Days 2 and 3! (originally posted to the wrong blog!)
The day started late enough--I let myself sleep in a little because I was exhausted from the flight over, and also because I had late plans for the day, but I got my day started around eleven with a brunch omelet made here at the house. I had a lovely visit from the neighborhood cats and then headed out to Shoreditch and Spitalfields Market for a little bit of browsing. I was hoping to buy a lighter bag for carrying around, since my laptop bag is awfully heavy for wandering, but alas, when I got there most of the stalls were closed or closing for the evening or didn’t have what I was looking for. Even worse, the little shop I remembered from last time I was there is now a Lululemon.
Even so, I found a Persian candy booth that was selling baklava and homemade Turkish delight. Everything was so pretty and the samples were delicious--I definitely bought an inadvisable amount (for a diabetic, the advisable amount is “none”, lol), and I’ve just helped myself to a watermelon flavored piece as I wrote this (the watermelon isn’t bad, but doesn’t have the flavor payoff that, say, the sour cherry rolled in coconut does. I’m definitely saving those like a miser!). I wish I’d taken a picture of the stand because it was so lovely and colorful.
Then I went to Denis Sever’s House, which, to be honest, was a little bit disappointing this time? I don’t know if I wasn’t in the right headspace or maybe I already knew what I would find and so it had lost some of the magic for me, or maybe it was the American couple I kept running into that were loudly whispering in corners--I felt like there were too many people in the house for both me and inspiration to fit inside. I’d go back, but maybe next time I’d go at a later time instead of 7pm. I definitely recognized the Turkish delight from the hall display, though!
After, I had several hours to kill, so I went back to the market in hopes of finding dinner. I first stopped at an Itsu I’d been to before, but it was literally sold out of nearly everything, so I moved on, and I’m glad that I did--I ended up at wagamama, and I hadn’t been in a long while. It was really delicious, and I was happy with the choice. After dinner, more wandering the market, and then I headed down to the Bankside because I had tickets for the midnight matinee at the Globe.
I finally got myself on the Millennium Bridge, which was gorgeous, of course. It’s a very pleasant view of the city, especially if you’re looking east, and I’d never done it before. While I was crossing the bridge, I stopped halfway to reflect on the day--it had been a truly good day, with everything going right, and no dark moods, and really just about as close to perfect as the day could have been. I spent a little while looking out over the Thames there. I eventually wandered toward St. Paul’s and realized that in my wanders I hadn’t heard Big Ben at all--I know it’s been stopped for repairs right now, but I didn’t realize how much I missed it until I noticed that. The city sounded a little emptier. St. Paul’s chimed the hour when it turned 11 and that helped, but it’s weird being in a London without Big Ben. Of all the Bens I’ve come to London to see, he’s the only one I’ve always assumed would just be there!
Eventually it was time to wander to the Globe for the show. I’d hoped to browse the shop since I figured it would be open because they were, but it wasn’t, which was a little too bad--they have a bag that would have suited me perfectly, with a quote about spending all of one’s time at the Globe which was lovely. I may try to swing back by and buy one sometime before I go, or look to see if they have it on their website.
My ticket was seated in the upper floor, which was a fantastic seat with a few notable drawbacks: there is nowhere to put your knees if you’re in the first row of the upper balconies, and my seatmates were strange. The young couple on a date ended up leaving at the interval--a lot of people ended up tapping out at that point, I suspect as it was already 1:30am and the trains would stop soon--and the older lady to my left, I suspect, was asked to leave (first, she was asked to put her camera away, though I do honestly believe she was just using the zoom feature to see the actors’ faces, and eventually she ended just standing for much of the time she was still there. There was no one behind us, but after she’d been standing there for perhaps fifteen to twenty minutes, she asked to move past me and I let her--well, more accurately, I moved to the second row a moment so she could get through the narrow path and out--and she didn’t return. At the end of the show, a Globe employee came to escort the last two girls in the row down to their mother, who’d been sitting in the bottom of the tower the whole time).
Weird seatmates aside, I highly, highly recommend the current run of Much Ado about Nothing. It’s so sweet and wholesome and charming. The show is reimagined in a Mexican Revolution setting, Chihuahua, with Don Pedro and his soldiers as revolutionaries and Signior Leonato as a wealthy cattle owner who supports the cause. I’d never seen a production at the Globe before, but I knew to expect it to be good, but the cast of this one is so good at what they do. It really was very, very good, and the fact that I saw it at midnight with the stars overhead made it even more special. I will say that the upper level seats do get the first taste of the wind, though, as it dips into the barrel of the playhouse, so it can get a bit chilly--London’s not cold yet, but at two in the morning on the top floor of the Globe, the wind bites a little.
Managed to finally get home at just before 5, and had tickets to go to Stonehenge that required me to be at Victoria Coach Station by 8--set my alarms and still managed to finally wake up at 7:50. There’s no physical way to get from Highbury to Victoria in ten minutes (at least not yet, or not yet outside of theoretical physics labs), so I ended up rolling over, having a lie-in, and catching up on all of the sleep I’ve been missing for the last several days. I did a little bit of tumblring, a fair amount of journaling, a lot of random youtube browsing--my usual. Finally wandered off to the shops so I can stop eating my host out of house and home--still need to replace the eggs, though she told me to eat them--and here I am now! And now is just before 11:30pm--time to consider heading to bed to actually get started doing things again tomorrow, or else this blog will be very boring indeed!
I always seem to travel at a time when my life is changing, and I always seem to travel in the autumn, so I suppose I could say my life changes most in the autumn. It’s probably not true; it’s probably the same thing that makes the clock always read 11:11 when you look at it or the new word you just learned to suddenly be everywhere. I travel in autumn and life is always changing, and since I tend to be more introspective than usual when I’m traveling, it feels like everything changes in the autumn. Certainly, though, I’ve had some major changes this time of year--this trip is a memory, in a way, of the death of my mother, which happened this time of year five years ago--so I suppose I can’t rule it out completely.
The days leading up to my trip were tremendously awful.
My insulin dose had been adjusted a few days prior, and rather than do the expected thing when you’re given more insulin and dropping low, my glucose levels skyrocketed to the point that I was afraid I’d have to go to the emergency room. Instead, I pushed on and was rewarded with a rollercoaster that made me leave work early the day before my flight, sick and shaking. I got home at 5pm and slept straight through until 3pm the next morning, at which point I forced myself to get up, since I still had things to do before meeting a friend for Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. This was probably a mistake; in my defense, I was hoping this would make me sleep on the plane and awake refreshed when I arrived, but of course it didn’t happen that way.
The museum and the friend were lovely, and a great way to start the whole holiday. I really highly recommend the MSI for anyone visiting Chicago; it’s not cheap, but it’s not the most expensive museum in the city, and it’s well worth the fare (especially if you’re an IL resident like I am and go during the free admission days!). The friend gave me a ride to the airport and things at the airport went just fine. The woman at the counter checked my passport and my bag and even moved me to a better seat than the one I’d selected (though, sadly, still not a window seat--perhaps for the best, though, considering the stomach distress my illness was causing).
Then things went a little...rough. Rough air, precisely: we had the worst turbulence I’ve had on an international flight, ever. Normally turbulence on an international flight is just a little bit of rolling and is reasonably short lived, but on this flight the turbulence was so extreme the whole thing seemed to be rattling my teeth out of my head, and it was so frequent and persistent that they started and stopped and restarted the dinner service three or four times. Considering all I’d had that day to that point was a cup of chili and some crackers (since that was all I was willing to risk keeping down), I was a little bit frustrated by the time dinner did come out. It wasn’t very good, either--British Airways living up to the idea that English food is horrible, haha. Anyway, between the turbulence and the hunger and the crying baby (yes, there was one of those), I found it impossible to catch more than an hour’s sleep (ironically enough, I put on the new remake of The Mummy, stayed awake long enough to see the gorgeous Sophia Boutella a few minutes, and the moment she was replaced with Tom Cruise I fell asleep and slept until the credits were rolling!). By the time I landed in London, I was hungry, tired, and sleepy.
The less said about border control, the better. Terminal 5′s border control was immensely slow, and I missed Terminal 4 so much. That, more than the uncomfortable seats, poor food, and uninteresting in flight entertainment will send me back to more familiar airlines--sorry, BA. After more than an hour in line through customs, I literally walked up to the desk and placed my passport and landing card in the officer’s hand--yes, 12 days, holiday, thank you--and was done. I’d made the assumption that I’d be able to charge my phone--and there’s another gripe for another day, because my phone is not unlocked as I’d hoped it would be--on the plane, so I ended up sitting at a port plugging in and charging and eating a cheese sandwich.
I was meant to meet a friend to go to the Tate around 11 or so, but after finally eating something satisfying and sitting so long charging my phone, I found myself nearly blacking out on the tube into the city, so I negotiated an hour’s nap--and then promptly scared her by sleeping through my alarms and not waking up until three hours had passed--nearly time for the show we were both going to see. In the end, I managed to pry myself out of the bed with a crowbar and get myself to the station where, after I wandered around Angel like a lost puppy for half an hour, she took mercy on me and found me. We went to her hotel so she could give me a prize I’d won in a raffle--an incredibly gorgeous calendar--and then we headed to the theatre, where we had drinks and I inhaled a halloumi salad before the show started.
I love visiting the Almeida Theatre. It’s one of my very favorites in perhaps the world, to say nothing of its superiority here in London. Their programming is always phenomenal, and we saw a controversial new play called Against by Christopher Shinn. It was an interesting play, but I’m not certain whether I liked it or not. It’s very well acted, and I’m seeing it again Tuesday, so I’m interested to see how I feel about it when it’s more familiar to me. I have a more in-depth response to the show over on my main blog, if you’re interested in learning more. After the show there was a talkback that seemed less about the show itself than about volleyball, which I’m quite alright with, as it ended up in Ben Whishaw very enthusiastically talking about why volleyball is very important, which was adorable.
After the talkback, my friend and I sat in the bar and had drinks and talked about the show, and then when the bar closed, we moved to the lobby, where we chatted until we were both wiped from a busy day of travel and good theatre. I headed back to my airbnb, which is absolutely amazing, by the way--I can send a link to the listing for anyone who’s looking, but it’s a Victorian semi-detached that’s been converted into flats, and my host and her partner live on the top flat. My host is a plumber, and she’s been restoring the place, so there are the most beautiful green ceramic tiles in the kitchen (where I’m writing this next to the huge window that opens onto the houses behind it) and painted tiles in the hall--and vintage fixtures in the bathroom. The pictures in the listing don’t do it justice at all--I don’t think photos could, really--and the price was very, very affordable. Either way, my host and her partner have gone on a mini-break and so it’s been fun to do the shopping and pretend a little bit that this could be my place!
An afternoon at the National Gallery. These are my favorite paintings in the gallery, and even when I don't have much time I make sure I have enough time to visit these paintings. :>
Trafalgar Square and a detour through part of Theatreland. I remembered something about the Bond in Motion exhibit at the Film Museum in Covent Garden but when I actually stumbled across it they were closing for a private event, sadly. I don't think I'll get a chance to go, which is a bit sad, but it was fun just to pass it, too!
Paddington Bears! I couldn't find all the bears where I was rambling today--I swear I went around the entire outside of Ripley's, but I refuse to pay to go into that train wreck just to get a picture of Paddington--and I didn't get a shot of the tag for the Mayor's bear because it was dark and there was a really sweet old couple who clearly really wanted a photo of the bear.
They're surprisingly hard to find! or else I'm just unobservant, but I had so much trouble finding Ben's bear!
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