My wife hit the milestone age of 50 on May 4 and as a gift, I purchased two airline tickets to London and a week in a flat in Fulham.
We left on Thursday, May 5, and didn’t arrive in London until 11 a.m. on May 6. There’s a six-hour time difference, but that’s still a lot of travelling.
We landed in London, breezed through customs — seriously, we didn’t have a personal interaction with a single customs agent while entering the United Kingdom — and we set about the task of finding our luggage. Which, of course, did not arrive with us.
Friends in London had arranged a car for us and we were soon winding our way from Heathrow to the flat in Fulham.
On the way, I saw two Lamborghini Hurracans, a Ferrari 458 and a Porsche GT2RS, this was going to be a good car-spotting trip.
When we made it to the flat, my wife, exhausted, collapsed on to the bed for a couple hours of napping.
I took to the streets looking for beer.
What I found, was a multi-cultural neighborhood that had as much activity as a kicked-over fire ant bed. People of all colors, creeds and shapes were everywhere.
I went to the local grocery and bought a few staples. (You have to pay for plastic bags there.)
We spent the rest of the afternoon not far from the place we’d rented eating at a pub, there is one on every corner, or just walking in a daze. What you don’t find much on your first day in London is clarity of thought.
The next morning came bright and early at about 10 a.m. after a much-needed night of deep sleep.
We entered the London Underground at Fulham Broadway, grabbed the Eastbound District Line changed at Earl’s Court for the Piccadilly Line to Cockfoster’s (I swear the comedians make up the names around this place) and exited at Kightsbridge.
What lay before my wife was the unrivaled king destination for all shoppers, Harrod’s.
It’s an overload of price, posh and perfume.
Luckily, we left without ever once using the credit card in the building. Surprisingly, there is actually a grocery in center of Harrod’s and people who shop there.
We left Harrod’s, found another underwhelming food selection at a pub and made our 2 p.m. ticket to Westminster Abbey.
The Abbey and the British Museum were the two most-anticipated stops for me on this trip. The Abbey did not disappoint. I have always been fascinated by a contemporary portrait of Richard III. I saw it on an easel as we left the Abbey.
The church is grand in its scale and wonderfully still an active sanctuary. There are no fewer than 20 services weekly.
We also saw the newly installed Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries which contain the funeral effigies of many of the monarchs back to Henry VII. The effigies, if they were life-size, would have made me a giant compared to the kings and queens of England.
For dinner that evening we visited with friends at The Dove in Hammersmith. The pub is owned by Fullers and the company makes my favorite beer in the world: Fuller’s London Pride. The beer in London is its true saving grace in the culinary world. The hand-pumped cask ales come out just about 60 degrees and go down so easily. It’s a wonder we ever started drinking cold beer.
Speaking of cold drinks, why are the Brits so averse to ice cubes in all their drinks save for the gin and tonics?
Instead of attending church on Sunday morning, we went to the high altar of theft and imperialism, the British Museum.
On one hand, the British Museum is the world’s largest warehouse of stolen property proudly on display in the world. On the other, if it wasn’t all in one place, then I would not have been able to see probably any of it.
That night we ate at the oldest restaurant in London called Rules. It was perhaps the only place with food worth crowing about. The rest is just missing something. (Mostly salt and pork fat.)
On Monday we had a theatre show and the National Gallery on our itinerary.
The gallery is the highlight of a visit to London. We saw Gainsbourough’s Blue Boy, Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and a Rembrandt self-portrait.
For my money, the Blue Boy is one of the most astonishing pieces of art in the world. Holly asked, “why is it so good?”
“You saw it didn’t you?” I said.
“Yeah,” she said.
“It’s the greatest thing I’ve ever seen,” I said. “Isn’t it the greatest thing you’ve seen?”
“Yeah, but why?” she said.
“It just is,” I said. The picture is truly astounding.
Later that night we saw a show that will never be performed on the stage at Delta Center Stage, The Book of Mormon. I laughed until I cried.
We’d done all the London highlights and by the fourth day had officially declared ourselves experts at riding the tube, just in time to take the trip from Fulham Broadway to Earl’s Court on the Eastbound District Line with a change to the Westbound Picadilly Line to Heathrow. All while “Minding the Gap.”
