Day 78, 25 March: Unrushed Activities of London

Holiday Inn Express in North Acton, London, Day 78. Unrushed Activities of London

     

      Despite the late start, the free breakfast provided downstairs ran til 11, so we made it with a comfortable hour margin before it closed. Scrambled eggs, beans, apples, cereal, sausage, sunflower butter (not recommended), tea (white tea is weird), peach yogurt—so much, all amazing.

      Our first stop of the day was to the Marble Arch, a place I want to say is mentioned in the popular song by Leonard Cohen, ‘Hallelujah’. It was one of those songs that I liked to sing when I was younger, but the religious connotations never really phased me. Katya and I took turns taking pictures at the Arch, which is literally just a big arch.

      New Bond Street was our next direction, going down and seeing the store displays and somewhat empty streets. Throughout this part of the day, a motif arose in the recurrence of this singing ice-cream-esque truck, tinted a quaint baby blue. I retraced my steps from the last London trip until we finally found what I wanted to show Katya: Burlington Arcade—not an actual arcade, but an indoor archway-hallway-ish mall (row of stores, really). We finally found Piccadilly Circus, which is not a circus by the way but a media-screen corner followed by rows and rows of stores on an oblique intersection.

      Trafalgar Square was one of the highlights for the early afternoon, lying down by the soothing fountains and gazing at the sign with the Olympic countdown of 5 hours and 100 something days until the opening ceremony. Lunch was at a Spaghetti—not World, too kid-ish, but something—and the food was inevitably expensive but still, it’s London. M&M World was a two-minute experience, and we kept walking.

      Throughout all this walking activity, with the constant pressure of knowing we had until 4:45 to get over to the London Eye for the boat cruise around the Thames, we did not rush. We did back it, though again with five minutes to spare. The ticket guy who checked our reservation held the boat for us. On our way there we had stopped to hear a few songs from this four-guy hipster guitar-dominant band, but somehow we underestimated walking time in general.

      Once on the boat cruise, which was extremely windy, we enjoyed the nice 40-minute experience of seeing the attractions and features of London from the water, seeing and going under many bridges. I was surprised at the flatness of the actual ‘London Bridge’—more of a pragmatic than entertaining feature of the city. These lion statues, as pointed out at some point, marked the divide between London city and Greater London, apparently two different jurisdictions and thus two mayors run London. Odd to think: London is really two cities. (Tale of Two Cities takes on a whole new meaning.)

      Our next part of our two-amusement ticket was on the London Eye, a gigantic, energy-efficient (it’s what the builders pride themselves with) Ferris Wheel on the water of the Thames. One revolution is thirty-minutes, in which we got dozens of photos of us and each of us with the background of the Big Ben and the London beyond.

      We headed to Westminster Abbey at the now close of the sunny day, and found it closed, so we headed to a tavern nearby for a pub meal. One Underground trip later and we were back at the hotel, tired from the day but happy we covered so much.