The Largest City in Europe

How do you write a blog post about a week in London? It's a busy place. It's a huge place. There's a lot to do, and I did a lot, but somehow in writing it down it doesn't seem like half as much. I suppose it's because London is so busy and  so big, and you're constantly moving. It's hard to eat in London. I had to force myself to stop for long enough to buy something overpriced from a chain pretend-cafe, and then keep going. I went from a week of walking idyllic open spaces, scattered gently with people and livestock and lonely clouds, to the biggest city Europe.

Floating golden busker with a
long nose

When I got into Kings Cross station on Monday, and had brought the magical Oyster Card that would provide me with transport for two zones on the Underground and on any bus in London, I somehow found my way towards the British Museum with my blue wheeled suitcase. It's surprisingly graceful, that suitcase, with four wheels on the bottom, but I can assure you that all its grace doesn't help much with walking up stairs. When I got to the British Museum, I discovered that my graceful suitcase was too large to be checked into their coat room (lest I should be a harbourer of weapons, though I doubt my pocket knife was their main concern) and so instead I found a little cafe in a park nearby and waited for a friend. She's English, but I met her in New Zealand and it so happened that she'd just returned for two months of her own back home before she'd be going back to New Zealand, and that she was in London at a convenient time for me. I went on my first tube ride. I saw Coventry Garden, a market more than a place for trees, and a big statue and giant TV screens, and a pointy monument, and buildings.

I've often admired architecture, but not in the way many people do. I find it hard to get terribly excited about the outside of buildings simply for the way they look, unless they are also ruined or have plants enhancing their unnatural even-edgedness. But in London, I thought the buildings - not all, just some - were beautiful. They just were. And there's such a mix, such a contrast of the old and the new right beside each other - as Jessie later said to me, you can see the Georgian buildings that started the biggest change the world has known right next to the modern buildings that are a product of it.

It was rush hour when my (second?) cousin finished work. I was to stay with him, who I hadn't seen since we were about 12 years old, probably not too long before his family had moved over to England. We crushed into a tube together with everyone else, standing up and swaying against people, snatching conversation here and there, then disembarked to alight on a bus that quickly filled. He lives with three other chaps behind a green door above a shop. I slept on a bean bag, which was comfier than I had expected.

From a bridge in St James Park

Creepy detail of St Paul's

Lady of the Night, from a society in a time in the world

I looked at Big Ben, the Eye of London, various bridges that cross the Thames river, St Paul's cathedral, streets, buildings, people, cars. I looked at statues - there are many statues, of all kinds of people, some of which have wings. I perused the British Museum and ran short on time, so full and vast is it. I saw a range of human societies across time and the globe reduced to little labelled objects caged in glass. On a sunny afternoon, I rested in the green be-flowered St James Park, admired patterned geese and cursed at wicked grey American squirrels, those interlopers of the natural order. I glanced at Buckingham Palace.

A building.

I visited Westminster Abbey for somewhat of a price, waited in a long line to be admitted, walked down the rows of memorials with Jeremy Irons' voice in my ear, telling me a little more about what I was looking at from a little black box. I saw Darwin's grave, and that of the Unknown Soldier wreathed in poppies, the tombs of Kings and Queens, a memorial to Shakespeare, and Geoffrey Chaucer's tomb. He rests in Poet's Corner now, the first among many famous literary names who are noted even if their bodies lie elsewhere. Chaucer wasn't originally buried where he is now, but in a lesser part of the Westminster grounds. He was afforded the privilege for his work for the government rather than his literary prowess, which grew later and afforded him the more prominent place he now has. Not that anyone notices him that much anymore. In the postcard shop, they had a postcard for Shakespeare who isn't even buried here, but nothing at all for Chaucer. Chaucer. Geoffrey Chaucer. I was outraged. I was enraged. I raged. To friends, and on a blog. Particularly because I mostly obeyed the stupid rule about not taking a photo, and so took a terrible unfocused one on my cell phone and was too chicken and obedient to take another.

Illicit photograph

Inside the Tower, with one raven flying above a tree, and just a sample
of the tourists

I visited the Tower of London for somewhat of a price - sightseeing is expensive in London, positively steep, but the Tower was too beautiful for me not to. It contains, unsurprisingly, a great deal of history, and, in fact, several towers, and still the beefeaters and their families live there - one of them led a large group of us around, and we sat in the chapel as he told us who had been murdered by whom and lay where. There is the Bloody Tower, where they think those nephews of Richard III were murdered. There is the spot where the scaffolding for the executions of royalty was erected. There are towers where prisoners were held, and where they carved their names and surprisingly delicate designs into the sandstone walls. There are museums with weapons and objects, and the gaudy royal jewels that are nothing but gold and shiny rocks that everyone crowded around to gawk at. There are the ravens, whose wings are clipped, some of whom are in cages. There must always be at least six ravens resident at the Tower, for the fortress will fall should they leave.

Squashed image of within the Tower

One gets bored when imprisoned in the Tower

Squashed image (why is it behaving so?) of the Traitor's Gate

At the advice of a friend, I walked down Brick Lane (either near or in Spitalfields, I'm not suite sure which, but I do know I caught the tube to Liverpool then walked). At one end the shops seem standard fare, but as you walk down the concentration of Indian and similar ethnic food shops increases, until it feels as though you've somehow stumbled away from where you thought you were. I didn't note it, but legend (Rob) tells of a mosque that began its life as a Catholic church, then transmogrified to a synagogue before reaching its most recent incarnation.

Brick Lane

It was here I had the best coffee in all of England, if not the United Kingdom. A New Zealand run cafe called Nude has its roastery off Brick Lane, and I found it and partook of the most delightful cappuccino. The extraction was perfect. The milk was frothed exquisitely  The design in the foam was like a fern frond newly unfolded to the delights of the planet. I had one sugar, because I hadn't eaten breakfast or lunch and I felt like something sweet. Perhaps you are thinking, "What? A mere cappuccino when surely a NZ cafe would offer the flat white, which is all but unknown to cafes outside of NZ?" To that I say, poopoo. I like frothy milk sprinkled with chocolate powder.

And what else, what else did I do in London? I'll tell you in my next post, and I promise you, the best is yet to come.