The Tower of London

You may disagree (but you’d be wrong, wrong, WRONG, I tell you, wrong!), but I think the Tower of London is the most fantastic thing to tour when visiting, living or slumming-it in London.

I mean, honestly, peeps, it’s got EVERYTHING!  Castle, river entrance, moat, portcullises, massive gates, executions, murder, ravens, intrigue, royal jewels, terrific tours and a gift shop.

That being said, it sucks for children.  Absolutely sucks.  Like an electolux, I’m saying.  It’s because they’re a prisoner of their own success.

The Yeoman Warders who give the tours (Beefeaters to us yanks) are typically terrifically entertaining storytellers.  So their tours are packed.  My poor kids get squished, smooshed and man-handled unless they’re jammed right up in front.  Their views are of the general lumbar area of the person in front of them.  I tried to listen to the guide at two stops, but I just couldn’t put my kids through it.  His stories were probably only vaguely interesting to them and I didn’t want them covered with bruises by the end of the one-hour tour.

So we toured on our own.

Now I’m not a moron about this place.  I know it’s going to be terrifically busy, but we are here in mid-May and I did go on a Thursday.  Short of arriving at 4 P.M., I don’t know what I could have done to tour it when the crowds would be the smallest.

Still, the wait to see the Crown Jewels was 25 minutes.  That’s a sort of no-Moms-land amount of time with kids.  If I’d remembered to bring my stupid IPod, I could have plugged the kids into a podcast story or some Zumba music that they love.  But I didn’t.  So we listened to a street performer and then toured the armoury museum (sort of a snore, but I wanted them to see something in the chance we skipped the Crown Jewels entirely).

When we got out of the museum, the line for the Crown Jewels was, seemingly, tiny.  So we hopped in it.  BIG mistake.  The normal queue-loving English have really dropped the ball here.  After waiting nicely in line outside, once you get inside, everyone is jammed into bedroom-sized and larger rooms that have no discernible queue system.  So you walk in the door and, depending on your home country, either search for a line or push around the sides of the suckers to shove your kids forward to the front of the line.

Talk about a recipe for cranky tourists (myself included).

After four rooms of this, during which I debated leaving the exhibit for more than half the time, we get to see the Crown Jewels.  A moving platform keeps gawpers and gapers from gawping and gaping too long.  But then, fizz, it’s over. 

Still, I suppose it’s something the kids will remember.  Those crowns are quite nice.

Moms Do This Superhero Stuff All the Time

I’m sitting on my hotel bed when I hear Olivia in the bathroom, say, “Uh-oh."

Great.

Bracing myself, I walk in to see that she’s taken the cap off her toothpaste and dropped it squarely (or roundly as the case may be) into the drain.  She’s taken the sink-closer-upper-thingamabob out, so the top of the cap is a good half inch below the bottom of the sink.

I figure I pay for these stupid, tacky acrylic nails for occasions just such as this.  But no, there’s not enough clearance to wedge them in.  I try using a comb to lever it out, also with no luck.  I sit down on the bed, fuming, and try to figure out what to do.  Then it hits me.

Chewing gum!

Fourteen seconds later the sink’s good as new.  But now I need to brush my teeth again.

Great.

T.M.I. U.K. Style

I’m American.  We talk. 

We talk too much.  In that respect, I’m particularly American.

No, no, don’t deny it (not that anyone is), I know this about myself.  I’m a “sharer.”  An introverted one, which makes me a puzzle to so many, but that’s just how the factory installed my programming.

Anne 2.1

So I find some aspects of British culture surprising, given their reputation for being reserved and private.  Case in point, when someone offs themselves on public transport.

The train from York to Edinburgh was running about an hour late.  Within a minute of the doors closing after each stop, an announcement would be made, apologizing for the lateness of the service.  “This train was delayed, due to a person being hit south of Basingstoke.”

(For sake of thoroughness and truth, it wasn’t Basingstoke, but I can’t remember the town now, sorry.)

Since our part of the journey was 3 hours and 45 minutes, we heard this announcement over and over.  It became jarring and then I just stopped visualizing the incident, numbed to the accident.

I understand the need to apologize.  I get that people want a reason.  But WOW, that’s a lot of information to share.  Just three days ago I saw a telly advert for a show about train accidents.  The teaser trailer shows infrared-camera footage of a guy stumbling in front of a train, just barely missing getting smeared by it.  It felt like watching some action movie deleted scenes reel.  The one where the stunt guy screws up, falls over and JUST misses losing a foot.  Or a spinal column.  But knowing it was real made it hard to watch.

Just yesterday in London, “a passenger went under the train” on the Bakerloo line.  They even named the station—though I forget which one it was.  Yes, I’ll admit to being curious.  Was it intentional or an accident?  Was it a man or woman?  Gulp.  Was it a child?  Double gulp.  I can’t think about that one.

Since I don’t take trains much in the states, I don’t know what information is and isn’t given about delays.  But somehow, I don’t think it would be this detailed.  Could it be that even we tactless Americans would show some restraint in a situation like this?  I sorta hope so.

My guess is that the explanation is given because it is required by the passengers.  People use public transportation so much here that delays can affect a huge amount of people.  Customers have come to expect, and receive, consistently on time, courteous service.  I’ve always felt that British trains are the best I’ve been on (though I haven’t been to Japan and I suspect they’re amazing).  So when they are late, for whatever reason, the railroads feel obliged to apologize and explain.

I’ll never forget being delayed at Newcastle about 20 years ago.  It was a lovely, sunny day.  The train arrived in the station, passengers disembarked, new passengers shuffled on… and the doors did not close.  After a few minutes, people started grumbling and talking amongst themselves.  After two more minutes (we were sitting in the station for no more than seven minutes at this point), a British Rail employee made an announcement that our arrival in London was to be delayed four minutes.

From the sighs and groans, you’d have thought he said four hours!  It was pretty funny to me.  But, if you’re used to perfection, you expect it all the time.

Good thing I’m not perfekt.

Well, That Was Pretty Crumby

This is why our clothes look so threadbare and awful--because they are threadbare and awful.  Two months of eating on granite benches, rubbing up against rough Metro seats, jostling about in crowded public places and general kid-destruction has taken its toll on our togs!

I think we'll slowly throw away everything on the cruise ship home and arrive wearing some of the new stuff we bought.  Otherwise, we'll hop off the ship looking like a bunch of hayseeds.

Fun Times at the Natural History Museum

Of all my nerdy obsessions, natural history museums rank at the top.  I love 'em.  If I had to pick one building to live in for the rest of my life, it'd be Chicago's Field Museum.  But the British Museum of Natural History didn't disappoint, either.

The girls just talked me into a "light up the dinosaur for charity" thing.  The computer screen behind them is thanking them by name for donating to Dippy the Diplocodus.

Here's Olivia being a vicious T. rex.

Watching this video, it just clicked that the Lorax is a play on Hyrax.  Interesting.

I'm a total sucker for these types of exhibits.  These antlers are a full yearly set from the same animal.  Fascinating stuff for the kids--we'd just seen a bunch of antler artifacts at the Viking museums in York, so they were particularly jazzed to see this.

Tube Life

To compare our Paris and London experiences, one big difference is the trash-in-the-streets factor.  Paris has a city-wide program of trash cans called Paris Ville Propre.  It's logo is "never more than 100 meters between a trash bin."  Trash cans are everywhere.  It's terrific.  As a result, the only junk you see in the streets is dog poo.  And even that's being picked up more and more by Bobos (bourgeois bohemians--the new yuppies who inhabit the city).

London has always remembered the 80's and 90's IRA and 7/7 bombings by avoiding placement of public trash cans.  There are many "keep the tube clean, bring your rubbish home" signs around.  As a result the morning and evening (evening?  So interesting...) tabloids are read and abandoned on the tube a lot.  My girls get a kick out of picking up the papers.

This photo just cracks me up.  Olivia looks like so many travellers we see.  Helena, two seconds before, was similarly flipping through pages of a paper.

Knock-Offs R Us

Imagine the day this guy gets "cease and desist" letters from both Colonel Sanders AND Foghorn Leghorn.

I can't even imagine how the lawyers would draft them.