English Lesson #10: Nothing To See Here Folks

$8 ice cream, princeless palaces, festival shootings—by Monday there was only one last thing to do in London: we needed to recreate a photo. We checked out of the Thistle, gave our bags to the concierge, got our Starbucks, and hopped aboard the Tube. I’m sure many of you are familiar with the original photo, and what the it doesn’t show is the fact that it was taken at a busy stretch of roadway. Busy or not, standing in the middle of the street is always dangerous. Further complicating things, although we were off the beaten tourist path, we were not the only ones trying recreate this picture. What the girls didn’t understand is that life doesn’t stop just because crazy ham shanks want a photo.

I tried to explain something about English crosswalks to the girls. When there are crosswalks with flashing yellow globe lights on poles on either side of the street and pedestrians are present, motorists are obligated to yield to the pedestrians. I don’t think anyone was listening because suddenly everything got chaotic. Before I could finish my explanation, the girls had stopped some passing tourists and given them about fifty cameras to take our picture with before jetting across the street to the other side. Once on the other side, I remember a lot of clucking and a lot of confusion as we all stood at the edge of the curb. Per the vehicle code, the passing traffic stopped to let us cross. Not wanting anything else in the photo, the girls motioned for the cars to continue. Already we were gaining popularity with passing motorists because, as a motorist myself, I know how much I love stopping for no good reason. Why would these crazy motorists think we wanted to cross the street anyway?

Once the coast was clear, we began crossing. When I say it was clear, I mean there was no traffic for at least 100 feet in either direction, but there was more traffic coming. So now we’re in the middle of the street with cars approaching the crosswalk on a fairly busy street and the girls shout “STOP”.

WHAT!? You can’t stop! This is a crosswalk not a movie set!

Meanwhile, another tourist began crossing. “Nooo! You’re ruining our picture!” one of my posse shouted. I’ll admit now that she was with my party, but at the time I think I just kept walking and pretended not to know her. When we got to the other side (the chicken had it way easier) I got yelled at. Not by the motorists and not by other tourists, but by my party. When I refused to stop in the middle of the street, I broke formation and crossed the street too quickly, effectively ruining the picture. How silly of me. Variations of this went on for the next half hour. When all was said and done, one of the girls commented, “the Beatles must have had someone stop traffic for them”. I’d say that’s a definite possibility.

English Lesson #9: Pizza...the New Spice of Life

We finished up our first night in London with pizza and wine along the Thames. The next day it was off to Buckingham Palace. With all those perfect date clothes we packed we were going to do our best to meet a prince. Lucky for us August & September are the two months of the year Buckingham Palace opens up the state rooms to the public, Prince William here we come. The palace was only about a five minute walk from our hotel and we planned our arrival to coincide with the changing of the guard. Talk about pomp and circumstance, it took nearly an hour for the band to march in, the soldiers to pace back and forth, and the guard to finally change. In the meantime, there were people everywhere, the pushing and shoving type of people. By the time the guard finally did change I was ready to get the hell out of Dodge.

Like many tourist destinations these days, the tour of Buckingham Palace was self-guided using a pre-recorded audio guide. I enjoyed it, and I think the girls did too. It was pretty neat walking down the same corridors official Royal guests use. I especially enjoyed the ballroom and hearing how the crystal chandeliers are on a pulley system so they can be lowered to ground level once a year and meticulously cleaned. I’m just glad it’s not my job.

Buckingham Palace left us rather hungry—hell I was starving—and we immediately began our search for lunch. After three days in England, the girls were already showing fatigue for English food. I was also learning that, even though they didn’t always say they were hungry, it was best to keep them fed and watered at regular intervals to keep morale high. We walked back towards our hotel and, wanting to avoid a long drawn out decision making process and general crabbiness (myself included), I ducked into the first pub we came to—much like the one we ate at the day before. In fact, it was so much like the one from the day before that the menu was exactly the same. The girls made it clear they did not want the EXACT same food as yesterday. That’s almost a direct quote. We walked half a block back the way we came and settled into a nice little Italian restaurant—where the girls ordered pizza. At least it wasn’t the EXACT same food as the previous day…this time I ordered beer instead of wine.

We had tickets for the presentation of Wicked that evening at the Apollo Theatre, conveniently located across the street from our glorious hotel (as was the bus station, if I didn’t already mention that). After lunch the girls went back to the hotel to rest up and get ready for the evening out. I took the opportunity to do some unencumbered sightseeing and went to Trafalgar Square, the Portrait Museum, and Big Ben. When I got back to the hotel I had just enough time to freshen up and hit the pub for a pint before meeting the girls at the theater.

It turned out to be a lovely evening out at the theater. Wicked is the untold story of the two witches from the Wizard of Oz, Glinda and Elphaba. The story is superb and the performances that evening were spot on, even though I was a bit disappointed with the music. It didn’t have that flowing musical euphoria that has you humming the tunes the next day. There was also no euphoria—or anything else—in the $8 ice cream we bought at intermission. Just the Big Smoke whispering more sweet nothings in my ear.