A Spot of Tea

Today was about organizing things, shopping, and snacks. We were supposed to go to the town of Bath today but when I checked the weather in the morning, the forecast was for rain all day so we changed our plan and got a few other things done in London, where there were only a few light showers. Peter went to some museums, I went to Victoria Station to change our train tickets, and then we met in Leicester Square to inquire about theatre tickets. Peter got a ticket to As You Like It at the Old Vic for tonight, he also got a ticket to the London Opera for Friday, and we both got tickets to The Railway Children on Saturday; I have no idea what it's about but it's being staged on a disused train platform in Waterloo Station, and apparently a train actually passes through the set - cool. Then it was off to the department store, Fortnam and Mason to look at the food halls and have some tea, followed by a stop at Harrods where the food halls are even more impressive. I can't imagine actually shopping at either of these stores, they are packed with tourists and totally chaotic - at least on the lower floors where the accessories, perfume, makeup, and food halls are. Maybe the upper floors where the clothing is located are more pleasant, we couldn't bring ourselves to investigate. Lots of ladies in burkas shopping in both stores; I'm guessing they're Saudi as it would take an oil well or two in the family to be able to shop at either; we saw a cake that you could order for about $6,000; truth told, it looked kinda gross.

Wimbledon

Today I fulfilled a lifelong dream: to visit the All England Lawn Tennis Club, home of Wimbledon. It didn't even matter that the tournament had been over for a couple of weeks, I still count the excursion as a major achievement in my life as a tourist (leaving just Euro-Disney and the Corn Palace to complete the list). I took the guided tour of the grounds and visited the tennis museum, which had some really good exhibits about tennis through the ages (ladies used to play in corsets and stockings; one of the sponsor's give-aways in the 1920s was a pack of smokes). The grounds of the club look a lot smaller in person (why is that true of so many things? People are always talking about how television rots the brain, how come no one complains about how is skews the sense of size?), but seeing Centre Court, the press area, Court 18 where the epic 138-game match took place this year, and all the other places I've watched on TV since I was about 12, was super-exciting. Membership of the club is about 375, there is a waiting list of about 1,000 and a rigorous screening process to get in. Our guide told us that the easiest way to get in (and the dues aren't even that much - less than a gym), is to win the tournament since all singles winners become honorary members.

The tour was really enjoyable, but one thing you are absolutely, totally, and without equivocation NOT allowed to do on the tour of the All England Lawn Tennis Club, is touch the grass.

The Royal Botanic Garden, Kew

or Kew Gardens, as it's more commonly known, is actually a 300-acre park which was established in 1759. The botanic research and preservation institute that runs Kew Garden is responsible for the world's largest living collection of plants, and apparently they keep track of quite a few dead ones too as their preserved specimens number over 7 million. Peter and I spent a very pleasant morning walking around the park, the highlight of which was the waterlily house. There was also a really nice butterfly exhibit where I leaned that a person can spend an awfully long time trying to get just the right photo of a butterfly.

After we left the garden, we took the tube back into Central London to the Victoria and Albert Museum, where a touch of home hangs in the central lobby; and then because I had watched The Young Victoria just a few weeks ago, we took a stroll past the Royal Albert Hall and the Prince Albert Memorial. Peter and I split up after that and he continued a long, circuitous walk back to the apartment passing the Queen Victoria Memorial and Buckingham Palace along the way, which prompted him to ponder at dinner, "I wonder where they'll put the Queen Elizabeth Memorial when she croaks." Good question.

Real Food

Molecular Gastronomy is something in which I have very little interest. I don't want essence of unsprouted parsnips wafted toward me as a first course; I don't want duck served to me in pellet form; I don't find the idea of granita, mousse, or anything "popsicled" outside the dessert tray in anyway appealing; call me pedestrian, I don't care, I like to chew my food. Which is why we had lunch today at The Hinds Head pub in the village of Bray, and not at The Fat Duck Restaurant next door. The chef-owner is the same for both; the food couldn't be more different. Here are some offerings on today's menu at The Fat Duck: Nitro Poached Green Tea and Lime Mousse, Pommery Grain Mustard Ice Cream, Chicken Liver Parfait, Snail Porridge, Salmon Poached in Licorice, and Blood Pudding with Confit of Umbles. I have no idea what an umble is, but if I did, I'd probably want them straight-up grilled with a side of mayo. Conversely, the menu at the Hinds Head included Highland Beef with Yorkshire Pudding, Braised Pork Shoulder with Crackling and Roasted Potatoes, a Venison Burger, and several other, toothsome options. I had the grilled hake with mashed potatoes, bacon, and peas; Peter had the poached cod on a bed of crab and lemon; side of french fries; and a pickled lemon salad with fresh herbs to start. Dessert was a cherry tart with yogurt ice cream. All of it was spectacularly delicious. 

Bray is a tiny village outside the town of Maidenhead; Maidenhead is a 30-minute train ride from London. I had read about both restaurants, made the obvious choice between the two, and Peter and I set off late-morning on the train. From Maidenhead we walked down the road about half an hour to Bray, where there is nothing much besides some picturesque homes and the two restaurants. After lunch we asked our waitress if there was anything to see in Bray or any shops to look in, she smiled and said "no." The service in the pub was excellent, the food was lovely, and we left stuffed full of food, as opposed to high on pheasant-flavored helium, or whatever they were serving next door.

London/Venice

Little known fact: there is a small network of canals in London. Well, "network" might be a stretch, but there are canals, and they are very pleasant to walk along. This morning we got up at a very reasonable time, made it out the door around 10am and took the Tube to Camden (neighborhood-home of Amy Winehouse for those of you keeping track; we didn't see her). We walked through the giant Camden Market and made our way down to the canal for a long walk to Regents Park. There are long, narrow barges on the waterway, some motoring through with tourists, some which appear to be permanently moored live-aboards (nothing like the appealing houseboats on Lake Union; more like a claustrophobe's nightmare). The London Zoo abuts the canal and is part of Regents Park (you leave the canal- path at the warthog exhibit to enter the park). We walked through the park and came out on Baker Street (where Sherlock Holmes kept office space; we didn't see him) and planned on taking the Tube from there to somewhere else, but being as the entire Circle Line was closed, and the fact that I didn't notice that some other line went through some other station where we could have connected to the place where we were going but didn't, we ended up somewhere else where we weren't really going and didn't necessarily want to be. Navigating London can be a little complicated. We ended up back at the apartment around 5pm and I called my friend Chris (using my London cell phone, which h I hadn't used in over two years, but which worked just fine after I purchased a new SIM card from Carphone Warehouse) and we made a plan to meet him in the quiet neighborhood of Wapping, which is further east along the Thames, and where we could hit a few pubs I remembered from my previous trip here. We started out at a pub called the Town of Ramsgate which is a lovely, rustic spot with a breeze blowing in off the river, and ended at the Pride of Spitelfields which is in Shoreditch; Shoreditch is a bit of scene on a Saturday night, but we managed to avoid the boozers and clubbers and snagged a table in the pub, which somehow remained empty except for the giant cat sleeping on one of the chairs. From Shoreditch we caught a bus which dropped us off right in front of the apartment, and after a long if not particularly eventful day, it's time for bed.

Day 1: Stay Awake



view from the flat

I have now been awake for 29 hours. We landed in London around noon and arrived at our flat about 90 minutes later. The place is great, we're right on the Thames, central to most everything, not too long a walk to the nearest Tube station, in a very nice place with a balcony over-looking the river, blah, blah, blah.

I can't really think straight because, as I mentioned, I've been awake for 29 straight hours, and if you know me at all, and of course you do otherwise why would you be reading this? you know I like my sleep. Our only goal today was to STAY AWAKE until 8pm, which we have, and now I'm feeling very, very loopy. We arrived, unpacked, showered, changed, and hit the sidewalk. We walked to the Tate to check out the Turner collection. Many of J.M.W. Turner's famous oil paintings have that lovely, hazy, "unfinished" look; apparently, that was because he didn't bother to finish a lot of them (ADD?). We left the Tate and walked and walked and walked to the Millennium Bridge (my favorite of the London bridges) which takes you across the river directly to the Tate Modern. We were fading by that point and immediately got some snacks in the cafe before I suggested we just check out the room with the giant Mark Rothko paintings and then head back to the apartment. Turned out the Rothkos are being refurbished and there is only one on display hanging in one of the regular galleries, lumped in with about 20 other wildly varied pieces. When I was at the TM last, there was a rather large room, dimly lit, hung with nothing but giant, red Rothko rectangles; the paintings struck me as being exceptionally powerful hung in a group like that and I was hoping we could sit in that room for a few minutes to gather strength to walk back, but it was not going to happen. My second favorite piece in the museum was also no longer on display - that would be Jeff Koons' Three Ball Total Equilibrium Tank which, if it's not clear from the title, is three basketballs suspended in what looked to my untrained eye, to be about a 50-gallon fish tank (being both untrained in modern art AND fish containment, that's my best guess; I mean, I'm pretty certain about the basketballs, but I'm guessing on the size of the tank). Since we couldn't view that piece either, we made do with a Monet and some rather violent Cy Twombly scribbles, and left. Walking back, fighting the urge to just curl into a ball on the river-path and sleep, we passed the National Theatre. The NT does a series of free summer programs, and an outdoor dance performance was going to start in 30 minutes. We decided this would be a good way to kill more time, and waited it out. The performance took place on a clear Plexiglas stage, while the audience sat in reclining chairs underneath, looking up at the dancers through the stage. Each performance was 8 minutes, forty-eight people could sit in the chairs for each performance. We made it into the first group. I'm not sure the piece was necessarily enhanced by viewing up the ladies dresses, but it didn't hurt. After the performance we continued down the river path back to the apartment. We arrived around 8pm, which was our goal time to stay awake until. I'm banging this out while Peter takes another shower (it's pretty hot out); and in a few minutes I'm going to take an Ambien and go to bed. It's bright as day out but I don't think I'll have any trouble sleeping. Goodnight.

And Then There Was Snow

That being the case, needless to say, I’m home. And it was a long trip getting here—first Bangkok, Tokyo, Portland, Sacramento, then two days in Sacramento before driving north through rain and sleet to Portland where I spent then night before making the drive home to Seattle. Except as soon as I arrived in Seattle, I dumped my suitcases and then drove another thirty miles north to my storage unit to get all my winter clothes and shoes; loaded up my car, drove back down to Seattle, and spent the next six hours unpacking. I finally got settled into the place where I’m staying (which is the same place I was staying before I left, with my friend Gail in Ballard), spent one night there, and then moved to my friend Margie’s place on Queen Anne since she happened to be out of town and graciously suggested I stay at her place while she’s away. So I’ve been on my own for the first time in five months (as has my brother; I’m sure he misses me terribly). Last Wednesday night was the first night I spent at Margie’s, and when I woke up in the morning (5am, jetlag), it was snowing and snowing and snowing. Margie’s condo is on a bluff looking over Lake Union with a view all the way across to downtown so I had a great view of the massive (well, 2 inches at least) snowfall covering the city.

But back to Bangkok.

Cheryl and I left the [nasty] beach and headed back to Bangkok and the Davis Hotel, which we had grown very fond of on our first couple of days in town. Great staff, great room, nice gym, lovely spa, roof-top pool—what’s not to love? We also found a great little café down the street which we went to nearly every day for the rest of our trip. The owner, Tay, was a young guy who had spent 12 years in the U.S., had an amazing design-sense, great taste in music, and had his coffee beans specially roasted to his specifications. The café was a lovely oasis off the busy street where we would have breakfast or lunch before heading out, usually via sky train to whatever destination was in line for the day. On most days it was one of Bangkok’s huge shopping malls, but we did also make it to another very cool temple, the night market, and the Moon Bar on the 56th floor of the Banyan Tree Hotel which gave us an amazing perspective on how large a city Bangkok is. We made the neighborhood around the hotel home, ate at the same Thai restaurant around the corner several times, got snacks at the grocery store across the street, drank iced chocolate at the ice-cream place across the street; I went to the gym every day, Cheryl went to a spa every day, we both went to the pool every day – it was a nice way to end the trip.

And now I’m home. The snow has melted, the sun is out (off and on), I’m shopping for a condo, and hoping to go back to work soon. If going back to my old job doesn’t pan out, I’ll find something else to do I’m sure, but right now I’m mostly trying to find a place to live and settle back into life in Seattle. I do love this place.

Thanks to everyone to who went on this trip with me by sending me emails, commenting on the photos, and keeping in touch. Part of me felt like I never left because my friends always seemed so close; on the other hand, I missed everyone terribly and am really glad to be back. And that’s the end of the blog for now, will maybe resurrect it if I go somewhere else, but I’m really looking forward to staying put for a while.

Hugs and kisses to everyone reading,
-Manomi