Oh the excitement! Oh the anticipation! And here we are at last, after months of waiting after buying our plane tickets, and in the case of my mom (or is it mum?) over 45 years of waiting since she left Europe not quite making it across the channel, because she and my father were out of money after they had spent a whole five weeks in Europe on their honeymoon.
The thing about traveling to a foreign country is that the first day can be a tad tiring and stressful. Even though we Americans and English share a common language (well, mostly; there are lots of noticeable differences) there are enough differences to make visitors like us feel stupid.
It’s tiring not only because you get off an eight hour flight, but also because trying to figure out how to do things properly without coming off as ignorant or unread is difficult, mainly because that even though you’ve read that at pubs you have to go to the bar to order food rather than wait for a server, trying it out yourself and hoping you do it correctly while worrying that they’ll notice you’re trying is very, well, trying. Plus they hear the accent, and sometimes you can just hear the sigh of frustration in their brain. But, oh well. That’s the name of the way on the first day. The more important thing to worry about on your first day after a long flight is to NOT FALL ASLEEP WHEN YOU ARRIVE. It’s very tempting to do that, but just don’t. Really. Don’t. Otherwise you’ll never get on the local time.
So what to do instead? Drop your bags off at your hotel or room or wherever, and then go to a busy, public place and walk around. But even getting to the hotel can be a challenge when you first arrive. Even though we managed to select the correct tickets for the Heathrow Express to get to Paddington and then from there our hotel, the machine wasn’t taking our card. So, we went to the counter where a very bored woman “helped” us.
When it came time to pay, however, we had even more difficulty. You see, the US is behind in some things. One thing we’re behind in is those new credit cards with those fancy chips. After the lady told us to pay, we tried inserting the card into the reader, and it told us to remove it. So we did. But nothing happened.
The lady at the counter told us to try again and do what it says on the screen. So, we put the card in again, the machine told us to remove it, and then nothing. She took the card, asked us, “Did you insert it this way?” indicating the chip end first, and I said no, and she responded, “You’ve got to put the chip end in first, the same as with everywhere else.”
Except in the US, of course, where these chips seem really fancy, as we didn’t quite know how to do it as with everywhere else. But, now we know how to use these fancy chip cards. And this generally is how it goes. You gradually learn how to do things as with everywhere else.
By the time we got to our hotel (after not understanding when to get off the train to Paddington, having to double back to get on the connector) we realized we were only a brief walk away from Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, so naturally that’s where we went to stave off falling asleep.
What’s weird, though, was how untired we actually felt. So it was marvelous to see Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens with such energy flowing through us. We were both amazed at the amounts of people, the sizes of the trees, the ages of the buildings, but mainly how such a huge green space exists in such a city as this. And calling it a green space doesn’t quite describe it well. It feels like suddenly, in the middle of a bustling city, with people, cabs, cycles, and busses, that after just a few steps it’s possible to enter an entire field of green. And so many people were using it. Even after it started getting dark. Families weren’t rushing home, and people kept going about their normal enjoyment, all without the fear that at any moment a murderer with a gun might mug you for your money.
And Speakers Corner, right by the Marble Arch, was similarly busy with people just enjoying themselves, complete with a young man who was entertaining some small children with a contraption made of twine that he’d dip in a solution of water and soap to create bubbles of all shapes and sizes that would hover about in the breeze, and just a bit farther north at the Marble Arch were men and women holding signs declaring in all caps, “NO2ISIS,” as busy traffic zoomed by and onlookers gazed and took photos.
No first day in London would be complete without a trip to a pub for an ale and some good old fashioned pub food. We made our way along Oxford Street, heading east away from Speakers Corner. After some initial faffing about not quite knowing where to eat or what to eat, we came across a pub called the Marlborough Head. We sat down to some pints of cask ales, and I ordered the Taylor Walker steak and ale pie, my mum the baked Camembert, and then we finished with pudding, churros and a sticky figgy sponge. While we were eating it, we marveled at how bland everything tasted. Even the custard for the churros was emotionless and lacking in much zest. Still, that’s to be expected in a land where you must expect these things. This the the name of the way after all.
Following dinner, we made our way back to the hotel, the Mitre House, where how tired we were sunk in properly. And while a lifelong dream of mine was to watch a world premiere episode of Doctor Who on BBC One in London, not even that could keep me awake, as I found myself nodding off during the episode, and it wasn’t even nine o’clock yet. All I remember is that it took place at Coal Hill School and the Doctor was dressed up as a janitor.
Oh well, I’ve got two more Saturdays to try again.
Our second day in the UK took us directly to Bath, and already on this second day I felt like I didn’t stick out as much, even though the accent still gives much away. Even still, we now knew how to use the credit card machines and feeling more rested helped keep the mind in order to do things like find the right platform to board the correct train that would take us to Bath.
And how fabulous the train system is here. This is another thing that the US is severely behind on. And I mean severely behind. There are very few places in the US where you can show up at a train station and expect to be on your way to exactly where you need to go and all within a half hour or so all with very little fuss.
And so little fuss it was to arrive in Bath, a taxi taking us to our hotel, and then a quick walk to downtown… er, I mean the city centre, where we happened across a restaurant called the Green Park Brasserie. And oh my! What a decadent meal to have! First we started with a salted squid salad for my mum and a pomegranate chicken salad for me, followed by for both of us a chicken dinner affair with roasted potatoes, steamed carrots, a vinegar cabbage side, and ginger seasoned squash. For pudding we had an even more decadent affair of rhubarb tart with a true Southwest England staple, clotted cream.
We had the most wonderful server as well. She was very friendly and had a wonderful, smiling charm about her. She even told us, “I just love your accents,” to which we told her that we loved hers as well! She told us that she was from the Midlands, and so the way she pronounces bath is closer to how Americans pronounce bath, along with New Zealanders and Australians. Apparently she gets lots of flack for pronouncing bath with the short A sound rather than the schwa A sound, as most of her other English citizens might pronounce it, while declaring that she’s actually in the majority of how to pronounce bath.
In the end, though, the Green Park Brasserie put to rest that all English food is bland, and I’m now starting to wonder if the meal we had at the Marlborough Head in London just didn’t have very good food. Or maybe it was just because it was pub food, and so we have to expect a certain mediocrity. We shall see when we return to London to try pub food again.
Naturally, a trip to Bath wouldn’t be compete without a visit to the Roman Baths. Now, I’m pretty sure I’ve never been to a site that boasts architecture that’s nearly two thousand years old. I’ve seen artifacts from Ancient Greece and Egypt at the Louvre, but not the entire site of ancient remnants of a building built so long ago. The redevelopment of the baths is quite remarkable, but even remarkable still is viewing the original foundation and existing various pools. Taste the water, too. If you’ve grown up in the country where you might have access to an old pump made of some kind of heavy metal where you could pump water directly from a well, you’ll have some idea of what the water tastes like. Kind of normal to me, but I imagine somewhat disgusting for others. (Just imagine water with lots of iron and magnesium, and you’ve got the idea.)
Well, we’ve got two whole weeks ahead of us. My access to the internet isn’t regular, so I’ll write when I can (hence writing in “parts” rather than my usual “days” when I write up my trips).
I hope you look forward to my next post where I shall chronicle my first excursion (and other lifelong dream come true) driving on the left side of the road.