Finally, a PROPER anniversary trip. Part 1.

Dinner out in Shepherds Market area, London

Not that the icy one in March wasn’t just ducky (see previous post), but come on.  Twenty-five years calls for an outlay of cash at least approaching the price tag of the first used car you ever bought as a married couple.  And I think we accomplished that.

Since my virtual stack of digital photos is absolutely overwhelming to me, and the thought of captioning and explaining all of them even more daunting, I shall simply begin at the beginning, and get as far as I can get before my coffee and my stamina runs out tonight.  This trip deserves a proper debriefing, ruminating, archiving, and these things can’t be rushed.  So, if the many people who’ve asked me to describe and show pictures were really serious about that request, here they will find satisfaction, bit by bit.  Along with some pithy observations on life, travel, marriage, Europeans, and worship.

Part 1:  London with Lynn and Becca

To be clear, this three-week odyssey was not all anniversary.  My dearest and only sister (Lynn) suggested back in winter that I accompany and help plan a trip for her and her graduating daughter (Becca), and Becca wanted to go to England. 

Waaaaay back in 1982, when Margaret Thatcher was ruling and Princess Diana was making babies, I spent a semester studying in London:  living in Bloomsbury, taking classes in British art and architecture and theater, and growing into the adult version of my faith.  This latter happened largely through the preaching and warmth of All Souls Church, Langham Place, just down the street from our digs in Gower Street.  John Stott was still preaching regularly, along with several other very gifted, winsome men of faith. 

All that to say, my familiarity with London goes pretty far back.

Me and my sister

Although Lynn had had part of the same experience the previous year, her semester had been cut very short by a medical crisis at home (a serious flare-up of my mother’s MS, which finally took her from us ten faith-squeezing years later).  So her experience of the place was scant, and that–coupled to the fact that she is memory-deficient and directionally challenged–led her to realize that a tour guide might be a good idea.  Or maybe she just wanted to spend time with her sister.

I’m certainly no expert on the UK, but Larry and I have visited London and various UK spots together every five years or so since we got married, so I do know what to avoid and where some of the hidden gems are.  So we began our stay in London, lodging at the comfortable but (I’ve now decided) slightly prickly Vicarage Hotel in Kensington (I’ll embed links to most of these places, in case anyone needs to plan a trip.  No charge.)  Larry and I had found this hotel to be a nice retreat from the noisy streets of tourist-London, but close enough to either Kensington High Street or Notting Hill tube to get almost anywhere pretty fast.  One magical morning on one of those trips, I remember waking up to the sound of horse-clops on the street, looking out our (front-facing) room window, and seeing a small parade of horses being moved from the nearby Kensington Palace stables to their morning gig.

Unfortunately, the hotel isn’t quite what I remember.  It’s not disastrous, but it’s definitely lost some of its joy.  Particularly the management, who can be hard to track down and hard to pin down once you’ve found them.  Granted, part of the problem was simply a difference in room locations:  fourth floor (no elevator) facing the back alley, rather than second floor facing the picturesque front street.  But service and comfort have declined over the years, as the management no longer seem to take much pride or joy in their business. 

Vicarage Hotel, Kensington

The worst moment, and I am not making this up, was about 8:00 on our last morning there (a Saturday), when we awoke not to clop clop outside the window, but a cacophonous chank chank– a loud pounding of iron on iron–right outside our door, in the corridor.  I crept out of the room to hit the loo (yes, too cheap to spring for an en-suite room), and two workmen were on their knees in the corridor, right outside of the doors to the loo and to the shower, prying up the carpeting and the underlying vinyl tiles with flat irons.  Seeing me in my jammies and figuring out where I was headed, they moved their tools and stepped aside as I squeezed by them and into the WC (wondering how soundproof that door was, if you know what I mean…).  By shower time, the new carpeting had been roughly cut and rolled out but not trimmed or tacked down.  The men were gone, working on another floor.  Opening the door to the shower room meant tugging back the new carpet’s edge as far as I could, so I could open the shower room door just enough to squeeze in–hoping, of course, that when it came time to get back out, I would be able to get it open that far again (or call for help). 

Why all the detail about this fiasco?  TRAVEL OBSERVATION #1:  Britain ain’t America.  This is true on so many levels, but one thing you have to just accept is that unless you’ve paid Hilton or Ritz prices for your hotel room, don’t expect everything to work, and don’t expect the staff to apologize if it doesn’t.  Here they do not operate on a “customer is king” basis.  An American small-hotel owner would have this kind of repair work done in the off-season during a closed-for-refurbishment week, because the typical American guest simply wouldn’t put up with this kind of noise and lack of privacy.  They would demand a refund, or call the BBB, or both.  I guess we’re not the typical American guests.  We let slide the very weak acknowledgment at check out: “sorry about the mess this morning; they were supposed to come and do this yesterday afternoon.”  OHHH!  Well, that makes perfect sense.  Your plan was to rip up all the carpeting on all the hallways and stairs (no elevators, four floors) in high tourist season in a fully booked hotel at CHECK IN time on a Friday, not on Saturday morning.   ’Kay. 

Hungerford Bridge, evening

Fortunately, when you’re in London for just a few days, you don’t spend much time in the hotel room.  The reason we were there was to see the city, walk the city, shop the city.  We also snagged some almost-reasonable seats at Wicked, and some very inexpensive seats at Avenue Q (I am being very brave to admit that one).  And for a teenager who’s new to London, just a walk across Waterloo Bridge in the evening is pretty magical (heck, it’s still pretty magical to me). 

Click the photo above to see all the photos on Picasa Web (once there, click the first photo to scroll through the pix and read captions).

Next vacation post:  Driving tour of Devon and Cornwall.