By Michael Downing
The Red-Eye to Heathrow
We took the red eye out of Newark and landed at Heathrow at 7 am, disoriented and quite a bit depersonalized. A friendly woman on the people-mover noticed our Hokas and modeled hers.
“Those are cool,” Jackie said.
Hers are purple; Jackie’s are pink; mine are black.
“I like yours, too,” she said.
And there it was: We made our first friend in London as a result of a footwear connection.
Speaking of friends, my dear old college friend Mark Britton (aka “Falstaff” because he fits the mold) once told me to pay it forward when traveling so before we left the States I bought ten $5 Starbucks cards to give to flight attendants, servers, cabbies, and others who helped us along the way.
Back up in the air at 35,000 feet: I was in the aisle seat so it was my job to hand out the gift cards to our flight attendants. The first two women lit up: “Thank you so much!” Big smiles. A simple and beautiful transaction to lift the spirits of someone trying to do the difficult work of shoving a drink cart down a too-narrow aisle, asking people to “Please mind your arms…cart coming through” and asking for various drink preferences. The Falstaff magic was working.
Then this exchange occurred between me and a flight attendant, a 30-something-young-man, clean cut, nattily dressed, in his blue uniform:
“What would you like, sir?” he asked.
“Is there whiskey?”
“Charge for whiskey. Beer and wine are complimentary.”
“Ok, I’ll have a Stella.”
“Good choice, sir.”
“Thank you,” I said. “By the way, this is for you” [hands card to attendant]. “Thanks for all you do.”
He lit up: “Thank you so much!“
Then he went into a self-initiated routine, nodding his head in appreciation, working the drink cart for us, all the while saying something about how “some people were raised right.” Then he handed me a Stella, along with two little bottles of Buffalo Trace bourbon!
“Thank you so much,” I said. Goodness.
I now had three drinks on a small tray in front of me. I finished the beer in short order and started in on the whisky. I was completely unaware of the time of day. I think it was 4 am London time. Just let me say that a little gratitude goes a long way. Steal this trick from me and my friend, Mark Britton.
A smooth landing at Heathrow and the airport security guard directed us to the train with a distinctly British accent: “Straight ahead, then. Take a left and then a right and you’ll see signs to the train.”
“Thank you.”
He was super kind. We had to listen carefully because his accent was movie-quality. We were delighted.
We found the train, jumped on, and rattled into the city during morning rush. It was Tuesday (I only name the day because I’m pretty sure it was the day after Monday, but travel across five time zones makes it hard to tell). We sat on the padded flat bench, arm-in-arm, holding one another close as we watched local commuters board the train. Meanwhile, outside, little Harry Potter chimneys poked into the sky as far as the eye could see.
We were in London.
A young couple sat next to us, speaking perfect American, which clued us in. Something about “going to a Browns game” in the fall. Countrymen!
“Where you from?” I asked.
“Cleveland.”
“We’re Pittsburgh people. Steeler fans.”
“No way! Go Browns!” they said.
We all laughed.
“Enjoy your time in London.”
“You too.”
Clickety-clack down the track.
Heathrow lies slightly southwest of the city, mostly west. It took about 80 minutes to get to our stop at Picadilly, clattering along in our metal boxcar, with the little English voice coming over the speaker telling us about the next stop as I followed along on the map.
Piccadilly Circus
We popped up at Piccadilly Circus, and it kind of blew our minds. It is definitely the Times Square of London, but the buildings are older. You see it in the movies all the time.
We were exhausted after the travel and I didn’t even mention how–at least twice in the subway tunnels–we had to hoist our suitcases up flights of stairs, with backpacks on. My woman Jackie gets the job done. She summons the power, hoists the bag, and up the stairs we go. I love her Sagittarian exuberance.
We emerged at Piccadilly Circus at 9 in the morning tired, rattled, hungry and still a little bit buzzed from the complementary booze encounter on the spacecraft. We had to orient quickly and not stand there gawping.
My instincts go immediately to safety. Hot tip for travelers: It is never a good idea to pop out of a subway in any city and just stand there, particularly in super-busy places like Piccadilly. Goons lurk, looking for opportunities–targeting tourists with mouths hanging open. I tend to steer us quickly to storefronts where we can blend in with the human traffic and enter the stores (or pubs) if need be.
Pubs in England, by the way, are considered, more or less, safe spaces. Most pubs will let you use the bathroom and are typically child-friendly. Be ready for certain restrictions if you are traveling with children, but we most definitely saw lots of kids with their parents in British pubs, especially when food is involved.
After moving into a storefront and gaining our bearings, we visited the famous Piccadilly fountain, Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, to be precise, with the statue of Anteros at the top. People from all over the world were smiling and posing and just taking it all in. We were just going with the flow now, despite being tired, trying to capture the experience so it could be recollected in tranquility at some point in the future.
Okay, that was fun but we were absolutely starving so after looking around a bit we went to Bill’s Soho. I had the Traditional English Breakfast. Jackie got Eggs Benedict. We both had English tea. Delicious. Pictures in the slide show below.
We scored groceries at Whole Foods and dragged all of it over to our London rental flat, a nice little place on Broadwick adjacent to Carnaby Street. Tons of little shops in Soho. We were above an Italian chocolate shop called Italian Bear Chocolate. Heaven for chocolate lovers: Chocolate cake, chocolate expresso, boxed chocolate for later. Anything you like. We got some white and dark chocolate and took it upstairs.
Back to Piccadilly
After we dropped our bags in the flat, we headed back to Piccadilly, about six blocks. While we meandered, we saw people from all over the world walking down the narrow streets of Soho. We were in the thick of London’s West End! We browsed, took pictures, bought postcards and went in and out of souvenir shops which were all over the place. A lifetime achievement for a shopworker’s son from Erie’s Lower East Side.
We wandered over to the Sculpture Trail in Leicester Square to see the bronze Mary Poppins sculpture and ended up seeing numerous sculptures depicting popular Western cultural icons: Harry Potter, Mr. Bean, Bugs Bunny, Paddington Bear, Clifford the Dog, Gene Kelly, and Charlie Chaplin. Photos in the slide show below. Chinatown is not far from Picadilly, so be sure to check that out, too.
You learn so much when you travel and I noticed this: I’ve always been a decent amateur photographer. Had a rugged Canon AE-1 back in college. Did darkroom work, enlarging and finishing prints. I used to go on photography excursions with my old friend Jon Shimmons. We’d take pictures and sometimes drink Scotch all over Shenandoah, Civil War Battlefields, Western Pennsylvania. and all around the DC area, since like 1985.
But back in 1985–even though cameras were becoming increasingly available–they were either too pricey or super-cheap disposables. And despite the availability, people often left them at home. So as I recall, it was me and Jon and lots of Japanese people taking the pictures. We felt a kinship with the Japanese photographers because we all loved the same hobby and it seemed to be gaining momentum, and it sure did once smart phones came along. Jon–now a professional photographer–would often be curious about the equipment of our Japanese friends and, being extremely gregarious, would often engage in conversation about Nikons, Canons, Olympuses, along with shutter speeds and apertures.
I can definitely remember how the general public would often give us funny looks because our body language was foreign to them: We would be angling and distancing and moving in for a close-up. Definitely looked strange to people who never took pictures in public.
Well, those days are gone.
Today, people are taking pictures everywhere you look. It’s a whole different scene than 30 years ago. Every single tourist is pointing and clicking into infinity. On our UK trip, I took 600 photos in 20 days and Jackie took another 200-300. Thank God storage is cheap.
Speaking of smart phone technology, people seem to look at their phones endlessly. Myself included. It’s a colonization of the mind, for sure, but you can’t survive in today’s world without those intrusive little things. I had to navigate the streets of London, block-by-block, which involved endless steps, turns, and re-orientation, so I was looking and listening to my phone constantly while Jackie steered me up, down, and around the curbs.
Google Maps is amazing. It can take you right to the square foot of a destination and, if GMaps becomes lost, it tells you to point at a street landmark so it can re-calibrate. Totally frightening and super cool all at once.
Travel tip: We paid $10 per day through Verizon for roaming service and it was 100% worth it. Just build it into the budget to keep one of your phones active and keep all secondary phones on airplane mode the rest of the time. If one of your squad needs to activate their phone in an emergency, they can take it off airplane mode and use it. Verizon will just charge $10 for the day on that particular phone which is 100% worth it, just in case you get separated from family member. Yikes.
Our friend Christen says get a burner phone but this would not work for me: I had everything in my phone: travel emails, screen shots, receipts, calendars, confirmation numbers, day-by-day schedule…all of it. I absolutely needed my phone pretty much constantly throughout the trip.
Soho/45 Broadwick Street
We were staying a block away from Carnaby Street which is a really busy, pedestrian street in Soho. Lots of shopping and retail. Lots of clothing stores. Nearby Oxford Street has endless fashion stores and they are all located in buildings that go back hundreds of years and are the direct product of British looting over the millennia. Stunning architecture on a scale that you can’t believe. The human and monetary cost to build these endless architectural masterpieces at such impressive scale can’t really be measured.
You have to see it to believe it.
Luckily, our flat wasn’t directly on any main thoroughfare, and although there was some noise disturbance from time to time, it wasn’t too bad except for one or two nights, and we were there for nine. There was a pub on the corner, John Snow, and a tapas shop across the street, but all in all, we were happy to land where we did. We were also four stories above the street, so we felt safe (there was an iron door at the gate of our vertical “courtyard” so we were locked away.
Tapas is super-popular. We had some just off Carnaby Street after we went to A Midsummer’s Night Dream at the Shakespeare Globe. The idea behind tapas is you get to try lots of tastes. It is delicious but the cost…good Lord. They recommend three little plates per person: squid, beef, fish, veg, fruits, sauces, and various sprinkled toppings. All delish but at £13-15 per plate, plus a drink or two, gets us to £60 per person pretty quickly and then the conversion from pounds to dollars is about 1.25. That means a little bit of tapas and a drink for two gets to $150 American in no time. So go ahead and have tapas, but not every night. Pub grub is priced much more reasonably and pub food in England is typically good food, not frozen and deep-fried.
The next day, it was off to the Thames via Trafalgar Square, a much-celebrated public space that once hosted the premiere of a Harry Potter movie where the actors arrived in limousines and that sort of thing. A big deal. The Battle of Trafalgar was also an important event from 21 October 1805.
Down to the river then where we saw the London Eye, the Ministry of Defense, and the Ministry of Silly Walks. I’m joking about the latter, but I can’t omit a Monty Python reference.
There are beautiful parks along the Thames. I took a picture of the Korean War Monument because my dad was in Korea (see pic below). Then we wandered down to see Big Ben. It was closed at the time because they were doing renovation work, but we stood across the street and took pictures. Impressive.
Then we went over to St James Park where we wandered for a bit. When we came out on the other side, we were greeted by the Royal Marching Band with their big, king-sized hats. They were heading toward Buckingham Palace, so we watched them march past and then wandered in the same direction. We took pictures in front of the gates of Buckingham and made out way back to the flat. Later that evening, we ventured over to Hobson’s for some lovely fish and chips.
Afterword:
We walked more than 100 miles during our 20 days in the UK. We took two days off for sleep and recovery. Make sure to plan for rest during a long travel stint, because you’re gonna need it. You’re putting your body through a lot and it needs to rest. Get yourself a pair of Hokas, too.
Slides
In the pictures below you’ll see Jackie and I having breakfast at Bill’s in Soho, the view from the back end of our AirBnB in Soho, Carnaby Street, sculpture park near Piccadilly Circus, Chinatown, Trafalgar Square, the Ministry of Defence, Big Ben, Royal Band, and Buckingham Palace Gates. All photos by Michael Downing.
My Writing Wanderland 