London - Round 2.5

The continuation of our weekend in London!
 


Day 2 - Saturday, 16 June

7:20 a.m. - Hannah, Bailey, and I departed from Gloucester Green, Oxford. Bailey was late, missing the 7:05 bus by 15 seconds and delaying us. Instead, we took the 7:20 Oxford Tube bus but made sure to mock Bailey for the duration of the trip. 

9:00 a.m. - Arrival at Marble Arch, London. We purchased Day-passes and transferred to the Underground, only to learn that westbound train service was temporarily suspended. Fortunately, we were able to use our day-passes on westbound courtesy buses.

But First A Coffee Break... 

We rode one of London's famous double-decker buses down Oxford Street to Tottenham Court Road. We disembarked in search of a good breakfast before attempting to tackle the British Museum.  Unfortunately, both of the coffee shops that I'd researched turned out to be operated by hipster scum who thought they were too good for advertisement or signage of any sort.  The first cafe displayed nothing to indicate whether or not it was open. There were no patrons, and a bored-looking barista and a meager pair of croissants in the window did nothing to entice us.  Its wall menu seemed to have very high-end font. We moved on.

The second shop was located further down its street than I'd been led to believe and was in fact the only shop on its row without any external signage of any kind. Having walked right past it, we were forced to settle with a comfortable-enough, vaguely Italian  cafe on the same street.  This fallback named Cafe Paradiso turned out to have a descent selection of baked goods and quite palatable coffee.  Big couches with low tables. Bailey amused himself with a spare Bollywood tabloid while I examined a self-important British music rag with minimalist page design and artsy photos.  We were the only customers, the meal was good, and we likely were better off than we would have been at either of the other places.

Bailey is entranced by the latest developments in Bollywood.

(We later passed the cafe which we'd at first been unable to locate.  Its lack of proper signage, flat white interior, bare wooden tables, and industrial lighting made it far too cool for us. Rather glad we missed out.)
 

Hipster scum.

Culture and Stuff

10:30 a.m. - Arrived at the British Museum, one of the world's great museums and it is entirely free to the public!!! We saw the highlights including the Rosetta Stone, the Sutton Hoo helmet, the Lewis Chessmen, the Elgin Marbles, and a special exhibit on the history of thoroughbred race horses.

British Museum

Sutton Hoo helmet (top: original, bottom: replica)

weird violin-like instrument

Rosetta Stone

Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon

Bailey and I really like the dramatic Assyrian sculptures of the royal lion hunt (c. 640 B.C.)

  
I chose not to split off from the group and walk over to tour the Sir John Soane's House and Museum near Lincoln's Inn Fields for the 11:00 a.m. tour. Soane was a 19th century architect and collector who converted much of his London residence into a small museum. He collected a wide variety of artifacts: antiques, paintings, and architectural drawings to name but a few! I've wanted to visit for years, but I just couldn't pass up the British Museum. I missed a very interesting exhibit on the history and architecture of stadiums, but I would rather go to the Soane museum's monthly candle-lit tour anyway.

2:00 p.m. - Walked down to Holborn Station and rode the Tube to Knightsbridge to pay a visit to Harrods, the famous department store. Hannah wanted to go shopping, and since "The Sale" is taking place at Harrods over the next week, we thought it would be worth a visit. So did everyone else in London. We spent 45 minutes examining the Lego and Harry Potter goods as well as perusing the designer clothes, frivolous accessories and lifestyle gadgets (who really needs 007-style spy equipment for the house?) and sumptuous food halls.  Needless to say, Harrods truly lives up to its motto: Omnia Omnibus Ubique—All Things for All People, Everywhere.

Harrods

We met a celebrity or two in Harrods.

3:30 p.m. - Lunch at Harrod's, sort of... The food halls were incredibly crowded with shoppers and the sit-down restaurants were rather pricey. (What else did you expect? It's Harrods.) We opted instead to purchase some deli sandwiches and drinks and head over to the nearby Hyde Park for a late afternoon picnic.

FUN FACT:  Many of the wooden lawn chairs in the park are NOT public property; they must be rented from an attendant who comes around periodically with a credit card scanner.  Apparently, there are notices posted in the area, but we certainly didn't see any. Still, the rate is only about £1/hour.

Aerial view of Hyde Park (Source)

 5:00 p.m. - Choral Evensong at Westminster Abbey.  We jetted over from Hyde Park in time to make the 5:00 p.m. service.  As we emerged from the Westminster Tube station, we were caught up in a political street procession passing through Parliament Square.  It appeared to be a procession of officials from every administrative district in the country, though I'm not sure of its significance.  Perhaps something to do with the Diamond Jubilee or a vote in Parliament?


We've all become big fans of Anglican choral services in our time here, though I must admit that today we had more mercenary reasons for attending evensong.  Typically, admission to Westminster Abbey costs £16.00 ( £13.00 w/ concessions), but all worship services are free to the public. (The choral evensong service is typically at 3:00pm, but from June to September, it is moved back to 5:00 p.m., likely to accommodate the summer tourist season.)

We entered the abbey and stood in a queue on the left side of the nave with a few hundred other worshipers.  As we waited we examined the tombs and markers of the hundreds of famous men and women who have been accorded the honor of being buried within the abbey walls:  Winston Churchill; Issac Newton; Charles Darwin;  Henry V; James I; and Mary, Queen of Scots among many others.  I was particularly thrilled to see the tomb of composer Edward Elgar whose well-known Enigma Variations I played with the MSU Symphony Orchestra last year!  Hannah was delighted to visit Poets' Corner and Bailey stopped at all the scientists' markers.

We were finally seated in the south transept next to Poets' Corners and a marker for William Blake (1757-1827).  The service was very nice, though we were tired after a long day.  Bailey managed to fall asleep while standing and fell back into his chair!  He was O.K. though.

After the service ended, we walked north through St. James's Park and up to Piccadilly Circus. We stopped for some Turkish coffee at Kahve Dunyasi, a popular chain in its native Turkey.  The coffee was good, but we hat to wait forever for a table.

Nice cup of Turkish coffee

Around 7:00 p.m. - Tried to catch the Tube northwest to Marble Arch, but construction on the Central Line forced us to take a bus instead. The Saturday evening traffic on bustling Oxford Street was so slow that we eventually got off and walked!  Even with the crowds of shoppers, walking was still faster than the bus. From Marble Arch we caught our return bus and headed back up to Oxford.