London - Part Deux
Monday, September 18th, 2006(Chris is harassing me to add more about the honeymoon, especially since we spent more than two days there.)
On Friday, as a gift from Chris’ Gama and Grandfather, we took a bus tour trip called “History and Mystery.” It was a day trip out of London and a nice change from figuring out where to go by ourselves.
So it actually starts with “Mystery” - we went to Stonehenge. It was a surprise to learn that the “henge” part was the oldest (5000 years or something like that), and really it was an overglorified circular ditch around the stones. I’m not sure how they figured out the date of the ditch… can you carbon date dirt? Surround the area was miles and miles of flat farmland (punctuated once in a while with a large dirt mound - graves for important people). And of course sheep. Chris became very interested in a haytruck.
Next stop was Bath. The main attraction was the Roman Baths. Actually, we sped through it (the main rooms, the steam rooms, the source of the spring, the lead pipes etc) so we could schlepp down to the Jane Austen Center. Chris left me there to soak in all the Jane Austen I could get while he went to get lunch for us. What a nice husband. 
While munching our food, we noticed a garden across the street. Weirdly enough, one of the flower beds spelled out something like “biotechnology.”
Last stop was a medieval village called Lacock. It had these neat thatch roofs and also one main building (owned by the church) made of stone roof tiles. We’re told that they (way way back) submerged a large slab of stone in water during the winter. When the water froze, it would introduce cracks at certain places and then in the spring, voila, roof shingles. Must have taken a long time to build one house. All in all, these little places were very cute and full of hanging flowers. So of course, we had to take a few pictures of that.
Lacock is also one of the sites used in the BBC production of Pride and Prejudice. In particular, the dance at the Merryton assembly hall was filmed here, in the Lacock assembly hall. It reminded me of our reception site - which was essentially the assembly hall of Sherborn back in the day. One of the cute houses in Lacock was also used in the first Harry Potter movie - I think it was the house of Harry’s parents.
That evening, back at our corner of good ole’ Westminster, we went out for Indian food - a sort of classy restaurant. The place was tiny - the food was brought up in a food elevator. Strange! Now the food looked like stuff we would order at Coromandel - but the flavors, so different. In one bite, your palate would be treated to a variety of tastes and spices, each one held its own.
The next day, we decided to take the bus to Trafalger Square and the area near Leicester Square. This was of course the 24 bus, which we would later learn to take almost every single day. In any case, we were looking for Foyles, the big bookstore in London. There we spent many hours, browsing and reading. I spent most of my time in the children’s section and discovered an huge collection of the Mr. and Miss books (you know Miss Brainy, or Mr. Tall). And I saw that the new edition of Richard Scarry “The Big Book of..” are now printed in sans serif font - so weird and strange. I also read several books of Babar. I never realized how colonialist that story was. And finally, I had to buy a copy of “A Bear called Paddington.”
Chris re-read Mike Mulligan and Steam Shovel, and Katie the snow plow. It was fun.
Next, my husband the map maniac had to visit Stanford’s, the largest and probably most famous map store in England (and probably Europe). So we schlepped over there. I found a cushy chair to sit in while he scampered around looking at maps of all scales and places. I think he found his version of a candy store.
At around this point, we headed back to Westminster to meet my cousin, Geng Nan. We had grown up together and he was going to come to the wedding but was waylaid by the fact that the day he was supposed to fly out Heathrow, the London terrorist thing happened. He couldn’t even get near the airport. Alas.
We met up. It was strange that someone I had grown up with, was meeting Chris for the first time, and as my husband. Kind of boggles your mind. In any case, we determined to make the evening one of English pub drinking and eating. So after careful internet research which we then promptly ignored as we walked around the area, we picked the Prince of Wales Pub not far from our hotel.
Ordered beer, sat down and just chatted for a long time. The beer was ok - I had a Stella. It wasn’t fuzzy but flat and kind of warm. But still good. Unfortunately, the kitchen was closed. Strange thing but on Saturdays I guess they don’t get enough food business to make it worthwhile to keep it open. So we ended up going to a second bar (called the Shakespeare pub) for food - Fish and chips, burgers and chicken burgers. And of course, more beer. It was excellent.
Gee had been in London for about a month now and was eyeing a place to rent near Paddington. It sounded like he was till waiting to hear from agents about jobs (indeed his cell rang a few times while we were out). His girlfriend, Joey, was already working and they both lived about an hour outside of London. Unfortunately, she was too sick to hang out that night.
We wandered, half drunk, back to Westminster station (which was near the Abbey and Big Ben) so that Gee could grab the Jubilee line back to his place. On a whim, I remembered that Nina, my college room mate, told me about a poem that was on the bridge near the Parliament buildings. So we headed out on the bridge to look for this poem. Sadly, did not find it. But we did find a statue honoring Butica, the warrior queen I learned about in A History of Britain.
