May 7 - it's Patricia's birthday. Happy Birthday, Patricia!
Before setting out this morning, Neil gave me a plaster (read: "band-aid") as I was starting to get a blister. Too much walking!
Neil & Geraldine were driving us to see the Museum of Design and Architecture - traffic in London is c-r-a-z-y! They drive really quickly down really narrow streets, swerving at the last minute, and it seems like rush hour is every hour. However, this museum was quite far away, so driving seemed the best route. We did see some interesting sights along the way - in particular, an unfortunate man standing next to his off-kilter car, with the wheel lying in the road. Not just the tire, but the connector and a springy-thing (behold, the vast depths of my automotive knowledge), so somehow the axle must have broken. Bummer.
We were much less unfortunate than him, but our luck wasn't so hot either: some 25 minutes later, we discovered that the museum did not open until 2 p.m., which was two hours from now. N&G decided to drop us off (read: "ditch us") at the Cockfosters tube station. This is way way out of our zones (we have tickets for Zone 1-2, and this was Zone 6), so we had to buy a tube ticket; however, it was a direct route to the V&A (which we decided to return to finish our visit). Before we left, they lent us a cell phone so that we could meet up with them later in the day to do the "Ripper Walk".
Lots of people on the tube dressed in their Arsenal team wear and going to the game. Go, Arsenals! Arsenal? Whatever. I'm not fooling anyone.
So, back we are, alighting at South Kensington and heading to the V&A. This time, we do NOT check our coats. We picked up where we left off. Monica tried on a Kimono at one of the interactive exhibits, and we both designed a Coat of Arms for ourselves. So it's a fun place - just make sure you're ready to leave exactly when they tell you to.
After that, we weren't sure what we wanted to do. Monica wanted to see the street theatre that was taking place today. It was called "The Sultan's Elephant", by Royal de Luxe, and it involved a giant marionette of a girl and an elephant. Not something you see every day.
The Knightsbridge tube station was closed again. Is it ever open? Not for us, anyway. We saw the Harvey Nichols store - Monica said it was supposed to be a trendy place to shop, so we walked through. Looked like a department store to me. We walked out. Making our way towards the Hyde Park Corner station, we decided to walk through Hyde Park instead.
I heard a ringing noise, and asked Monica, "Is that your phone?" She said, "No." I thought it was. I made her take it out of her bag, just in time for her to say "Hello?" and hear a click at the other end of the line. The phone showed "5 missed calls."
She called back and left a message on N&G's machine, since we couldn't seem to catch them on their cell phone. We walk for another few minutes through the park, and again, there's ringing. "Is that your phone?" Monica: "No." Of course it was, again. Basically, instead of hearing the phone ringing, Monica just hears me asking, "Is that your phone?"
Finally managing to answer one of the calls, Monica and I headed along the edge of Hyde Park, back toward Green Park (yes, it is very green). London has very beautiful parks, and a surprising amount of green space. Green Park exits right next to Buckingham Palace. They'd closed "The Mall" to traffic for the street theatre; you could hear music playing even off in the distance, and there were many thousands of people milling about. Good luck finding anyone without the aid of cell phones.
Speaking of cell phones, ours is dying. Monica briefly talks to Geraldine, manages to ask, "Where are you?" and heard that they were at Pall Mall, not far away, and then it went dead. We did actually find Neil, or he found us - he said he saw my red hair in the crowd. Geraldine was lost somewhere else in the crowd. There were thousands and thousands of people milling around, and a helicopter whirring around overhead. We waited on the corner by St. James's Park, and eventually saw the puppet-Girl appearing in the distance. It was a huge marionette (about 30 ft high) suspended in a frame, with puppeteers perched on the sides, and it was being driven by some big truck. It took up half the street.
We were suitably impressed, but Neil said, "Wait until you see the elephant!!" The elephant was massive (maybe 50 ft high), taking up the entire street, flapping its ears, and waving its trunk, and occasionally spraying the crowds around it with water. It was a strange and amazing thing to see. I had no idea anyone built marionettes on that scale. Everyone follows the elephant and the girl down past St. James's Park and into the Horse Guards Parade.
Although there were bleachers there, when Monica went to see if we could sit in them, she was told they were only for "important people". Monica is sad but agrees, "I'm not important." The woman added consolingly, "But you are very special!"
Geraldine saw Geoffrey Rush in the crowd (the bad guy in Pirates of the Carribean). I saw a million billion people standing around, but didn't see anyone I knew, except Monica, Neil and Geraldine. We did see armed guards, and bobbies patrolling the crowds. (Found out later that there were 400,000 people in attendance.)
The finale to the show was held in the square of the Horse Guards Parade. The marionette girl said goodbye to the Elephant, got back into her spaceship (with the help of a giant crane), and - boom! - either went back to her home planet or exploded. Monica voted for "home". Afterwards, we walked back to the Green Park tube station, travelled two stops away (where Neil had wisely parked the car), and stopped at a pub for a drink and cookie before heading off to join the Ripper Walk.
The "Jack the Ripper Haunts" walk was starting from Tower Hill at 7:30 p.m., £6 to attend. I was really surprised at the number of people who showed up to take part in it. Fortunately, there were two guides, which diminished the size of the group a bit, although it was still about 70 people. Our guide was Donald Rumbelow, who is a "Blue Badge" tour guide (I presume that means "official") for London, and he's written a book on Jack the Ripper. We set out from Tower Hill, then spent the next two hours walking through the city to see various sites.
We all laughed when he told us that when Johnny Depp had been researching for the film "From Hell", he went on a Ripper walk with Donald, and that his daughter "was incandescent with rage" when she found out that he hadn't brought her along. When he asked for questions (about the Ripper), Monica wanted to ask, "Was Johnny Depp hot?" But she didn't, because - duh! - we all knew the answer to that.
It was already getting dark when we started towards the East End, and he warned us that the tour can be "interesting" in this area. Sometimes there are drunks who think he's not telling the story right, and they'll try to explain it better; once, someone re-enacted a murder from their apartment window. We did actually have a few screamers who shrieked out from their apartment windows when they saw the tour group going by. And one very puzzled man, standing in the street, asking, "Where are all you people coming from?!"
Donald was a very good speaker - he knew what to highlight. The plight of the poor people in London at that time, how they must have lived. He also pointed out the oldest buildings in the area, built in 1666 after the great fire of London.
The tour ended just past The Ten Bells, which is known as the Ripper Pub, because all the victims frequented it, and (presumably) because all the tours end near this point. We ate at the Strada next door to it (the Ten Bells was very crowded), and after that started to walk back to the car along Aldgate. Obviously, Whitechapel hasn't changed much - we saw a Working Girl standing on one of the corners. :-O
Some poor guy stopped Neil for directions - he was looking for Covent Garden, and was about 4 miles away from where he should have been. It's not easy to give directions in London - the streets are all bendy and strange (and everyone drives on the wrong side). Who knows if the poor fellow ever got there?
While we were driving back to West Hamstead, the car was pulled over for a police check. Very strange - they seemed to be stopping all the vehicles on both sides of the street. Where are you coming from? Where are you going to? What's your address? Is that your home address? Peers at all of us in the car. Okay, thank you very much. Monica and I were thinking we should have yelled, "Help us! We're kidnapped Canadians!!!" Then Neil would be arrested, and we'd get to see the Old Bailey. Next time.
Before setting out this morning, Neil gave me a plaster (read: "band-aid") as I was starting to get a blister. Too much walking!
Neil & Geraldine were driving us to see the Museum of Design and Architecture - traffic in London is c-r-a-z-y! They drive really quickly down really narrow streets, swerving at the last minute, and it seems like rush hour is every hour. However, this museum was quite far away, so driving seemed the best route. We did see some interesting sights along the way - in particular, an unfortunate man standing next to his off-kilter car, with the wheel lying in the road. Not just the tire, but the connector and a springy-thing (behold, the vast depths of my automotive knowledge), so somehow the axle must have broken. Bummer.
We were much less unfortunate than him, but our luck wasn't so hot either: some 25 minutes later, we discovered that the museum did not open until 2 p.m., which was two hours from now. N&G decided to drop us off (read: "ditch us") at the Cockfosters tube station. This is way way out of our zones (we have tickets for Zone 1-2, and this was Zone 6), so we had to buy a tube ticket; however, it was a direct route to the V&A (which we decided to return to finish our visit). Before we left, they lent us a cell phone so that we could meet up with them later in the day to do the "Ripper Walk".
Lots of people on the tube dressed in their Arsenal team wear and going to the game. Go, Arsenals! Arsenal? Whatever. I'm not fooling anyone.
So, back we are, alighting at South Kensington and heading to the V&A. This time, we do NOT check our coats. We picked up where we left off. Monica tried on a Kimono at one of the interactive exhibits, and we both designed a Coat of Arms for ourselves. So it's a fun place - just make sure you're ready to leave exactly when they tell you to.
After that, we weren't sure what we wanted to do. Monica wanted to see the street theatre that was taking place today. It was called "The Sultan's Elephant", by Royal de Luxe, and it involved a giant marionette of a girl and an elephant. Not something you see every day.
The Knightsbridge tube station was closed again. Is it ever open? Not for us, anyway. We saw the Harvey Nichols store - Monica said it was supposed to be a trendy place to shop, so we walked through. Looked like a department store to me. We walked out. Making our way towards the Hyde Park Corner station, we decided to walk through Hyde Park instead.
I heard a ringing noise, and asked Monica, "Is that your phone?" She said, "No." I thought it was. I made her take it out of her bag, just in time for her to say "Hello?" and hear a click at the other end of the line. The phone showed "5 missed calls."
She called back and left a message on N&G's machine, since we couldn't seem to catch them on their cell phone. We walk for another few minutes through the park, and again, there's ringing. "Is that your phone?" Monica: "No." Of course it was, again. Basically, instead of hearing the phone ringing, Monica just hears me asking, "Is that your phone?"
Finally managing to answer one of the calls, Monica and I headed along the edge of Hyde Park, back toward Green Park (yes, it is very green). London has very beautiful parks, and a surprising amount of green space. Green Park exits right next to Buckingham Palace. They'd closed "The Mall" to traffic for the street theatre; you could hear music playing even off in the distance, and there were many thousands of people milling about. Good luck finding anyone without the aid of cell phones.
Speaking of cell phones, ours is dying. Monica briefly talks to Geraldine, manages to ask, "Where are you?" and heard that they were at Pall Mall, not far away, and then it went dead. We did actually find Neil, or he found us - he said he saw my red hair in the crowd. Geraldine was lost somewhere else in the crowd. There were thousands and thousands of people milling around, and a helicopter whirring around overhead. We waited on the corner by St. James's Park, and eventually saw the puppet-Girl appearing in the distance. It was a huge marionette (about 30 ft high) suspended in a frame, with puppeteers perched on the sides, and it was being driven by some big truck. It took up half the street.
We were suitably impressed, but Neil said, "Wait until you see the elephant!!" The elephant was massive (maybe 50 ft high), taking up the entire street, flapping its ears, and waving its trunk, and occasionally spraying the crowds around it with water. It was a strange and amazing thing to see. I had no idea anyone built marionettes on that scale. Everyone follows the elephant and the girl down past St. James's Park and into the Horse Guards Parade.
Although there were bleachers there, when Monica went to see if we could sit in them, she was told they were only for "important people". Monica is sad but agrees, "I'm not important." The woman added consolingly, "But you are very special!"
Geraldine saw Geoffrey Rush in the crowd (the bad guy in Pirates of the Carribean). I saw a million billion people standing around, but didn't see anyone I knew, except Monica, Neil and Geraldine. We did see armed guards, and bobbies patrolling the crowds. (Found out later that there were 400,000 people in attendance.)
The finale to the show was held in the square of the Horse Guards Parade. The marionette girl said goodbye to the Elephant, got back into her spaceship (with the help of a giant crane), and - boom! - either went back to her home planet or exploded. Monica voted for "home". Afterwards, we walked back to the Green Park tube station, travelled two stops away (where Neil had wisely parked the car), and stopped at a pub for a drink and cookie before heading off to join the Ripper Walk.
The "Jack the Ripper Haunts" walk was starting from Tower Hill at 7:30 p.m., £6 to attend. I was really surprised at the number of people who showed up to take part in it. Fortunately, there were two guides, which diminished the size of the group a bit, although it was still about 70 people. Our guide was Donald Rumbelow, who is a "Blue Badge" tour guide (I presume that means "official") for London, and he's written a book on Jack the Ripper. We set out from Tower Hill, then spent the next two hours walking through the city to see various sites.
We all laughed when he told us that when Johnny Depp had been researching for the film "From Hell", he went on a Ripper walk with Donald, and that his daughter "was incandescent with rage" when she found out that he hadn't brought her along. When he asked for questions (about the Ripper), Monica wanted to ask, "Was Johnny Depp hot?" But she didn't, because - duh! - we all knew the answer to that.
It was already getting dark when we started towards the East End, and he warned us that the tour can be "interesting" in this area. Sometimes there are drunks who think he's not telling the story right, and they'll try to explain it better; once, someone re-enacted a murder from their apartment window. We did actually have a few screamers who shrieked out from their apartment windows when they saw the tour group going by. And one very puzzled man, standing in the street, asking, "Where are all you people coming from?!"
Donald was a very good speaker - he knew what to highlight. The plight of the poor people in London at that time, how they must have lived. He also pointed out the oldest buildings in the area, built in 1666 after the great fire of London.
The tour ended just past The Ten Bells, which is known as the Ripper Pub, because all the victims frequented it, and (presumably) because all the tours end near this point. We ate at the Strada next door to it (the Ten Bells was very crowded), and after that started to walk back to the car along Aldgate. Obviously, Whitechapel hasn't changed much - we saw a Working Girl standing on one of the corners. :-O
Some poor guy stopped Neil for directions - he was looking for Covent Garden, and was about 4 miles away from where he should have been. It's not easy to give directions in London - the streets are all bendy and strange (and everyone drives on the wrong side). Who knows if the poor fellow ever got there?
While we were driving back to West Hamstead, the car was pulled over for a police check. Very strange - they seemed to be stopping all the vehicles on both sides of the street. Where are you coming from? Where are you going to? What's your address? Is that your home address? Peers at all of us in the car. Okay, thank you very much. Monica and I were thinking we should have yelled, "Help us! We're kidnapped Canadians!!!" Then Neil would be arrested, and we'd get to see the Old Bailey. Next time.
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