Day 5: London to Paris

Thursday, June 13

We checked out of the Arsenal Tavern this morning, but they were kind enough to store our bags while we were out for the day.

Continuing to use our London Passes as much as possible, the first thing we did was get on a Tube back to Westminster Abbey. I am not even sure what to say about that experience; it's exactly like i said about St. Paul's yesterday, the words don't exist, you need to see it in images, or be there in person. The art and architecture are...say it with me...breathtaking.

Westminster Abbey is almost more of a mausoleum than a cathedral though. The entire building seems to consist of crypt after tomb after memorial, most housing actual remains. It wasn't clear from the tour, though, which were actual graves and which were just effigies. Frederick Handel is buried there for sure though; as are Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton, so we paid our respects to all of them. William Shakespeare has a large memorial dedicated to him, although he is not actually buried there (they apparently considered moving him to Westminster Abbey, but it was ultimately nixed). Rudyard Kipling's stone was ambiguous, but i like to think he's in there. The most lavish of them were, of course, the final resting places of hundreds of years' worth of kings and queens.

I'd like to write more; after all, i wrote multiple pages about St. Paul's, but there's really nothing i can do with Westminster Abbey that wouldn't have involved smuggling a camera through. Oh, i guess i could mention that we took an audio tour (did i mention these before? We've taken a few. They give you a device, some kind of mp3 player, and headphones, and you walk on your own and listen to information about what you're seeing as you go) that was narrated by Jeremy Irons. So that's something, i guess.

When we walked up to Buckingham Palace, an enormous crowd had gathered. People were packed into every inch of sidewalk, lawn...anything that was not outright street. They were all staring through the giant metal fences surrounding the site, and a large number of the palace guard were in formation, playing music. We had no idea what was going on; as tourists, we had just bumbled into some kind of event whilest simply trying to get a look at the place and maybe see the changing of the guard.

We climbed up onto a stone wall taller than ourselves across the street from the palace, hoping the higher vantage would get us some insight into what was going on. We got a better view of the palace guards, but it still wasn't good. After sitting there for some time, as it was sporadically drizzling and windy and generally anti-Amanda weathering, we didn't see anything else happen except for guards playing their horns and drums and bagpipes in formation. So finally, at 1:00, i gave in to Amanda and agreed to venture on to our next stop. We got down from the wall and crossed back to the palace side of the street, when something started to happen.

The gates opened, and the guards marched out, playing their instruments. They made their way down the street and went straight past the wall we had just been sitting on. If we'd have waited just two more minutes, we'd have had a perfect view of the whole thing! But instead, we were up near the gates, right in the middle of the crowd where it was hard to see much of anything.

After that, the crowd started to disperse, and we flowed along with it. We'd find out not long after that what we'd witnessed WAS the changing of the guard. I had no idea it was such a large ceremony! I was expecting just a couple guys to come out and relieve the couple guys already standing outside. I guess now i know why it's such a popular ritual for tourists to observe. I think it's worth noting that we had no idea when the changing of the guard was supposed to take place, we had just intended to go look at the palace and hoped to get lucky, and so we did. So. We. Did. Maybe not as lucky as we could have been, if we'd gotten there before the crowd, but hey.

Amanda wanted to see the Buckingham Palace Mews, the royal horse stables. They were just down the street a bit, kind of a long bit, i was surprised that we were still on the palace grounds. They are enormous. But, considering that at this point i had already seen the London Tower and knew what kings and queens were historically used to, i should have expected Buckingham to be bigger and better.

The Mews were kind of a let down, not only for me (as was to be expected) but for Amanda as well. If we'd paid for it straight out (10 freaking pounds), i'd have felt ripped off. I suppose i still should. In the security building, there were four horse stalls, each containing a royal mount. They were all standing around placidly, munching on their hay, and doing not a thing else. We obviously couldn't get anywhere near them, there was about a meter-wide gulf between us, so that's all it was. Take some pictures, move on.

Into the complex, we came to a courtyard parking lot. There were several open garages along two interior sides of the building, mostly containing the royal carriages. We were taking an audio tour, so the voice kept speaking on the significance of these carriages, but it was largely uninteresting to both of us. Amanda just wanted to see the horses.

One of the garages contained the royal limousine, very old, one of the first limousines in existence and thus only affordable, in its day, by royalty. This is really nothing more than a footnote, the limo was just as uninteresting as the carriages.

Then we came to the horse barn, which houses some fifty royal horses. Every stall was empty. Apparently, the horses themselves are not on exhibit for the general public. It was really nice of them to mention this before we took their tour, right?

Beyond that was the building housing the Golden Carriage, the biggest, most gaudy thing we've ever seen, and we've seen the Crown Jewels. It's a massive carriage, weighing in at four tons, that must be drawn by a minimum of eight horses. It's hand-carved wood and almost entirely plated in gold leaf. It's the one they break out only for special occasions, and in fact, in the last 60 years that the present Queen has ruled, it has only been used three times: at her coronation in 1953, at her silver anniversary in 1978, and at her golden anniversary in 2003. The part that fascinated us, though, is that there is no apparent way to remove it from the building it's in; it is much larger than any of the doors. According to the audio tour guide, one of the walls contains a hidden door which takes a team of men two full days to open. I guess this is to deter thieves? I don't know, it seems like there may have been an easier way. But if you've only got to open it once every 25 years, then, eh, ok.

Next up was the London Tower Bridge, which we should have seen yesterday, but didn't have time. It is, after all, right next to the London Tower. Amanda mostly wanted to see it because it's one of the few famous London landmarks she didn't get to see the last time she was in town.

This is another one of those things i don't recommend without the London Pass, because the price they charge to look at the inside of the bridge is preposterous. You go up the elevator, you watch a short film, walk across the upper part of the bridge, which is an admittedly amazing view (but has nothing on the Golden Gallery at St. Paul's), then you watch another short film on the other side, and you go back down. Then, if you choose, you can go to the engine room, which should have been really interesting, but was only kind of interesting. There, you can see the massive steam-powered engines that lift this enormous drawbridge when boats need to pass below. It probably would have been great if they were in action, but what we saw was just a bunch of pipes and gears lying inert in a well-painted formation. Beyond that, there were some displays showing the principles and physics of how the whole thing works, which were the beginnings of intriguing, but were really aimed at kids. All i'm saying is, it could have been cooler.

We were running short on time at this point, but there was one London landmark i still wanted to see: Abbey Road. We weren't entirely sure where it was, but the Tube map showed an Abbey Road Station, so we boarded the train heading in that direction and figured to ask someone at the other end how to get to the recording studio. Hell, it worked with the Arsenal Tavern when we first got into town; took the Tube to the Arsenal Station and asked the kindly Tube worker on the other side where the tavern was. Why should this be any different?

Well, it was. Significantly.

Our train burst out of the underground somewhere around the time we left Zone 2, which means this was the farthest from city center we'd been yet. We needed to get off at West Ham (yes, West Ham. The British are awesome at naming things, for serious) and catch another train to Abbey Road, which would be the next stop after that. Well...at West Ham, we were confronted with a marquee showing the present status of the train we intended to get on, and it was 9 minutes out. 9 minutes! Every other experience we'd had yet with the Tubes was that a train going your way popped into the station every 30 seconds to a minute. So this is what it's like outside of Zones 1 and 2. I was starting to get really antsy about the time; we absolutely could not miss our train to Lille, which at the time, for some reason, i was under the impression was leaving St. Pancras at 4:45. It was already after 3 and we were in Bumfuct, Nowhere, and we still needed to get back to the Arsenal Tavern to pick up our belongings before going to St. Pancras. To top it off, we hadn't eaten lunch yet, and that coupled with all the walking was weakening us considerably. Add to that that i'd had to pee for some time and it was really catching up with me, and you've got one big pile of stress.

When we finally arrived at the Abbey Road station, we were greeted with a sign:

DAY TRIPPER looking for Beatles pedestrian crossing?

Unfortunately you are at the wrong Abbey Road. However, WE CAN WORK IT OUT and HELP you GET BACK to the correct location.

Take the DLR one stop to West Ham and change to a Jubilee line train to St. John's Wood station.

Passengers need a TICKET TO RIDE.

THE END.

FUCK! (Not capitalized for being a Beatles reference; capitalized because FUUUUCCCKKK!!)

So i did not get my cliche tourist picture crossing the road with my shoes off. Nor did i get to see the famous recording studio whose roof the Beatles played their last show from. It was time to scramble back to the Arsenal and get our asses to King's Cross/St. Pancras.

Amanda tried to figure a faster route to St. John's Wood, which is as far into the city from Arsenal as we were currently outside of it, but there was clearly no time. Defeatedly, we headed back to Finsbury Station, which is equidistant from the hostel as the Arsenal station but involved no transfers. We thought this would help. It did not, because somehow we came out of a different exit from the station than the one we'd been entering, and lost precious minutes being lost.

We ran into a fried chicken place just before reaching the tavern, thinking it would be fast, because it looked like a KFC knockoff. It took almost 20 minutes to get our food, which were not 20 minutes we had to burn. While sitting there, i was freaking out a little bit, and Amanda was trying to get me to relax, and pointed out that the train actually left at 5:03, not 4:45. This helped a little, since it was 4:30 by the time we got our food, but not a hell of a lot.

Grabbed our heavy, heavy bags, ran (as best as possible) down the street to the Arsenal Station, through the terminal, and onto the train; shamble-sprinted through St. Pancras until we got to the international departures, and then stopped cold in our tracks at 4:55 at the end of a twenty person strong check-in line. I exclaimed, and i quote, “Well, we're boned.”

It was shockingly Amanda who took the initiative here and found an employee and explained the situation to her. What was even more surprising was that, after some initial complaint about how we were supposed to be there to check in 30 minutes early (further inspection of the tickets reveals that, yeah, we were, it was all clearly spelled out for us), and how check-in for that train had just closed, the staff helped us out considerably to rush us through the lines, cutting off scores of other people who had waited longer, and get us on that train. They still ran all of our shit through security and metal-detected us and all, but they were very fast about it. We ended up getting onto our train with about one minute to spare. People had already taken our seats, thinking us absent, but were kind enough to move when we appeared. The woman, jokingly, but seriously, blurted, “you ran!” in reference to our sweat-soaked visages and the foul odor we exuded. I apologized for the offense, laughing it off.

I was mostly just happy we made the train. If we had missed our train from London to Lille, it would have also messed us up on our next train, from Lille to Paris, since we'd only scheduled a 14 minute window to make it from one to the other, banking on the fact that European trains are almost always on time (yeah, our experience going from Liverpool to London sure proved that theory...). As we were en route, Amanda casually mentioned that we needed to get our Eurail passes validated before we could get on the next train. Lovely.

Luck just happened to be on our side, though, and the information desk that we ran across mere moments after arriving at the station was able to validate us with no trouble. We hadn't so much as known the platform our train was leaving from, but it just happened to be the one immediately next to said information desk. There were a lot of platforms, i think ours was number 38, so it could have been literally a kilometer away, but it wasn't.

We boarded, stowed our suitcase, and were instantly struck by how much more luxurious this train was than the last. After we found our seats and made ourselves comfortable, Amanda remembered that, oh yeah, all of our Eurail routes are First-Class. Because being an adult rocks. No really, Eurail only sells children Second-Class passes. So all of our travel from here out will be quiet and child-free.

That brings us up to now. It looks like we've just entered Paris, so i ought to pack the laptop away. I've got impeccable timing.

--

When they say “youth hostel” they aren't kidding... While we were waiting to check in, a group of about twenty under-10s came in, along with one adult chaperone. After they disappeared into the hostel, there was a second group. I mean, the age restriction on this place is 30, but i hadn't imagined there being anyone under 18 here. From where i sit in our two-bed room on the 4^th floor, i can't hear any children, which is surprising considering their activity in the lobby, but welcome. I thought i was going to be very unhappy here for a moment there, but it turns out we're in a good situation. We were not expecting to have a two-bed room to ourselves; hostels don't usually work out that way (there were nine beds in our Arsenal Tavern room, we shared it with at least four other people each night).

Anyway. We got into Paris at about 8pm, but decided against heading out to see anything. We're checked into the hostel and relaxing in our pretty nice room (although it only has one power outlet – unfortunate, since i was excited to finally be out of the UK and in a place where i had the ability to charge TWO BATTERIES AT ONCE)(if you didn't know, the United Kingdom uses a different electrical plug than the rest of Europe. We only have one power adapter, which will convert either EU or UK to American, but my camera's battery charger has its own EU adapter). I don't think i've got anything else to say about Paris yet, so far all we've seen is three subway stations and the hostel, with just a little bit of street in between. So i think i'm going to put my clothes back on and head downstairs to the lobby, since it's the only part of the hostel with WiFi, and upload this very journal entry so that my mom can read it and not freak out about not hearing from me for 24 straight hours.

Ciao.

UPDATE: It's worth noting that they're playing the original Highlander in this hostel lobby.