Travel Report, Part one

 7 May 2011

 

It was an eight hour plane flight here to London from Calgary, lengthened by two hours by technical difficulties involving the engine driver. I've never been able to sleep on planes, so I watched a few movies along the way. The Green Arrow, the new version, Tron Legacy, Casino Royale (by far the best of the movies) and the first part of Iron Man. I stopped watching Iron Man quite early because in my sleep deprived and somewhat hungry state the bit where he gets the box implanted in his chest made me quite queasy; I had to sort of stagger toward the bathroom and half-fainted on the way. Worried the plane staff quite a bit, I think. On the ground, or less tired, I think I'd have been fine with it.

 

8 May 2011

 

We did eventually arrive in London, then had to stand in a very long customs/immigration line. I was quite tired and not particularly happy and really wanted to go lay down or something, so this was not a particularly pleasant experience. We got through eventually, made our way to our hotel through the tube system (hauling our suitcases up a couple of flights of stairs in the process. Subsequently, I pretty much crashed. I did go out for supper, had a bacon, avocado and blue cheese burger at a local pub (which was quite good, avocado seems to be yummy in most any form) but I didn't finish most of the fries and had to head back to the hotel to flop into bed. Said hotel did have a functional internet connection, albeit a someone shaky one.

The next day was quite busy. We took the tubes to Westminster and I found myself surrounded by impressive buildings, so I took out my camera and flailed it to and fro like a tourist for a while. We walked some distance to the Tate art gallery, where we spent a few hours, sufficient time to see most everything in the gallery. Much of it was quite impressive. I wasn't sure if we were supposed to take pictures, so I only took one of my favourite piece. It was called "Belief System", made from books, plaster, metal, a lightbulb and black paint on canvas. The books were attached to the canvas with plaster in a very interesting and chaotic way, then smeared with black paint. It was, I think, a very interesting take on how our worldviews are held together.

A new canon theologian was being installed in Westminster and the evensong (a service which we had intended to attend the first day, because it lets us get inside impressive cathedrals for free as worshipers, but were thwarted by the aforementioned plane delays) would be a special and more lengthy service. We decided to walk a very significant distance to St. Paul's to catch the service there instead. We spit up into two groups; my group went to look at some extremely old churches and see if we'd be allowed inside, which we were not. I took some more pictures. Then my group went to the Cheshire Cheese Shop, which is a pub known for being the haunt of a number of significant literary figures, though it is highly unlikely cheese was ever actually sold on the premises. There was a statue of Dr. Johnson's cat.

We rejoined our groups to attend the service. The cathedral was absolutely staggering, especially when you consider that we also saw three other such churches, two much smaller but one even larger, within easy walking distance. The service was sung by a choir with very impressive organ accompaniment; the choir sang in plain english but the acoustics and their manner of delivery made the words quite indecipherable, unless you were following in the little handout they gave us and were paying quite careful attention.

We then walked across the Thames and via the millennium bridge and to a historic pub called the Anchor. Unfortunately I was very tired and had the beginnings of a stomach-ache, so I didn't manage to actually eat any of the fish and chips. At this point I was completely exhausted and just wanted to get back to the hotel and flop into bed. We planed to catch a tube at a station closer than Westminster, but the first two we went to were closed so we ended up walking most of the way anyway. It was nearly 9 o'clock when we got home, so I flopped into bed pretty much immediately. My stomach-ache sort of improved throughout the night. Eventually I got to sleep, though.

Woke up about an hour and a half before we had to go the next morning (today) and got ready really slowly and sleepily; took me pretty much the whole time. Then we loaded into the bus, heading to a place which is apparently to the place I thought I was going. Maybe Salisbury. We just stopped at a motorway because apparently there's no bathrooms where we're going. And that just about brings it up to the present.