BenCrowder.net

Saturday, 2.21.09

When I woke up at 7:30, the two beds in the outer room had splayed bodies on them. Luckily the bodies were still alive, and my heart was set at ease. Even so, however, it was unnerving to see these two sleeping guys and not know anything about them, not have a human connection to them.

But my unnerves were washed away by the shower, which met all three of the basic requests I ask of a shower: hot water, privacy, and a towel hook far enough away that I don’t have to take extra care to keep my towel from getting soaked. (Most showers do in fact meet these demands, but you never know. :)) (I figured that if I prepared for the worst case — having to shower on the sidewalk in cold water — I’d be pleasantly surprised no matter what, and I was right. :P)

One of the reasons I chose the Indian hostel was the complimentary breakfast/dinner combo, which my travel guide said would be Indian food. Mmm. When I showed up at the café, however, breakfast was toast and a very small bowl of cereal. I don’t know, maybe some Indians eat that for breakfast, but that wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for. Being American and therefore disposed towards eating more rather than less, I returned to Coffee Republic for second breakfast. (And yes, I felt remarkably like a hobbit — except for the hairy feet thing.) I should also mention that I had considered going to the next-door Pret a Manger instead, but it had no wifi, so Coffee Republic won out.

After that I walked down Tottenham Court Road, just enjoying the freedom of having zero time constraints and being able to wander anywhere I wanted. The concrete sidewalks were often wet (whether from rain or from people dumping soapy buckets of water from above, I don’t know) and smelled a lot like Bangkok sidewalks. And it was sunny! And warm! Having come from winter in Utah, I thought this was a nice change. (Most of my trip it was fairly decent weather, with only two rather cold days that I can remember.)

Now, for someone who’s from a place like Utah where you can always get your bearings by where the mountains are, it’s awfully hard sometimes to figure out which way you’re going. And at this point I wasn’t used to looking for street signs on the buildings themselves (instead of on the corners; pretty much all the street signs are plaques affixed to the walls of corner buildings), so I got lost and ended up strolling towards Oxford Circus when I thought I was going toward Leicester Square. Fixing that, I went to the TKTs booth, hoping to get cheap tickets to see Hairspray and Oliver. But sadly they had neither, so on the spur of the moment I bought tickets to see Blood Brothers (the posters were touting it as the best musical in London) and Sunset Boulevard (which I knew was an Andrew Lloyd Webber show and figured I’d probably like it). The whole time I was in line, this delicious breeze was sailing through the square and I honestly could have stayed there the rest of the day.

On my way back to the hostel, the Tube was insanely packed, so I waited for the next train (they come every 1-2 minutes) and ended up being the only person in my car. Oh, you may have heard the expression “mind the gap” — I’d heard it but had no idea what it referred to. Well, with the Tube (and trains in general), they paint these white and yellow lines on the walkway so you don’t get too close to the trains, because it would really be a damper on your day to accidentally slip off onto the tracks (particularly if a train is coming).

I went ahead and paid an extra hundred bucks to get a private room. The receptionist (whose thick and nigh undecipherable accent made me forget that I was in England, home of English) said I wouldn’t be able to check in till the next day, however. That was fine — one more night in the dorms wouldn’t kill me. (If this were fiction, I’d add, “Or so I thought.” But alas, my assumption carried through and the night was uneventful. And I’m still very much alive.)

Next: the British Library! My first impression was that it was icky modern and not really that appealing, with a boring sort of orangey/reddish brick. My second impression was that, even so, it was huge. I wandered in, found a map, and then went to the treasures room, since that seemed to be most promising. It’s a dark room (to preserve the manuscripts), lined with glass-encased documents of all sorts. I saw the original Beowulf manuscript, Gower’s Confessio Amantis, Milton’s common place book, Jane Austen’s Persuasion manuscript (on top of her writing desk), the Jane Eyre manuscript, Lewis Carroll’s diary, Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbevilles manuscript, Captain Cook’s journal, a draft of Handel’s Messiah, Mozart’s marriage contract, Beethoven’s tuning fork, a draft of Ravel’s Bolero, Mendelssohn’s Wedding March, the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Codex Sinaiticus, the Magna Carta (completely unreadable, by the way — I could barely see the writing), and some pages from Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks. So yeah, there’s lots of cool stuff. :)

That said, however, I have serious ADD when it comes to museums. If it’s stuck behind glass, then I can only maintain my interest for fifteen to thirty seconds and have to move on. Venerating historical objects isn’t something I’m good at; what I want is to flip through the pages and actually read the manuscript, seeing it in its entirety instead of whatever page the curator chose to immortalize. But of course there’s no way they’re going to let me take Jane Eyre out from the glass and curl up in a corner with it. Oh well. :) It’s nice to be able to say I’ve seen the originals of all these, but in all honesty having a $5 paperback of Jane Eyre is far more satisfying to me. (In other words, if you like spending lots of times in museums, you probably don’t want me around because I’ll be done in twenty minutes and chomping at the bit to get out of there. :))

After about thirty minutes in the treasures room, I got bored (see? :)) and left the library. Out in the courtyard area, however, I sat down for a short break. I’d gotten a map from the info desk and browsed through it. “Free wireless,” it said. Oh. My interest perked back up and I returned to the library so I could get the wifi and upload more pictures to Twitter. (Free wifi meant not having to worry about running over my 20-meg data roaming package plan and incurring extra charges.)

I decided to check out the King’s Library in the glass case in the center area — very cool and impressive — and then headed out back to the Centre for Conservation, which was small and the tourist area wasn’t particularly impressive.

At this point I was all touristed out and needed to just stop and read, so I returned to the main library area and parked for an hour and read (using Stanza on my iPhone — I read far more on my phone this trip than I did from paper books, actually).

Leaving the library for good this time, I finally went to the legendary Pret a Manger (a chain of sandwich shops which several people had told me about) and got some lunch. Good sandwiches and mostly filling (and relatively cheap, which was very nice :)).

Then it was off to the British Museum. I knew I didn’t have a whole lot of time — the matinee of Blood Brothers would be coming up soon — and so I mainly just poked my head in to get a sense for the place. It’s huge as well. The architecture is beautifully classical, too, and I much preferred the Museum to the Library as far as the buildings go. At the info desk I bought a map and got my first three quid in change — they’re deliciously thick and heavy. I like English coins.

On the map I quickly located the Rosetta Stone, which happens to be just off the main gallery. Hordes of people surrounded it, though, with a chorus of camera flashes blinking every second or two, and I wasn’t able to get close to it. But I did get some pictures from a few steps back.

After the Rosetta, I buzzed around the Egyptian exhibit — and this was in fact very cool, even though I didn’t really stop to soak any of it in — and then left. And you know, I think I enjoyed it more because I went so fast.

Then it was off to the Phoenix Theatre (on Tottenham Court Road) to see Blood Brothers. There were binoculars to rent for 50 pence on the seat back in front of me. I’d never actually seen a theater with those in real life before. In this case, though, I wasn’t far back enough that it would have made a difference. As for Blood Brothers, there were some cool parts and the music wasn’t terrible, but I was far from impressed. (It was also a bit earthy for my tastes.)

As soon as the matinee got out, I headed straight over to Comedy Theatre (just off Leicester Square) to see Sunset Boulevard. This time one of the theatre attendants searched my backpack in the lobby. He made me open and close the backpack, which was a first. (Usually it’s been the person doing the searching. I guess this guy was paranoid that the zipper was attached to a bomb or something.)

I liked Sunset Boulevard a little more than Blood Brothers, but it was a little creepy and I didn’t really care for the music either. Quite a disappointment.

Leicester Square was chock full of people after the show, crazy busy. I figured the Tube would be insane as well, so I just walked home (about a twenty-minute walk), stopping by Sainsbury’s to grab some food for both dinner and for Sunday (since I don’t like buying anything on the Sabbath if I can at all help it). All this walking made me pretty tired, and that was really useful since my bed in the hostel was kind of hard and not really all that conducive to sleep.

To be continued (again)…