Vacation 11: London, Part 1

First impressions of London: It's much bigger-seeming than Paris, and way moreso than Amsterdam. I know we drove thru quite an extended area of Paris coming in from CDG, virtually none of which we saw again during our visit. But the old, central part of Paris--the part most people think of as Paris--seems manageable and finite. London may have an analogous area following along the Thames, but it doesn't feel nearly of a piece the way a stroll along the Seine does. And so much of what you want to see in London is not in this area, or even close to it. The buildings along the Thames are hugely varied, and much of the view of the river is blocked until you're right on top of it. Streets of all sizes careen away from the river in every direction, betraying the age of the region--it all WAY predates any kind of plan. But also, compared to Paris and Amsterdam, there are many blocks and stretches of street without anything of particular interest, so that the size of the city sinks in: you simply have to cover a lot of ground to get from point to point, even though there are a zillion points of interest. Very contemporary things, buildings of great architectural interest from the last decade or so, are mixed in with stuff from each of the last five or six centuries, which is not something that can be said of either central Paris or Amsterdam (or, for that matter, of pretty much any city in America).



And London has a trash problem. There is the blight of litter everywhere, and part of it seems to be a kind of willful ignorance about human nature on the part of the city planners. There seem to be no trash receptacles anywhere outside, and so you either drop your trash where you make it or carry it with you forever (Susan had a little dish of ice cream this afternoon and had to carry it three miles before she found some random guy with a garbage bag in Hyde Park--who didn't appear to be actively doing anything about the park's rampant trash problem). We walked along the river over by the London Eye (which we'll ride tomorrow) and there were a million people along the walk, street performers and cafes and a vibrant city scene. And the trash all along the route was a disgrace. Tons of it, even clogging up the Dali sculptures by the aquarium. And yet, if there's no ready places to throw the trash that happens with street food vendors and sidewalk cafes, what should we expect?



Then there's the traffic. On my way thru the Chunnel on the Eurostar, it struck me that autos go into their special train car (or onto a ferry) in Europe under one set of rules, and exit onto British soil under another. At the time, I had a flashing silly thought about where exactly along the 30 mile stretch under the Channel the new driving rules took effect; now I'm inclined to think they don't really apply until about 100 yards INSIDE the country, as the rest of the world seems to be encroaching so much into the English way of doing things. Of course, there's no inherent right way to set up a country's driving rules, but one has to wonder whether or not it becomes at some point burdensome and problematic for a small nation to have rules which don't align with everybody else's. I know I must be careful not to not to extrapolate from the wrong place; I have spent 45 years developing instincts which are minutely mis-tuned for this environment. Already today I can think of a couple instances where I was crossing an intersection and someone mercifully slowed up because it was clear to them that I had no awareness of what was transpiring on the "wrong" side of my body. And I started with surprise in a way that I virtually never do in, say, New York (which is certainly not a less taxing place to walk in traffic). But given the ubiquitous painting of "Look Right" and "Look Left" on the pavement at every crosswalk, I'm clearly not the only one caught unawares. I can see that, given a few days or weeks, my regular traffic instincts will adjust (though not as quickly as they would have in my teens or pre-teens, I bet), but when you see the number of left-hand-drive vehicles here, obviously ferried over from any other country, I just can't imagine that this difference doesn't take a toll on the country in the long run. For me, it's rather shocking to watch the traffic, as none of my instincts are right here. I simply couldn't ride my motorcycle here. In a pinch, my tendency to move to the right to make way would have me move into oncoming traffic and an early death.



We got in last night to Waterloo station, and our first exposure to England was via a very Cockney cab driver who was virtually speaking a different language (I'm convinced that even Stanley Holloway would have had trouble understanding this guy); certainly, he thought WE were--it's an oddity to talk to someone who supposedly speaks your native tongue and have them say "What?" after every sentence. He very charmingly talked our ear off during the fairly long ride to our hotel (he had great trouble finding the place, even after a call to confirm the location), and refused a tip at the end. It was by then nearing 9:pm, so we had a quick look around for a bite to eat and returned to the hotel and hit the sack.

This morning we took the tube into central London and began our day at the Tower of London.









After a quick breakfast (mushroom & cheese sandwich for Susan, strange croissant-like "sausage roll" for me) on the street, we toured the place--including the crown jewels--and then Susan sat at a cafe while I toured the Tower Bridge, with an especially interesting bit about the steam machinery that lifted the bridge until 1976 (it's now electric / hydraulic, but the old machinery is still mostly in place and beautifully maintained).





(I have to mention a bit for any fellow machinery geeks about how this bridge operates--or used to. The steam engine seen two photos above would be, you can imagine, a rather inefficient way to open the bridge directly. It would take quite a while to fire up the boilers and make enough steam to do the job, so everything would require long notice. Their solution is seen in the bottom picture. The steam engine would run periodically and was used to hydraulically raise two of these huge weights--1250 tons each, if I remember right!--which are not even on the bridge itself; they're over on dry land. Then, when it was desired to raise the bridge, these weights would provide pressure for water, which was piped across the bridge to the towers, and hydraulic engines located at the moving portion of the roadway would do the actual raising and lowering of the bridge. It's like a huge mechanical battery. It's all quite massive, and in surprisingly great condition.)

From there we walked along the Thames on both sides, seeing the Hay's Gallery enroute to get tickets for tomorrow for the London Eye, the great, cantilevered ferris wheel on the river nearly opposite the Houses of Parliament. We then walked across the bridge past Parliament and Big Ben and down an increasingly crowded street toward Buckingham Palace. As we walked, we were overflown by wave after wave of military helicopters and fighter jets, the first part of (we learned) a city-wide celebration of the Falklands War. Unwittingly, we were walking into a great crush of humanity. Everything was staged in front of the Palace (I believe the lack of the royal family's private standard meant the Queen was not in residence), and we watched several marching bands and zillions of veterans march past.

Hays Galleria

As we walked, we were debating some arcane point of the monarchy, which I finally stopped and asked a police officer if she could clarify for us. She obligingly said she'd take a crack at it. Why, I asked, is the Queen's husband not the King? And if Charles and Diana had remained married (and alive) and he ascended to the throne, would SHE not have become Queen? And what of the Queen Mum? Why did she abdicate so early and give the throne to 20-year-old Elizabeth, when Elizabeth herself is hanging on 'til death, it seems? The bobby said that the rules of ascension are not quite the same for women as for men. If a woman carries the bloodline (Elizabeth), her husband will not assume the same equivalent title when she marries. If a man carries the bloodline, his wife will become Queen, but provisionally: if her husband dies (as was the case with the Queen Mum, whose husband carried the bloodline), then the next blood heir will ascend, and the provisional Queen will become the Queen Mum. So, if Charles had become King, Diana would have been Queen, but only so long as Charles remained alive. If he died, his eldest son, Will, would immediately have ascended to the throne, rather than have Diana remain as Queen. I asked if she thought Charles would ever see the throne, and she felt sure he would. Apparently, for the succession to move straight from Elizabeth to Will would require Charles to will it so, and she felt Charles wanted to be King, even if briefly. I did not ask, but I now wonder, whether the normal reign is for life, and if abdication is thought an oddity (obviously the very short reign of Edward VIII--I think--and his abdication so he could marry Wallace Simpson is very odd, and a story I'd like to know more of).

Buckingham Palace

We made our way back, with Susan heading for the hotel and me splitting off for a concert (which I'll detail elsewhere). A fabulous day.

A couple other things. We were approached several times last night and today by panhandlers and scammers as we walked around, and they seem more aggressive here than in other places. At least a couple of them did not take kindly to our refusing them, and one guy even followed us for a while. This, along with a fair number of shady-looking single guys milling about makes one feel generally less safe here than NYC or Paris or Amsterdam or Chicago, at least in the areas we've been walking in. We'll see if this impression continues.



And lastly, there's the Diet Coke Conundrum. Those who know me are aware that my affection for Diet Coke (hereafter DC) borders on compulsion--it's almost certainly pathological (thank the gods I don't have to go to Amsterdam to find relief!). As with my last visit, France put an arrow thru my heart by offering "Coca-Cola Light" instead. No, it's not the same. It tastes like Tab, like someone in a lab worked furiously to find a formula with Nutra-Sweet that tasted like the saccharine drink popular when people drove Plymouth Volares. Icky. About half way thru our stay in Paris I managed to find a couple stores which pointedly catered to Americans, and--praise Buddha--they had real Diet Coke. I practically hugged the unshaven, beret-wearing Frog on the spot! And to make it even more tantalizing, I noticed that the DC was bottled in England! Hope sprang eternal. When we got to Amsterdam, we were back to the dreaded Coca-Cola Light, always served in shotglass-sized servings without ice. In one case I asked for a large, and I got about 12 ounces and they charged me just shy of eight Euros for it. Fuck, I could buy the whole factory for that in the States, buddy. He had asked "small or large?" Does anyone want a small? How do you serve less than this? In the humidifier on the other side of the room? So I made my peace with it until we got here to London, hoping against hope. Our first foray out on the streets had me looking, fingers crossed, at each little market we passed. Turns out, they have both here: Coca-Cola Light and DC. That's great, of course, but one wonders how Coke ever got to the place where they had two formulas anyway. Did Europeans really prefer this taste when you were working on the formula? It's hard to imagine there would be a cultural difference. But there it is, as further proof of the London-as-melting-pot hypothesis: they even cater to all the world's low-cal Coke products needs. (And this doesn't even address their new worldwide product: Coca-Cola Zero.)

One last thing about Amsterdam. Do you suppose there's any connection between the size and power of the city and the bike-friendliness? London and New York could not now be forcibly made as bike-friendly as Amsterdam without hugely hurting their ability to function as engines of economic power (that's my thesis: I wonder whether, with some research, I could really support factually what seems true intuitively?). So is there a connection? Amsterdam was an economic engine 200-600 years ago, but is now a quaint, small-ish city and, I imagine, destined to stay that way. Well, so is Des Moines. Maybe it has nothing to do with bikes. I may come back to this. And maybe I won't.