London feels dramatically different from Paris. Almost on every level, you get the sense that these two places represent different universes. Obviously, of course, you hear a lot more English being spoken, and since language is core to culture, you absorb the Englishness (or Frenchness) that is in the air without even thinking about it. French always sounds to me like an angry language, as if the people speaking it on the street are always arguing with each other. Maybe they are, and maybe they’re arguing about Sartre. The streets themselves are different, with Paris being the result of the Baron Haussmann redesign and London just plopping itself down. Both cities are on rivers, but the Seine is more charming than impressive and the Thames looks like you can send battleships out on it. As you walk along the river in Paris, every few minutes a tour boat zips by with someone’s voice in the loudspeaker echoing for what seems like miles around, making you really glad you didn’t take a tour boat. We did boat down (up?) the Thames, but we were actually going somewhere (Kew). A totally different experience. As a city with a Catholic heritage, Paris has a church about every two feet, as is common also in Italy, but those anti-Roman English have no truck with such things, and when they do have churches, they are much more calm and quiet. And lastly, the streets of London are not lined with people sitting at cafes smoking and drinking and arguing about Sartre.
London, by comparison, feels like home. It’s New York with a tony accent.
I’m just going to talk about some things at random, rather than a day-by-day diary. To begin with, we saw Regent’s Park. We actually ended up walking through here a couple of times, as later in the week we were strolling down the Regent’s Canal. If you like this park, you can rent a chair to sit in it. Or maybe you can sit on the grass for free. When we came out of it on that first day, there was a street fair going on in Westminster, with lots of handmade art and craft items. We grabbed a bellini for the wandering through the tents; I mean, who wouldn’t?
This is Hampstead Heath, not far out of town, where you can roam about for months.
There is a great view of all of the city below you, once you make it to the top. There were also a lot of fishermen about, and they all seemed to have multiple rods and fancy tents and whatnot, and I was reminded of the saying, Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll spend thousands of dollars for the rest of his life in the pursuit of about a hundred dollars worth of fish that he could have just bought in the store. The allure of fishing eludes me, but then again, I enjoy golf, so who am I to talk?
One does need to visit the British Museum, where they have stuff like this from my favorite fair,
but more to the point, a lot of really old stuff. I had been doing the History of the World in 100 Items podcasts, so I was geared up for the place, although certain areas, like the mummies, were so throttled by Japanese tour groups that you could barely see the dead people, to which you wanted to add a few more. How can anyone possibly get anything out of being at the back of a pack of thirty tourists being herded through at top speed is beyond me. We had lunch with the son-in-law, who works nearby and who told us of the latest in the extended honeymoon adventures, this time to Barcelona. We look forward to having him in New York. So, presumably, does Kate.
This is a cab shelter, open only to cabbies, where they can hang out between fares and not get drunk, which is why they were built in the first place. Ah, Temperance! There are few still in existence, which I guess means that now, when they’re on break, the cabbies go to the pubs.
Kew Gardens is definitely worth a visit. We took a boat down, a very nice little passage along the Thames. Kew is where the Crystal Palace of 1851 ended up after the exhibition closed. There’s a display there of the work of Marianne North, one of those trademark Victorian women who put on their stout boots and traveled the world like there was no tomorrow, in her case painting every last flower of it. It’s not the most remarkable body of work art-wise, but its very existence is a tribute to the exploring spirit.
There’s a whole bunch of guys like this in front of what they call the Palm House.
Kew is a bit of a trip, but if you like to take photographs, or you like plants, it’s a must-see.
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