers (I mean, Gleneagles), spent our night there, and the next morning we headed towards a stone circle outside a village called Minions called the Hurlers. This took us through Cornwall for the first time, and we also passed through Plymouth, which was neat, as it was the city where certain English left the Old World for the New via a ship called the Mayflower (but surely you already knew all about this).

We didn’t stop for long in Plymouth, only at a Burger King (we were famished, and it was handy, and it still tastes the same, and the lovely man who served us was so, so skinny and tall and handsome and who had the most striking blue eyes, the most crooked teeth, and whose name was Glen, and who complimented me on my Christmas jumper with a lovely accent where his THs turn to Vs and Rs turn to Ws, and very few consonants are pronounced, but lovely towels sing through), and at a bridge called the Tamar Bridge that we took some pictures of.

Before long we found ourselves off of major motorways outside Plymouth and on squiggly country roads where oncoming vehicles approached in the middle of the road. And also before long we found ourselves on roads that were still paved but where you might find yourself sharing it with a sheep or two.

And then we parked and after a very short walk, we found ourselves amongst some very old stones indeed, arranged in three circles of 25 yards or so in diameter, the center of each circle all on an invisible straight line that stretched for a good 300 yards or so. These weren’t majestic stones of Stonehenge, but rather quite humble stones, and all organized rather neatly. These stones you could walk right up to and touch, if you wanted, and admire the work dedicated to smoothing them (well, smoothing some of them, as it didn’t appear all received the same attention to detail), and placing them, and moving them into their appropriate places. And the circles were all so exact! It was clear that they used some sort of math (or rather maths) to create such wonderfully circular circles.

And by the way, you’re admiring these stones while sheep and cattle and horses graze within feet of you, and there are no fences here. Only friendly people who make sure to drive slowly as to not harm them. But good luck getting close to any of the animals to pet them, as they’re very skittish. The closest we managed was about three feet or so before their eyes eyed us intensely and they ran off, signaling to others to run off as well.

Also in the area around Minions and the Hurlers, you can walk through the Cornish moors. And what a landscape to behold! Something I’ve never quite seen before! It’s so green, and the grass all neatly trimmed thanks to hungry sheep and cattle and horses, and the landscape boxed off neatly by stone walls, plowed and unplowed fields, and crops of different shapes and sizes and colors.

And then there are these shrubs that grow knobily and crooked, with sturdy bark, as if they were all mini oak trees, but not with those recognizably oakish leaves, but rather with little green needles like fir trees might have, soft to the touch, and sometimes these bushes (ranging anywhere to a few inches to several feet high) had yellow flowers growing on them. And if you were in a particularly windy part of the moors, these bushes seemed frozen in time, the strong winds forcing them to grow in a way that made them appear that they were leaning in one direction, branches shaped in long arcs pointing in the general direction of the wind, even on a windless day.

In addition to these shrubs were bizarre circular dips in the landscape. Sometimes they would be solitary, just all alone, a circular dip about 10 feet or less or so in diameter and about 5 feet deep. And in the center was this mud that looked like it could swallow anyone up. Sometimes these dips would appear in groups, though, like larger versions of those muddy dips in cow pastures where cows step in the same areas over and over again so that little muddy patches form surrounded by small foot wide humps of grass.

Even farther inland was a large hill that was littered with great boulders, and this hill could only have garnered all these boulders because of an ancient castle ruin. I could be wrong, though, except for at the summit was a long stretch of smaller boulders all arranged in a great arc around one side of the hill, like an inverted mote of stones. And there were also these extremely large, flat boulders, smoothed as if by millennia of being shaped by the waves of the English Channel, placed on top of each other, pillar like, like giant versions of those stone towers people will make by a river or lake with much smaller stones. There were two of these, and one was climbable which gave a staggering view of the Cornish countryside with all its stone walls, geometric fields all different from each other in colors of browns and greens, and ruins of old mines.

Yes, the mines! I don’t think there’s a place in this country of England where you will ever be far from ruins of some kind. At first I thought they were ruins of old, small castles, but a placard informed us that they were old disused mines. They were basically lone rectangular towers of maybe three stories tall, made of, of course, stone, but roofless as it had long since collapsed and vanished. And there the mines sat, disused but respected. Old but not in danger of being torn down. Lovely artifacts of times gone but never lost.

So that was the Cornish countryside. I kept thinking of the Dr. Who episode “The Sontaran Experiment” while we were out there, Tom Baker (or rather his double Terry Walsh) fighting a Sontaran, Harry falling down a small cliff side, and Sarah being captured by a shiny metallic robot. I’m not sure where they filmed that particular episode, but the Cornish moors resembled the location terribly well.

Then, we were off to Ilminster. (And this is the night where we met that lovely, lovely man at the Dolphin.)

Although we stayed two nights in Ilminster, we really only had one day to explore with the car while we stayed there, since we had to return the car to Bath at 9am the morning after our second night. It was difficult picking out what to see because there is just so, so much to see. We were sad to discover that Sherborne Castle was closed but were happy to discover that Old Sherborne Castle was open.

(Incidentally, lots of our decisions of what to see were based on whether or not they were part of English Heritage. We decided to become members of it when at Stonehenge, as it allowed us free or reduced price admission to many sites throughout England. I highly recommend doing this if you find yourself exploring the English countryside by car.)

Very little remains of Old Sherborne Castle, as much of it was deliberately torn down following the Civil War, a rare example, it seems, of the English deliberately tearing something down. In it’s day, however, the castle was quite a place.

It was built by Bishop Roger (well, he had other people build it for him) of Salisbury in the 12th century, and for a time it belonged to Sir Walter Raleigh. You have to use much of your imagination when viewing this castle, as it stretches in any direction for quite a ways and only bits and pieces remain, such as one of the main tower gates, a long staircase that leads down to a lake that has since long disappeared, and a main hall area where the bishop would have heard pleas from whomever (or whatever).

What’s also fascinating is that you can see more clearly how castles were built, as much of the outer stone blocks were gone, and only the inner stonework remained. If was terribly interesting viewing the mortar that held together stones and whatever else they threw into the wall before building the proper stone brickwork around it to make it pretty. This also led us to wonder what they used to make the mortar that held this all together, as it looked remarkably like concrete, but obviously this was unavailable in the 12th century.

Moving onwards, though, we left Bishop Roger and Walter Raleigh behind (and Oliver Cromwell, too, who spent 11 days trying to capture the castle from Royalists) and visited the nearby chapel of Saint Mary Magdalene Castleton Church. This was a very modest chapel, but still very gorgeous. Towards the front was posted in gold letters with a black background one of the most ridiculous lists ever, the Ten Commandments, and the alter was placed on top of square tiles alternating between red-orange and black, and to the left of the alter was a gorgeous pipe organ whose pipes were painted in predominantly teal-green with elaborate gold leaf-like designs.

In the pews, though, were these cute kneeler things. They were about a foot tall, a foot wide, and about 9 inches deep, but they were decorated in intricate cross stitching in designs of various crosses (as in THE cross) and other iconography from Christianity’s long history. The kneelers were so cute, though, and were wonderful little kind of anachronisms in such an old structure.

After Old Sherborne Castle and St. Mary Magdelene Church, we moved onwards to Muchelney where we saw some more architectural fruits of Christianity.

We went mainly to see Muchelney Abbey, but there was also a parish church in the village as well, which we visited first. As always, your eyes are drawn to the alter, which was set upon some really remarkable tiles that we weren’t allowed to walk on. We would later find out that these tiles were remains from the Muchelney Abbey ruins just outside the church. Behind the alter was a gorgeous painting of Jesus after he had just been killed and taken off the cross and whose bloody head was resting in his mother’s lap.

Also of note in this church was a rather beautiful painted ceiling, the work from the 17th century. The ceiling was segmented into squares, and each square was framed in clouds, and within each frame of clouds was an angel, dressed in robes of colors of reds and blues and greens and whites. It wasn’t the magnificent and staggering work of Michelangelo, of course, but it was still quite a marvelous addition to such a humble church.

And, naturally, there was an organ here, too, its pipes painted mainly blue and with red flower-like designs. After some persuasion from my mother, and after I turned the organ on and heard the wind start blowing through the instrument, I couldn’t resist playing a hymn. So, I opened up the hymn book in front of me and played a hymn (I forget what one). Memories flooded inward from my days when I used to play organ and piano for the Catholic Church. Sometimes I miss those days terribly, as I really loved playing organ and piano for the church, leading the congregation through song. But, I no longer believe in anything resembling “faith.” I don’t supposed they’d hire a devout atheist and humanist, though, would they? I’d love to get paid to do that again, provided they don’t require a believer.

We made our way to the abbey, and sadly only the abbot’s house remains, as much had been torn down, and only the foundation of the original abbey remains. The English Heritage staff explained, however, that this is only 1 of 800 such churches and cathedrals that hadn’t survived which is really quite remarkable. He also explained that the mortar they used was a limestone mortar, and that it was fortified with small pebbles and various animal hairs. He also explained that if it weren’t for the mortar they used and that had they used a more modern day mortar like our concrete, that all these castles and abbeys probably wouldn’t have survived to the present day, as the limestone mortar and how they prepared it allowed the walls to remain semi-liquid and therefore moved and absorbed shocks from canons and winds of the elements. Also, apparently, it has a way of allowing water to evaporate, and if it weren’t for that alone, water would freeze and cause untold damage to the structure.

The abbot’s house, though, was a real treat to see. In addition to some fine fireplaces, huge kitchens, a kind of grand staircase with uneven steps due to wear from millions of people using it over hundreds of years, delicate wall paintings suggesting fabric tapestries, and artifacts excavated from the ruins including bits of gargoyles, pillars, and archways, there was also a little exhibition that detailed how they made tiles like the ones that are now used beneath the alter on the floor in the nearby church, a process of using two different shades of clay and slicing out a design in one and filing in the gaps with the other. Such time and work to create such magnificent architecture!

After the abbot’s house, we took some time to explore the foundation of the abbey. If was fascinating trying to imagine what the structure might have looked like. We did come across the spooky remains of a burial site, a mortar and stone indentation vaguely resembling the shape of a person, with a space clearly for the head and a long trapezoid beneath that to match the shape of the rest of the body. I couldn’t resist lying down in it and taking a few photos of my playing dead. My mother and I had a good laugh.

And so, as we drove back to Ilminster by country roads that no longer seemed quite so ridiculous with their “Oncoming Vehicles in Middle of Road” signs, and whose roundabouts became so, so welcome when it was obvious how much more efficiently they moved traffic on the rare occasions where a busy intersection didn’t have a roundabout (seriously, once you use a roundabout at least 25 times, they’re easy; we really should adopt them more than we do in the States to help ease the flow of traffic and cut down on the number of traffic lights thereby reducing our carbon footprint), the time was nearing where we needed to leave our car behind, and it was a moment prepared for…

The next morning we made our way to Bath, after becoming experts in navigating the English countryside. And I can’t stress this enough… even though it goes contrary to how to experience England, I highly recommend you consider exploring it by car. You adapt to driving on the left very quickly, the roundabouts become second nature after a day or so, and the squiggly country roads are an absolute hoot to drive on. This isn’t to say that it was easy adapting to driving over here, as even on the fifth day I still needed to pay attention like a hawk, but not nearly with such resolute consistency as on the first day. (But even on the last day I found myself saying, “Turning right ahead. This is the difficult turn.”)

But seriously… give it a try. Driving here is a blast and you can get to see so much more of the countryside than by train, and your travels and destinations are ever malleable to your whims and desires.

And the people you can meet! Someone I neglected to mention earlier on was an old man who talked to us while we were admiring the countryside, and he pointed out a distant monastery from centuries past that young maidens used to visit to see if they were ready for marriage. He prefaced his story with, “Excuse me, do you know the area well?” and ended with, “So there’s a bit of local folklore for you.”

And lastly… how friendly every one is, like the man I just told you about and the man at the Dolphin! Frequently on these country lanes, during moments where oncoming traffic approaches in the middle of the road, you have to back up to let people through. And there’s a system: if you decide to back up, you flash your lights. Then, when you pass by the person who backed up for you, you wave with four fingers over the steering wheel. And it never failed: people ways waved!

There was also a really friendly lady who stopped us just as we were about to leave the petrol station after filling up, who told us, “Excuse me, your petrol flap is still open,” to which I responded, “Oh my goodness! Thank-you!” Such a friendly person!

But London beckons! And how exciting is that! I wouldn’t recommend driving in London, as the Underground is so easy to use and it takes you wherever you need to go.

So mind the gap in time between my posting this entry and the next one. We’re back off to the big city. And while I ADORED my time in the countryside, the environment of the hustle and bustle of the city is where my mind fits best.

And I imagine it’s going to be a superb old time!

So, sometimes when you travel (and this is the best way to travel) you’ll meet people. I mean, you’ll generally have a 100% chance of meeting people when you travel. And if you don’t, you’re doing it wrong. But most times the people you’ll meet will just be boring, everyday people that you meet every day. But every once in awhile you’ll meet people who will just be the most lovely people you’ll have ever met. The most warm, gentle, genuine human beings in the entire world. And you’ll leave the conversation thinking, “Gosh! If only all people were as wonderful, kind, and fantastic as that man, the world would be a much more kind and hospitable place to live in!”

Well, last night I met such a man. We wanted to find a pub to have some good old fashioned ales (and by the way, I’m going to miss the ales here, served out of a tap that you have to pump, served at a temperature most desirable, and served with so little carbonation) and some fine pub food. We stayed at a hotel in Ilminster, right outside Taunton. After a busy day traveling by various A and B routes and after a lengthy turn on the busy M5, we checked in in Ilminster, I yelped for a pub (because I wanted some ales and the food in the hotel was much too expensive), and I came across a pub with a suitably British name called the Dolphin.

We arrived after a 10 minute walk down some poorly little alleys (well, they’re actually streets over here), arrived at the bar, and I ordered some sausages and mash (that’s what they called them at this pub, not bangers and mash, as I would have expected) and my mum a ploughman’s lunch with cheese. The marvelous lady asked us where we were from, and naturally we told her from Minnesota.

A lovely gentleman was sitting just to our left as we were ordering and he remarked something like, “Are you tracin’ your roots? I’ve go’ fam’ly ‘n Massachusetts meself.”

I wanted to respond that no we weren’t, as our bar tender told us that she was going to put our order in and to have a seat.

After our order came, the man came over to our table and asked us, “So whereabouts are ye from?” I specified Minneapolis and my mother Avon. He then explained his interest in Massachusetts because his last name (well, surname) is Hawthorne, and he can trace his roots back to the Salem Witch Trials, and his ancestor was an infamous judge who undoubtedly put many women to death.

He then joked that if he were around during then that he would’ve been burnt at the stake too for being a transgender man, and I added that I would’ve been burnt along side him.

As it happened, we continued to have a fantastic conversation about people and labels and labels and people. He explained how he was a lesbian for many years and then transitioned to become a man. But all these labels seem so cumbersome after awhile, and that he’d much prefer it if we were just all people and all individuals.

I commented that all too often people want black and white answers, yes and no, yin and yang, and he said, “No, it’s a spectrum!” and I wholeheartedly agreed.

We talked about many other things from Angela Merkel and Obama and the horrid events in the Middle East, cold conservativism disguised as love in the face of hate in troubling Double Speak that would make mythical Jesus weep and role his eyes at his so-called followers (let’s be honest, atheists frequently make better Christians than Christians), to how when he first arrived at JFK he exclaimed, “Fabulous!” when his car took him towards signs that indicated, “Queens.”

In short, such a lovely man, and as we departed, he have us a hug and a kiss, and he wished us god bless and to be well.

What a lovely human being! And what a model to aspire to!

So now let me get you caught up in what we’ve all seen and done. And I promise I’ll get to that marvelous find I promised I’d talk about in my last post.

Before fully departing Weymouth and Portland Castle, we made a quick side stop at Chesil Beach to enjoy the sights and sounds of the English Channel (well, technically Lyme Bay which is a part of the English Channel, and Chesil Beach itself making up a part of the Jurassic Coast), and from afar, the beach itself looked quite inviting. However, upon closer inspection, the entire beach was composed of not find sand, but rocks upon rocks upon rocks usually all the size of about a golf ball and no bigger than a baseball, but every once in awhile there were a few rocks that bucked the trend in size. But all these rocks collectively were so smooth after millennia of wear and tear and sanding and smoothing from the never tired waves of the channel.

From the beach itself, you actually can’t see the channel, as it’s hidden by a giant natural barrier of these smoothed rocks. You first have to climb a kind of rocky dune shaped by water rather than wind of at least (I don’t know) 40 or 50 feet high. Once you make it to the other side, your ears become overcome with the sounds of waves. But not the sound of waves I ever heard before. Because of the littleish rocks that the waves crashes against, the crashing sound was all well and good and normal (as waves crashing do) but as the water retreated, between the small spaces between all the smoothed little rocks, it made a kind of fluffy, cold, sizzling sound. But not a sizzling sound like frying bacon. More like the sound of frying bacon if it was slowed down a tad and wrapped up in a pillow. And instead of smelling that gorgeous bacon smell, you smelled that fishless, blue-green smell of veiled salt.

My mother has long had this tradition of sticking her finger in whatever body of water she meets. It’s a tradition that’s worn off on me, too. As we approached the water, the grade of the slope was quite steep. And the waves were quite restless and unpredictable. As we tried to reach toward the water, the waves managed to invade the land unexpectedly closer and closer with each turn. So, we both clumsily tried to return to higher land, tripping over our own feet. I managed to stay dry from the ankles up, but my mother got a little more soaked, commenting, “Well, I didn’t quite get my finger in the English Channel, but I did get my ass in it.”

Indeed.

Following our wonderful moments at the beach (and by the way, if you ever come to a car park that is pay-and-display, you have to have exact change for whatever posted amount of time you need; in other words, over paying the 50p fee for an hour won’t give you more time unless you pay the full £1 for two hours, as an example) we made our way to Torquey (it’s pronounced Tor-Key).

In Torquey, our GPS directed us to our hotel: the Hotel Gleneagles. We chose this hotel because when we arrived in Weymouth just the day before, all the hotels along Greenhill (the main drag that runs along parallel to the coast, and by main drag I mean little backstreet with lots of traffic) were booked. A kind gentleman told us that there’s a Best Western away from the water down Dorchester that will probably have vacancies. While at this Best Western, we saw a book that listed all the Best Westerns in the UK. So, we knew we wanted to head to Torquey, and the cheapest Best Western in Torquey was the Gleneagles. So there you have it.

But, when we arrived at the Gleneagles, I noticed that there bar was called Basil’s Bar and Brasserie, labeled prominently outside the hotel. And then as we entered, there was various news clippings about Prunella Scales, Connie Booth, Andrew Sachs, and, naturally, John Cleese. (If you don’t recognize all these names, then you need to get out more. Or get in more. Take your pick.)

Apparently, just by happenstance, we picked THE hotel that inspired the greatest comedy series of all time, Fawlty Towers. And I mean THE greatest comedy series of all time. Ever. Until the end of time. It just is. And you’re wrong to disagree.

(Sorry… I’m forgetting my manners… We humans are a spectrum, as I mentioned earlier when I was writing about the man we had a conversation with at the Dolphin in Ilminster. But this might be the one case where it is black and white. Fawlty Towers is THE best comedy series ever.)

(I might just be joking.)

Anyway, how fantastic is this! Staying at the hotel whose manager with his horribly rude manners inspired comedy gold. Absolutely fantastic. Really, it is. And instead of room numbers, they’re named rooms like Tulip and Coral. We were staying in Lemon.

Also, there was a really handsome desk clerk who worked here. And he always greeted us with a cheery, “Hiya!” which I think is just so cute!

While we stayed in Torquey, we had a couple things that we wanted to see: Kent Cavern and at least another castle. Kent Cavern was first, as it was just a quick walk down the hill from our hotel. I’ve been to lots of caves and caverns, and I love going to caves and caverns. But even though Kent Cavern is on the small side, it was out tour guide who made if so, so memorable. Her name was Tara, and she had that suitably understated British humor where you tell jokes very dryly and with minimal facial expressions. As an example, at the very beginning, Tara said, “I’ll be right back in a minute with the wet suits, rope, and safety helmets.” Or on another occasion, she pointed out a certain stalagmite and stalactite will form a pillar in something like 20,000 years, and she added, “So I’ll take reservations now.”

Anyway, while down there you got to see the usual cave things, and they did the usual turn-off-all-the-lights-and-try-to-see-in-front-of-you thing (and one person seemed properly scared, but I always found total darkness in a controlled setting exhilarating), and of course there’s the usual spot-the-imaginary-animal-in-the-rock thing. But, it’s all terribly fun! Especially if you get guided around by a British tour guide with a sensibly British humor.

Beyond the cave, we had three options for castles in the Torquey region. There was Totnes Castle, an old Norman castle; the Berry Pomeroy Castle, a Tudor mansion layered in ghost stories; and Dartmouth Castle. We decided on Dartmouth because it was right on the coast in, er, Dartmouth. And we didn’t quite get our fill of the southern English coast quite yet.

So to Dartmouth we went. What struck me about this castle was that even though it had 600 years of history within it, because of the Victorian updating that happened with the Old Battery, it felt more like I was touring Fort Snelling or Fort Mackinac. Dartmouth Castle even had that smell that buildings like this from the 1800s have, a kind of subdued old wooden varnish smell mixed with dust and old chalk or dry limestone, and as if the varnish had been drying on and old piece of aromaless cedar, or something. And grey and white paint.

But it was still fascinating nonetheless. There was a video that displayed the process for preparing, loading, and firing the cannons, and it was just breathtaking imagining these things firing at enemy ships as they slowly made their way landward. It was also breathtaking, the views from the topmost tower, looking out over the town and Dart Estuary. While up top, we also had a wonderful conversation with a woman who had that marvelous British accent with ultra soft R sounds (the kind of R sounds where it turns into a W), and we spoke about differences in British and American home building. My mum and I have been marveling that we haven’t seen a single house built out of wood, yet, and this lady remarked that they refer to houses built out of wood as American style houses. Apparently they do exist over here. We just haven’t seen one yet. She also referred to our use of aluminum siding as very unusual.

A building next to Dartmouth Castle that missed the aluminum siding craze by about 900 years is a church called St. Petrox. This is a really, really old church. Quite small, but the floor is lined with gravestones of people long since dead, the earliest dates from the 1600s. It’s really very spooky, the idea if burying people in the church floor. Those above-ground tombs are really spooky too, so are the coffin shaped humps sprouting out of the ground, as if the coffin is willing itself to slowly rise back to the open air.

But honestly! My mother and I just can’t get over how OLD things over here are. It’s really quite remarkable. The accompanying graveyard was also old beyond words, with tombstones askew at angles out of some 1950s horror film. All you needed was to see in black and white, turn down the studio lights, flash some on and off a bit with stock recordings of thunderclaps, Bela Legosi clutching to one of the more giant, concrete crosses, and music by Bartok or Berg playing in the background.

As we drove back to our hotel in Ilminster, my mum and I continued to marvel at how old everything is and how old things just don’t get torn down over here. Even as we passed by village after village, gazing at the houses with thatch roofs, with timber frames filled in with plaster, and houses made of brick and churches made of stone, so much history here in a way that isn’t brand new in the way that 1666 is brand new but 1066 isn’t. It’s really quite remarkable.

And then after our drive home we discovered the Dolphin where we had a wonderful dinner with ales and lovely conversation with a beautiful human being. A beautiful person.

Gosh I would love to live here!

Now how can I make that happen?

(N.B. Our road driving will come to a close in my next post, and our exploration of London will begin.)