Holiday Inn Express, North Acton, London, Day 79. In Search of a Grassy Knoll and the Camera Crisis
Unfortunately, the joint titles for this entry made the day both extremely amazing and somewhat miserable, and the misery came second.
Upon checking out and leaving our bags at the hotel for the day, we made the happy discovery that the North Acton Tube station was back and working, making our nightly departure plans easier than we had hoped.
Our first stop today was where we left off yesterday, Westminster Abbey. We braced the expensive £16 entry per person, and though at first hesitated, we picked up free audio guides to explain the various chapels and tombs and tributes and statues, Henry VI here, Mary Queen of Scots there, Henry VII and his entire dedication and repose in the front of the cathedral. Just as we were growing tired of the royal treatment of English kings and queens past, we stumbled into Poet’s Corner. Charles Dickens, Thomas Harding, and Rudyard Kipling were all next to each other as adjacent plaque floor tiles. A statue of Shakespeare posing with a visible farewell passage from Prospero in The Tempest on a parchment was there, between wall tributes to Jane Austen and the three Brontё sisters. On the opposing wall was a statue of Handel with parchment depicting a religious hymn trailing down from his quill. We made our way to the nave, spotted old composers that Katya recognized, found tributes to Isaac Newton and Darwin, stopped for one brief look at the centre plaque for the unknown soldier, and then we were done.
Our whole day was lined along the Thames, the day bright and sunny. We made it to London Bridge and from there, we finally found the Thames walkway that lines the river. We couldn’t find a grassy knoll (one of our inside jokes/experiences derived from the nice sunny Sunday afternoons on the Memorial Glade on Berkeley’s campus back home). Ingeniously, we used the bread and jam provided for breakfast plus the peanut butter we bought last night and made PB&J sandwiches this morning before we left. This was our way to have an inexpensive lunch outside, facing the Thames, watching and imitating pigeons nearby. One stayed in the shade forever. We called it ‘The Lazy Pigeon’.
Soon we moved on, after lying down in the sun for awhile, and we made it down to the outside of the Tower of London, the impressive ramparts glowing yellowish grey on the stone in the sunlight. We shared an ice cream called a ‘Bunny ears’, basically a cone with two Cadbury chocolate sticks sticking out of it. Walking over Tower Bridge was exciting—seeing yet another angle of a city gradually becoming a little bit more familiar with time.
Finally, yes! We found one! A grassy knoll! On the other side of Tower Bridge. We walked over and lay down for another comfortable amount of time, smiling and happy being together. I positioned the camera in the grass and we got really cute photos of us with the Tower Bridge in the background of this beautiful, sunny day.
We realized that we still wanted to see maybe the Globe Theatre and Covent Gardens before we called it a day, but neither plan worked out. We scratched the latter out once we realized how low on time we were, and upon successfully walking past three bridges, including Tower Bridge, we arrived at a recently closed Globe Theatre entrance. I was partially upset, but we moved on, walking nearby over the Millennium Bridge, a bridge devoted to pedestrians and shaped with a modern architectural resonance.
Other than a quick stop at another grassy knoll outside St. Paul’s Cathedral, dotted with dandelions and soothingly flowing with a waterfall at one end, with again the result of a cute camera-in-grass series of pictures of us, we made our way to the Underground at St. Paul’s and headed back to the hotel.
Along the way, the worst thing on this trip happened, apart from Katya losing her iPod the first day: we tried seeing how many pictures we had taken, and so we went to formatting, but upon trying a button (which we later duplicated and pinpointed where this happened so we don’t do it again), the worst possible scenario occurred: the image count: 0. We lost all our pictures. Every single one. Gone.
The quick baggage pick-up at the hotel, the Underground to Liverpool Street Station, waiting for our train and eating dinner, all these events were now spoiled by the dark cloud of misery. All we had done, all we had seen, gone. Without any way to prove what we did. How beautiful the day was, or how cute we looked, or the funny faces, or ‘The Lazy Pigeon’, or the dirty brown water of the Thames revealed in the noon light of day, or the high-up Eye of London pictures of us with Big Ben down far below, or the goofy pictures of us on weird anchors, or the bizarre and narrow alleyways of pockets of London near the Thames, or the pictures from the boat cruise, or the ones of us at Trafalgar Square.
I tried comforting Katya, and eventually food helped both of us, but we were still sad about this shadow that just kicked up dust in our memories’ eyes, in the camera’s eyes.
The 8:30 train to Norwich finally came. We were again present with five minutes to spare, but in our defence, the platform number didn’t come on the overhead digital departure display, the one looming large in the centre of the Liverpool Street rail way station, until fifteen minutes before our departure.
I worked a little on my second essay, the Dickens one, on the train, revising a bit of the beginning, and Katya read more of Les Misérables on her dad’s iPad. We cheered each other up about the camera scenario, and finally felt much better about it. We still have Norwich and Paris to take pictures together, after all.
Once in Norwich, we caught the 25 train and made it to my flat at Norfolk Terrace.
A tipsy Marie was the first to meet Katya, and Marie’s roommate Laura (Lithuanian) helped calm her down. It was amusing and endearing. The rest of the flat was in Jen’s room and a lot of them came out to meet her, Stephen, Steff (Jen’s boyfriend, honorary flatmate of course), Jen, Dan, Laura, and Charlie.
A majority of them headed to the kitchen, where we played five rounds of the card game called Yaniv, and Katya was glad to meet them and that I was happy to introduce her to them. It was really a good setting, despite the rumbles from flats nearby on this Monday night of uproarious enchantments (college life of course).
Katya and I came back to my room and ate a few of the Kobasic’s chocolate from my hometown, Kobasic’s being a local family-owned chocolate factory/store near my house. So amazing. Salted caramel chocolates…it feels a little like home. At the moment, Katya is sleeping like an angel on my pillow.
Overall the first part of the trip was beautiful. The initial adjustment to our old habits with each other took us by surprise but the surprise went away quickly. Despite the weight we feel about losing the pictures, there is no way we can forget what happened there, in frankly one of the most expensive cities in the world but also one of the most exciting.
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