In Honour of the City of London - Day 1

LONDON, thou art of townes A per se. 

   Soveraign of cities, seemliest in sight, 

Of high renoun, riches and royaltie; 

- William Dunbar

Our middle son was presenting at a bio-medical engineering conference in Glasgow, and planned to spend the following week in London on holiday.  We all decided to crash his party, and managed to get all five of us together for the adventure.  #blessed

Finally managed to get a picture of this amazing sculpture
in the Suvarnabhumi airport - the three-headed snake, Naga,
protector of Buddha, is a common image here

Tim and I arrived at Suvarnabhumi Airport with time to relax a bit before our noon-ish departure to Frankfurt on Lufthansa, where we were to change planes to Heathrow.  A tiny Thai woman struck up a conversation with us - she was terrified about flying and was looking for some moral support.  She was on her way to visit her boyfriend in Germany, and stuck close until we boarded the plane.  I pulled out my shiny, new Thai vocabulary and managed to communicate fairly well with her, although once she got going, I only understood a fraction of what she said.  Still it was challenging and fun to see what I could do.

While we waited, I enjoyed watching the workers scale the outside of the terminal.  They appeared to be resealing the windows, and moved effortlessly on their tethers.  Pretty tricky job that.

After my extensive conversation in Thai, I giddily switched to German when we boarded the plane.    Because we looked like we could be German, the flight attendants were never sure which language to use with us, and I enjoyed adding to their uncertainty by switching between German and English the entire flight.  This is what thrills this Word Nerd - flexing those language muscles!



This was the first time I had seen this handy little contraption on a plane - a crib that attaches to the wall in front of the first row of seats.  Sleeping babies can be placed there, freeing up the parents' laps for a bit.  How clever!  I guess this is fairly common, but I'd never seen it before and was duly impressed.

Many miles, hours, movies, and danke schöns later, we arrived at Frankfurt with only enough time to pass through another security check.  The chinese checkers game in Tim's backpack caused a bit of a stir with the security officers, warranting close inspection by the team, who decided it was a clever design; a teak board that folds in half on hidden cords, one we acquired at a market in Bangkok.

Amazing how a foreign country like Germany can feel like coming home when one lives in Southeast Asia.  Just rejoining the western world was something of a comfort and a pleasure.  In short order we boarded for a quick flight to Heathrow.

Heathrow has the most efficient and thorough security check and customs of any airport I've been in since 9/11.  This is a necessity for the busiest airport in the UK, and the airport with the most passenger traffic in all of Europe.  We exchanged bahts for pounds, claimed our baggage, and splurged on a classic black taxi to take us to the flat we rented with airbnb. The taxi ride felt like a scene out of MI5 or Sherlock.

Ted and one of his fellow PhDs were the first to arrive at the flat, having finished the Glasgow conference the day before.  It was nice to have him there to greet us, especially when we had to carry our suitcases up three flights of stairs!  Apparently he'd already been grilled by a man in a neighboring flat, wanting to know what we were doing there and how long we were staying - awkward!  I guess some of the residents are unhappy with the presence of airbnb customers in their building.  I can see their point, but I suppose that sort of thing needs to be spelled out as part of the building's code.  One of many complications created by the internet. We tried to be as discrete as possible.

The flat was in a pretty great location - a lovely, upscale neighborhood of flats with a lot of shops and restaurants nearby, and just minutes away from the Tube.  It was a pretty roomy place with a nice kitchen, living area and two bedrooms.  It looked a bit like it had been updated by a do-it-yourselfer IKEA fan, but nice enough to suit the needs of five people.  The kicker for me was that it was on the third floor (although Brits would call it the second floor, after the ground floor and the first floor), and no elevator.  Certainly got our exercise going up and down those killer stairs; the boys didn't seem to mind them a bit.  If fact, I'm certain we walked a million miles and climbed a million stairs in our ten days in London.  Handicap access doesn't seem to be much of a priority here; but in their defense, many of their buildings predate the invention of the elevator.

We went out to grab a late dinner, but everyplace seemed to be closing at 10 p.m., just as we were arriving.  We did manage to find a pub open and had a quick glass of ale before they kicked us out.  Then we just stopped at the little Tesco Lotus Express and picked up some food to take back to the flat, as well as supplies for breakfast the next morning.

Saturday morning we enjoyed some breakfast in the flat, including some beautiful blueberries and raspberries that we greatly miss in Thailand.  They're not impossible to find, but are ridiculously expensive and kind of shabby-looking.  We turned over the reigns to Ted's friend, who had been to London several times before, and went on an all-day walking tour.  We took the tube to Oxford Circus, a pretty, vibrant area of shops and restaurants with lots of interesting architecture.  Found our way through Chinatown and around Trafalgar Square to Covent Gardens.

A bookstore on Charing Cross Rd!

Trafalgar Square

Our first glimpse of Big Ben
in the background

Admiralty Arch

Horse Guards Parade location

Stopped in a traditional English pub and had some traditional English grub - fish and chips, steak and ale pie, etc. The pub was called Punch and Judy - funny, because Pattaya has an English pub by the same name. Built in 1787, it retains much of the original ornate brick and stonework. It’s known as being one of the very few buildings in the area that escaped bomb damage during the blitz. The lower level where we ate felt a bit like going into a cave, with low ceilings and close quarters.

We continued walking, passing by Whitehall and on to the River Thames, where we stopped for a Snog frozen yogurt from a funky, bright pink double-decker bus, and enjoyed the view of the water from the upper level.

skate park nearby

Walked further along the water to an entertainment venue on the South Bank.  Hard to miss with a giant, inflated, tipped purple cow, this is known as the Udderbelly Festival, featuring several days of comedy acts and such.  However, the show wasn't scheduled to start for another couple of hours, and us old folks were just about done in for the day, so we headed back to the flat.

Ted and Ian headed back out in the evening, while Tim and I rested our weary bones and anxiously awaited the arrival of our oldest son the next morning.