Of Oyster Cards, Big Buses, Cathedrals, History and Meeting Up With a Friend

It was still raining, and threatening to some more, when I woke up early again the next morning. This time, I was not so early as to miss the Continental Breakfast in the dining room. This was a Club, a religiously founded one, and its idea was that quiet was provided, but if people wanted to speak and meet up, they were encouraged to do so. So, there were tables that were solo and those that allowed for "can I join you". 

Although at heart (I know some of you are laughing, but it remains true) I am a loner, when I am in these environments, I feel it incumbent upon me to be social. And so I found myself saying hello to various people, as I ate my cooked scrambled eggs and bacon and hash browns. This was more than the average continental breakfast, even though the bacon was a rounded affair, and the hash browns were a single knish like item. Still it all tasted good and I was fortified for my next outing.

The first thing, I needed to get an Oyster Card. You pay for what is essentially a pass for the metro and the buses. I was a little intimidated as I went into the station at High Holborn because it was faster paced than even New York as people got their fares and pushed through the access gates. I knew that I was the kind of individual in the facility that I as a New Yorker, hated, slow and unsure and in the way of people trying to get hither and fro.  So rather than stand at the machine trying to figure out the directions, I went to the information window for a live person who could hear my tale and get me the right thing.

And now, I was ready. Except now also I decided to go to a kiosk on Southampton Row to buy a ticket for the "Big Bus" which, like in Los Angeles, and other cities, is a type of tourist transportation that allows you to "hop on, hop off" when you see a site that you wish to spend more time exploring. 

I had to go to the top of the bus for a full view of the sights of London, which was some doing with the continuing rain (and may be the reason looking back that I am now fighting sore throat and cold back here in LA). I had an English style cap and that seemed mostly enough. You could get this plastic parka, but it looked too unwieldy. 

Happily though, I found my first spot of interest almost immediately, St. Paul's Cathedral, its rounded dome a bold invitation. This edifice, like so many, damaged during World War II but managing still to survive mostly intact. As the days passed during the trip, I was more and more in awe of the British, so close to the tyranny and destruction of those days, and yet managing not only to survive, but after years of ration and dreariness and danger, to thrive.

Here you are looking up at the "Whispering Gallery".  When I was told that once up there you could not turn back, my fear of heights announced, "You can see it from here."

The Pantocrator. I love this and printed it out to frame for my room.

I was actually not supposed to be taking pictures inside St. Paul's and stopped after I saw the prohibition sign. Some places allow it, if you don't use flash. This one, did not. Still I had my innocently taken inside pictures, and they were going to stay.

It is here in St. Paul's that you will find the tombs of two amazing historical figures, among the many in the Isle, the Duke of Wellington (whose painting by Holbein, I think, I would later see at the National Gallery) and Admiral Horatio Nelson, the hero of Trafalgar, who died of his wounds on the HMS Victory (which I would later see at Portsmouth). 

Let me digress here, just a bit. The thing this trip did for me, whether a lasting impression or not, was to remind me of the sheer number of us alive and dead, all vying for making our places in the world. I know, it's a theme that seems to preoccupy me in this blog, and on other entries about this trip--that no matter how famous, if famous, we become, no matter how accomplished , no matter how big the tombs and cenotaphs, our end is precisely the same. And we are either resigned to there being nothing after that equalizing end, or we see that it all pales in comparison with the Reality to come. And for that we have no evidence sufficient to our human reason.  So here we were modern dayers walking all over the graves, on the floor below us, of people with long epitaphs merely curiosities to us today, who hoped that the words would make them more known down time. But even if known, only a footnote in history. When I was in the National Gallery, one of the paintings I saw and listened to the description of, was this one:

 

 

It is another Holbein, and it is called, "The Ambassadors". The two young men are wealthy and happy, but there hovers below them an almost hidden, elliptical insert, a skull. The point is to note, according to the audio lecture, that all we collect endlessly and greedily, is ultimately for naught. It is all transitory. Sorry. Maybe that's what art is, a freezing of moments of time and people, long since gone. It is not really a morbid thing. Just a reality that may or may not direct our lives to more philosophical climes.

 

Ah, well. As with the British Museum, there was no way to take it all in, but only the overall majestic feel of the place and its effort at immortality. And then I hopped back on the Big Bus and was off, to stop at another amazing piece of history, begun when in the 10th century by Benedictines and the site of coronations, weddings and funerals of figure after figure, Westminster Abbey.

This time, seeing Big Ben in the immediate background of this astounding ancient church, I felt somehow that I had stepped into an old English movie. I have to admit that once I came back I watched several of my favorites, having now trod in some of the tracks of the actors and producers, nay the historical figures. But the Abbey, which I wistfully wished remained a part of the Catholic tapestry, rather than an annex of a very piqued Henry VIII, met every and any expectation of prayerful grandeur I could have had. I wanted to, but knew I could not memorize its great spaces and cloistered ones. The oldest door (sometime in the 10th or 11th century), the many amazing beings long laid to rest, including Queen Elizabeth and her half sister, Mary, Anglican and Catholic, Elizabeth on top, and Mary, below her, with a prayer for the resurrection for both of them.  John Donne preached at St. Paul's. Edward the Confessor, a saint, is he not, is in a fragile tomb that we could not get close to for fear of its deterioration.

 

 

 

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The last of my views was of Poet's Corner where Chaucer and endless other wordsmiths lay.

 

To say I was exhausted after winding my way through the halls of two massive Churches is an understatement. I had not even eaten for wanting to absorb the sights and echoes. 

 

When I got back to the Penn Club, Heather had arrived and rested a bit and was ready for dinner. I had seen two or three enticing Indian Restaurants along Southampton Row and we picked one that seemed the most inviting, the door opened by one of the proprietors.

 

 

The Chambeli. I love Indian food, but in Los Angeles, too often, the fare of a country is not prepared by its countrymen, but here, it was so clearly a family place and the several dishes we tried, curries, both meat and vegetable and the accompanying garlic naan, was, well, earthly nirvana. Bravo The Chambeli, the first of my dining experiences in London. Which brings me tot the second myth, that the food in England is bad. Whether you approve of the EU or not, the fact is that London is a multicultural phenomenon, and you can eat anything from anywhere, and the old time English food, I sampled that as well, Ploughman's Lunch, Sunday Lunch, a big slab of roast beef and fixings that was comfort food personified, it was a feast in each and every place I or we chose spontaneously.

 

Oh, yes, by day two and a half, I was falling in love with London, despite the rain. And then, I got even luckier. For the rest of my trip there were clear spells, sunny spells (as they call them) and outright sun to accompany each of my sojourns in each of the museums, churches and parks.