EuroTrip98 - London, England

London, England

Coming off of 2 nights of rather little sleep, I still managed to enjoy London thoroughly. I arrived on the Eurostar train from Paris. The British must be very embarrassed about this train as it speeds along at 300 kph through France and the chunnel non-stop, and then apparently approaches a stop as it nears daylight on the British side. However, the train does not come to a complete stop but just rolls sluggishly along all the way to London. It’s amazing how slow 120 kph seems after traveling at 300 for a couple of hours. I’m sure the British will build high-speed train lines on their side shortly, just so that they are not outclassed so blatantly by the French.

I spent my final day in London traveling on the underground and walking around my favorite museum in the world, the British Museum. Deep brought Rick Steves’ Mona Winks museum guide to Europe, which I bought from him for help with the sights in Paris and London. Rick Steves has an interesting outlook and an engaging writing style that makes visiting museums using his guide quite rewarding. I have logged well over 40 hours at the British Museum and have not really seen it all, so this visit I restricted my scope to:

Egyptian Section (with Rosetta Stone)
Assyrian Section (with awesome lion hunt decoration)
Greek Section (with "acquisitions" from the Temple of Xerxes and the Parthenon in Athens)
A guided tour of the "classical world" with a British Museum volunteer - a typical older English lady with a wicked sense of humor telling us about Etruscan finds, Roman remains, and the beautiful Portland Vase.
Sutton Hoo Treasure from a Biking style ship burial laden with weapons and riches
Lewis Chessmen

Being properly awed, I joined the British Museum Donors Society for a reasonable donation, and headed out to Leicester Square to buy theater tickets. Of course, I picked the worst line that was staffed by a friendly and cute but very slow working woman. More than an hour later, with ticket securely in hand I walked to Trafalgar Square and to the National Gallery.

The National Gallery is a wonderful review of the art I had seen during my voyage. Starting with the Medieval period, through an impressive array of Italians, Dutch, Baroque, British, and through Impressionism, I found myself having a much deeper appreciation and understanding of the art than at the start of the journey. A wonderful way to round out an extended experience of the art of Europe.

As the National Gallery closed, I headed off to Piccadilly Circus for dinner and then saw "The Complete History of America - Abridged" by the Reduced Shakespeare Company. If you have never seen the RSC, I would highly recommend them. The play they are renowned for is "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - Abridged" which they rattle off in hilarious fashion in 93 minutes. This was an experiment with a different play for them, and it was pretty good. The most fun was to see the reactions of the Brits, especially during audience Q&A when one astute fellow asked, "Why do Americans re-spell all our words but can’t come up with new town names?"

After the play and wondering a bit around London I headed to Gatwick airport, lounged for a few hours, and flew to San Francisco, where I amazed myself by staying up the entire time (over 50 hours by this point, on 2 nights of little sleep before that) just to beat jet lag. Small price to pay - it worked! Alas, the vacation was at an end. Next time - India!