Day 1 – Wednesday, April 4 - London
(This and
future days written by Sarah with additions from Jeremy)
Tuesday
afternoon I finished up with my meeting, had a lovely lunch with Lizzi, and
headed to Chicago’s O’Hare to catch my flight to London. Luckily for me it was
a fairly empty flight, and I was able to get a seat in the middle of the plane
with nobody else in my row. So as soon as the plane took off I made a bed out
of the three seats, and slept all the way to London. I arrived about 20 minutes
early, breezed through passport control, and parked myself in Costa Coffee –
the planned meeting place with Jeremy and Leah. Jeremy was supposed to come in
the night before from Tel Aviv, but didn’t get in until a few hours before I
did. Leah is a champ, and not only met Jeremy at the train station at 4am, but
came to pick me up at Heathrow just a few hours later.
On the drive
from the airport, Leah told us a lot about British culture that were just
fascinating:
They drive
on the wrong side of the road. That took some getting used to.
A bridge
that goes over something other than water is called a “flyover.”
Zigzag lines
in the road mean you are approaching a pedestrian crossing.
BBC radio
has a shipping weather forecast. It’s so interesting that this information is
still part of the broadcast!
Throughout
London, we kept seeing cars with signs saying, “Private Hire Cars.” Apparently,
these are privately owned cars that operate similar to taxis, except that they
must be reserved (no random pick-ups), and they are normal cars. No special
equipment inside, no funky paint job outside. Just a Londoner trying to make a
few extra bucks driving people around. Very cool.
We parked
Leah’s car not far from her house, and took the Tube into the center of town.
Our first stop was Buckingham Palace for the changing of the guard. We found
ourselves a spot on the very crowded street and waited for the parade of guards
to begin. The truth is we couldn’t see much from where we were, but did get to
see the band marching and the guards on horses entering the palace gates. Once
the new guards were inside the gates, the three of us crossed the street to try
to get a better look. We were able to see through the fence and listen to the
band play. Funny enough, they started out by playing “We Are the Champions.”
Maybe it was a Queen thing? They went on to play the patriotic Michael Jackson
song, “You Are Not Alone” and a jazz-samba rendition of “Unforgettable.”
From
Buckingham Palace we walked along St. James Park, past the horse guards and the
institute of civil engineers (which was very exciting since Leah is, herself, a
civil engineer), and stopped to grab a quick lunch at the supermarket. After
eating our lunch overlooking parliament and Big Ben, we walked to take a closer
look at the buildings. From there we crossed the street and visited Westminster
Abbey (not the inside, the line was way too long), and stopped in St.
Margaret’s Church right next door. We passed the sundial in the ground (which
does indeed tell the right time, although it didn’t account for daylight savings)
and came upon the new Supreme Court building. It turns out that the courts are
open to the public, so we stopped in and got to tour the different courtrooms. Surprisingly,
there was a very modern interior in a very old and beautiful building. Also, because
they didn’t have anything else to do with court out of session, the security
guards were also serving as tour guides in the various rooms. The stop was an
unexpected pleasure in our day’s itinerary. From the Supreme Court we walked
past a small garden of statues, including Nelson Mandela, Abraham Lincoln, and
Winston Churchill.
Our next
stop was the Churchill War Rooms, which came highly recommended by David
Israel; they did not disappoint. The war rooms are an underground museum
encompassing the Cabinet War Rooms from World War II and the Churchill Museum.
It was really interesting to be able to see the rooms recreated as they were
during the war years. The museum was really well set up, and I learned more
than I ever wanted to know about the life of Churchill. It seems that we picked a perfect time to be
underground, since the only rain all day was while we were in the museum.
From the
museum we took the bus to St. Paul’s Cathedral. On our way, we stopped for a
spot of tea at Bea’s and enjoyed delicious high tea and pastries. Jeremy picked
a peanut butter and jelly bar and I picked a meringue approximately the size of
my head. After our tea we took the elevator up to the top of the shopping
center where the bakery was housed, and had the most magnificent view of the
cathedral and the whole city. St. Paul’s is an absolutely beautiful cathedral.
With very high ceilings, a domed roof, and beautiful stained glass it is
definitely one of the most beautiful places of worship in the world. One of the
more fascinating parts of the church was that religious imagery was at a
minimum. Instead, monuments and sculptures and other pieces of art were in
honor of military and political figures from Britain’s past. From the
cathedral, we walked down to the Tower of London, which we unfortunately
couldn’t visit because it was closed. We spent some time along the bank of the
Themes overlooking the Tower Bridge, and then took a bus back toward the center
of town to visit the construction site where Leah is currently working.
From
there we found a cute pub to watch the football (read: soccer) game and relax
with food and drinks (I had a pear cider, Jeremy had a strawberry-lime cider).
The pub even had vegetarian bangers and mash, which made me very happy. (Note:
It turns out that “mash” refers to peas.) Jeremy had fish and chips, which made
him very happy. Since we had all been up since the wee hours of the morning, we
headed back to Leah’s apartment to rest up for our second day of touring.
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