at this moment, i am sitting in my room at nemacolin woodlands in pennsylvania, which is so big that i have to work to see the tv. i could have a party in my bathroom. in fact, i could have a party in my bath tub, which requires a step stool to get in. but seeing as how these offsite work events are just that--work, only i can appreciate my new home away from home--at least for the next few days.
my alarm, phone, and blackberry all started buzzing around 4:15am this morning. most of you know that my alarm clock does not usually recognize numbers that involve anything remotely close to 4am. given that i am a night owl, and fell asleep at my normal time of 1am, you can imagine how difficult it was to get out of bed, and why three different alarms were necessary.
after finishing my unpacking, then repacking, i was off to meet and prepare the bus, where i would spend the next four hours. so needless to say, it has already been a long day.
i say all that to say, bear with me as i attempt to reconstruct my recent london adventures.
it began on wednesday night. deb was on a 9pm flight out of ny and i a 10pm flight out of dulles. anne was gracious enough to take me to the airport, and though i had allotted a ridiculous amount of extra time due to the fact that it was the day before thanksgiving, i found that it was completely unnecessary. in fact, it was the quietest i have seen dulles in years.
due to the flight time and time change, deb was scheduled to arrive in london on thursday at about 9am, and i at 10am or so. in unplanned perfection, deb’s flight was late and mine early, so she only waited a few minutes before we met up at my baggage claim. while my arrival scene did not remotely resemble that of the opening sequence in one of my favorite movies, ‘love actually’, i was still thrilled to be there.
in doing some research beforehand, i had learned that a cab into the city from heathrow was approximately $100 and would take an hour or so. call me cheap, but it seemed neither cost effective or time efficient to go this route, so we opted to catch the 15 minute 15 pound heathrow express, which took us as far as paddington station. at that point we made the only real ‘first-timers’ mistake we made throughout the trip, and decided to take the tube to the hotel. little did we know that while the london underground is insanely easy and user friendly, it is still difficult to cart luggage up and down god’s concrete earth.
i am a notoriously bad packer, but i had been careful this time. yet, despite my attempts at ‘packing light’, after the first staircase, my hand was killing me, and i was out of breath. but there was no choice other than to proceed.
we made our way to the hotel, which was conveniently located around the corner from the marble arch tube stop, and when we entered the lobby, we had to pause to take it all in. attempting to be ultra-modern and ultra-trendy, resulting in simply being passé, the lobby was tiled completely in white, with strange sculptures of men doing who knows what. there were neon lights, egg shaped couches... we couldn’t help but laugh.
when we checked in and opened the door to our room, it was immediately evident that the fun was not over. it is impossible for me to capture in words the strangeness of our accommodations. red neon lights surrounding the full length mirror, a backlight acrylic headboard, backlit acrylic artwork, off-center plasma, no drawers whatsoever, and two double beds pushed up together, with separate linens, but otherwise looking like one giant bed.
the bowl sink thingy and the shower knobs went firmly in the ‘huh?’ category, but despite the oddity of the room, we would come to love the beds and bedding, as well as the hair dryer and towel warmer.
we attempted to clean ourselves up and refresh. we played with adapters and converters, trying to find the right combination, and unfortunately, my hair fell victim to a supercharged flat iron before we succeeded. fortunately, it was one small strand on the back of my head--completely unnoticeable, except to the touch.
it was finally time to get on our way and make use of the rest of the day. the weather was sunny and beautiful, and i realized that i had failed to pack my sunglasses given the forecast of rain, wind, and more rain. but that was something that would be remedied later on in the trip.
due to the timing and the limited hours, the first stop on the agenda was temple church. not extremely well known, it houses the tombs of some knights templar. it has been made more popular lately as a result of the 'davinci code' (which, ironically, i just watched again today as it was the movie chosen by the execs on the bus ride), but that was not the impetus for my interest.
on the way, we stumbled across the royal courts of justice. deb’s one request/hope for the trip was the opportunity to sit in on some sort of law something or other, so she asked me if i minded if we just popped our heads in. i, of course, didn’t, so we did. while waiting in the queue to go through security, it became clear that we had popped in when the courts were coming back from lunch recess. we watched as one man tried to break in the line and the following dialogue (more or less) ensued:
man 1: excuse me, but the line ends back there
man 2: i’m sorry, i’m due in court in five minutes.
man 1: so am i, what do you think we’re all here for??
deb and i shrank a little in our skin, feeling all of the sudden, very touristy. but the line moved quickly and our guilt passed equally so.
we wandered the incredible building, oohing and aahing over the gothic domed doorways, and monastery-like doors. we snuck a peek into one of the courtrooms, and deb was highly amused by the judges and attorneys in their white wigs and black robes.
we continued to wander, looking in as we passed by several courtrooms. we came across one where we noticed that three judges were just taking their seats at the bench. intrigued, deb moved into the foyer, where we could observe unobtrusively. the courtroom was beautiful...draped in red velvet and innumerable books, we were drawn in further when we realized that the chief judge, who as it turned out was the chief justice of england and wales (anyone know what that really means?) was ripping the defense attorney a new one. it was simply entertaining. that debacle concluded and the next trial began. it was only a few minutes before we realized we were watching a murder trial.
the royal courts of justice usually hold only civil cases, but i don’t know enough to know why this was an exception. we decided to take a seat in the gallery and watch for awhile. we were not the only spectators, but little did we know that the others would be almost as fascinating as the trial itself. we had been watching the action for about ten minutes when a couple in the gallery asked the lady next to them if she could let them pass.
she mumbled something about waiting, and would not let them by. they continued to very politely try to plead their case (no pun intended), but she refused. ultimately, at the fourth or fifth request, she slapped the requester. we were all shocked..deb, myself, the couple. she had just committed assault in a courtroom. and yet the trial proceeded without interruption.
after recovering from the shock, the man composed himself and climbed around on the chairs behind the crazy woman.
we stayed for a few more minutes, then decided to head on to temple church. after eventually locating it, we were disappointed to find it closed--or i was anyway. so the only thing left to do was to head towards the next stop--the tower of london.
given that 80% of my reading material consists of historical fiction centering around british and roman history, the tower of london was high on my list of ‘must sees.’ we arrived at about 3:00pm. which left us an hour and a half to explore. neither deb nor i had ever done an audio tour, but we felt that in this case, a little background info might be worthwhile.
i don’t know how worthwhile it really ended up being, as we continually found ourselves at different places in the audio and trying to walk in opposite directions. it was our very own ‘who’s on first.’ but when we were on the same page, what we saw was extremely interesting. particularly impressive were the carvings in the wall of the tower room. for me, realizing that elizabeth, and dudley, and raleigh were imprisoned in this very room, was surreal to say the least. probably enhanced tenfold by the fact that i recently finished watching the ‘elizabeth’ mini-series.
we moved on to wander through the armory and to check out the crown jewels. a conveyor belt moved us past the jewels with efficiency, and though there were no crowds on that particular day, i can see how effective it would be in giving everyone equal time to gawk.
we closed out the tower and headed to oxford circus for dinner. we ate at a combination bar/restaurant, at which the food was poor, but the eye candy was rich.
after ‘dinner’--if you can call it that, we wandered quite a bit more and landed in a quaint meze for dessert and tea.
that was when we hit our wall. so we headed back to our crazy hotel and called it a night.
my alarm, phone, and blackberry all started buzzing around 4:15am this morning. most of you know that my alarm clock does not usually recognize numbers that involve anything remotely close to 4am. given that i am a night owl, and fell asleep at my normal time of 1am, you can imagine how difficult it was to get out of bed, and why three different alarms were necessary.
after finishing my unpacking, then repacking, i was off to meet and prepare the bus, where i would spend the next four hours. so needless to say, it has already been a long day.
i say all that to say, bear with me as i attempt to reconstruct my recent london adventures.
it began on wednesday night. deb was on a 9pm flight out of ny and i a 10pm flight out of dulles. anne was gracious enough to take me to the airport, and though i had allotted a ridiculous amount of extra time due to the fact that it was the day before thanksgiving, i found that it was completely unnecessary. in fact, it was the quietest i have seen dulles in years.
due to the flight time and time change, deb was scheduled to arrive in london on thursday at about 9am, and i at 10am or so. in unplanned perfection, deb’s flight was late and mine early, so she only waited a few minutes before we met up at my baggage claim. while my arrival scene did not remotely resemble that of the opening sequence in one of my favorite movies, ‘love actually’, i was still thrilled to be there.
in doing some research beforehand, i had learned that a cab into the city from heathrow was approximately $100 and would take an hour or so. call me cheap, but it seemed neither cost effective or time efficient to go this route, so we opted to catch the 15 minute 15 pound heathrow express, which took us as far as paddington station. at that point we made the only real ‘first-timers’ mistake we made throughout the trip, and decided to take the tube to the hotel. little did we know that while the london underground is insanely easy and user friendly, it is still difficult to cart luggage up and down god’s concrete earth.
i am a notoriously bad packer, but i had been careful this time. yet, despite my attempts at ‘packing light’, after the first staircase, my hand was killing me, and i was out of breath. but there was no choice other than to proceed.
we made our way to the hotel, which was conveniently located around the corner from the marble arch tube stop, and when we entered the lobby, we had to pause to take it all in. attempting to be ultra-modern and ultra-trendy, resulting in simply being passé, the lobby was tiled completely in white, with strange sculptures of men doing who knows what. there were neon lights, egg shaped couches... we couldn’t help but laugh.when we checked in and opened the door to our room, it was immediately evident that the fun was not over. it is impossible for me to capture in words the strangeness of our accommodations. red neon lights surrounding the full length mirror, a backlight acrylic headboard, backlit acrylic artwork, off-center plasma, no drawers whatsoever, and two double beds pushed up together, with separate linens, but otherwise looking like one giant bed.
the bowl sink thingy and the shower knobs went firmly in the ‘huh?’ category, but despite the oddity of the room, we would come to love the beds and bedding, as well as the hair dryer and towel warmer.
we attempted to clean ourselves up and refresh. we played with adapters and converters, trying to find the right combination, and unfortunately, my hair fell victim to a supercharged flat iron before we succeeded. fortunately, it was one small strand on the back of my head--completely unnoticeable, except to the touch.
it was finally time to get on our way and make use of the rest of the day. the weather was sunny and beautiful, and i realized that i had failed to pack my sunglasses given the forecast of rain, wind, and more rain. but that was something that would be remedied later on in the trip.
due to the timing and the limited hours, the first stop on the agenda was temple church. not extremely well known, it houses the tombs of some knights templar. it has been made more popular lately as a result of the 'davinci code' (which, ironically, i just watched again today as it was the movie chosen by the execs on the bus ride), but that was not the impetus for my interest.on the way, we stumbled across the royal courts of justice. deb’s one request/hope for the trip was the opportunity to sit in on some sort of law something or other, so she asked me if i minded if we just popped our heads in. i, of course, didn’t, so we did. while waiting in the queue to go through security, it became clear that we had popped in when the courts were coming back from lunch recess. we watched as one man tried to break in the line and the following dialogue (more or less) ensued:
man 1: excuse me, but the line ends back there
man 2: i’m sorry, i’m due in court in five minutes.
man 1: so am i, what do you think we’re all here for??
deb and i shrank a little in our skin, feeling all of the sudden, very touristy. but the line moved quickly and our guilt passed equally so.
we wandered the incredible building, oohing and aahing over the gothic domed doorways, and monastery-like doors. we snuck a peek into one of the courtrooms, and deb was highly amused by the judges and attorneys in their white wigs and black robes.we continued to wander, looking in as we passed by several courtrooms. we came across one where we noticed that three judges were just taking their seats at the bench. intrigued, deb moved into the foyer, where we could observe unobtrusively. the courtroom was beautiful...draped in red velvet and innumerable books, we were drawn in further when we realized that the chief judge, who as it turned out was the chief justice of england and wales (anyone know what that really means?) was ripping the defense attorney a new one. it was simply entertaining. that debacle concluded and the next trial began. it was only a few minutes before we realized we were watching a murder trial.
the royal courts of justice usually hold only civil cases, but i don’t know enough to know why this was an exception. we decided to take a seat in the gallery and watch for awhile. we were not the only spectators, but little did we know that the others would be almost as fascinating as the trial itself. we had been watching the action for about ten minutes when a couple in the gallery asked the lady next to them if she could let them pass.
she mumbled something about waiting, and would not let them by. they continued to very politely try to plead their case (no pun intended), but she refused. ultimately, at the fourth or fifth request, she slapped the requester. we were all shocked..deb, myself, the couple. she had just committed assault in a courtroom. and yet the trial proceeded without interruption.
after recovering from the shock, the man composed himself and climbed around on the chairs behind the crazy woman.
we stayed for a few more minutes, then decided to head on to temple church. after eventually locating it, we were disappointed to find it closed--or i was anyway. so the only thing left to do was to head towards the next stop--the tower of london.
given that 80% of my reading material consists of historical fiction centering around british and roman history, the tower of london was high on my list of ‘must sees.’ we arrived at about 3:00pm. which left us an hour and a half to explore. neither deb nor i had ever done an audio tour, but we felt that in this case, a little background info might be worthwhile.
i don’t know how worthwhile it really ended up being, as we continually found ourselves at different places in the audio and trying to walk in opposite directions. it was our very own ‘who’s on first.’ but when we were on the same page, what we saw was extremely interesting. particularly impressive were the carvings in the wall of the tower room. for me, realizing that elizabeth, and dudley, and raleigh were imprisoned in this very room, was surreal to say the least. probably enhanced tenfold by the fact that i recently finished watching the ‘elizabeth’ mini-series.we moved on to wander through the armory and to check out the crown jewels. a conveyor belt moved us past the jewels with efficiency, and though there were no crowds on that particular day, i can see how effective it would be in giving everyone equal time to gawk.
we closed out the tower and headed to oxford circus for dinner. we ate at a combination bar/restaurant, at which the food was poor, but the eye candy was rich.
after ‘dinner’--if you can call it that, we wandered quite a bit more and landed in a quaint meze for dessert and tea.
that was when we hit our wall. so we headed back to our crazy hotel and called it a night.
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