Buckingham Pals; or, Notting Hillgrimage

One of the greatest things about living here in Egham is the proximity to London; in fact, it was one of the reasons I chose this place. On Sunday, I made my first (and definitely not last) journey into what I affectionately call the Greatest City In The World. The train station is not a far walk (about 40 minutes) from my dorm building, but due to a foot injury from walking too much in new shoes, I opted to walk only as far as the main campus and then take the shuttle from there. The train ride is just under an hour and cost eight pounds on Sunday (eleven for my second journey yesterday). I went with a girl I met on Thursday - or maybe Friday? - at my French departmental induction. Her name is Alice and she's from Switzerland! Anyway, on Sunday, we decided to go to Buckingham Palace, because tours of the staterooms closed in just a few days and we wouldn't have had an opportunity otherwise. Yes, it's touristy. Yes, it's overpriced. And yes, I loved it. We arrived at Waterloo Station and then walked from there through St. James's Park, which was very beautiful in the sunlight that we were lucky enough to have that day. In Buckingham Palace, we stayed for a few hours and went through the whole thing. It was nice to have the audio guide to go with it. The Picture Gallery was an amazing, long room full of paintings by bigwig painters - though interestingly enough, Alice pointed out to me, not one of the painters was British. Most were Dutch or French! In one room later on, there was a sculpture on a table that I knew before listening to the audio guide was Canadian - an soapstone sculpture of a polar bear and Inuit. According to the audio guide, it was a gift to the Queen on her most recent visit to Canada.


On Tuesday, Alice and I made a second pilgrimage (well, second for me - it was the seventh for her) back to the Promised Land. We arrived again at Waterloo Station, and then took the Tube over to Holland Park Station, with a quick stop at Leicester Square to buy theatre tickets for the evening. The Tube is a wonder in itself. I had taken it before, on my trip to London two years ago, but never had to figure anything out for myself. However, since London has one of the best subway systems in the world, it's hardly difficult to get from one place to another. Almost every station has more than one line running through it, and in two directions, and sometimes the lines split meaning there are multiple destinations for each direction, but everything is so clearly marked that even a complete novice like me can make a trip halfway across the city without a hitch. (Public transportation is my forte, but put me on my own feet at ground level and I'm lost after about two blocks.) We walked from Holland Park Station to what instantly became one of my favourite places in the world: Notting Hill. Yes, that's right. Notting Hill...or more specifically, Portobello Road. It's a charming street lined with quirky shops selling everything from health dog biscuits to antique suitcases, and produce stalls spilling into the road. The market runs every day (although it is livelier on the weekends) and I think I'll find myself there several more times during my stay in England. I bought a great print of a photo taken by a photographer whose shop is on Portobello Road. The photo is a close-up of a wrought-iron gate on the street, that just says "Portobello" in gold lettering, with an intensely green wall behind it. I love it. As we continued down the street, we stumbled upon a grill and café on the uppermost floor of a building. We sat on the patio, which has a wrought-iron fence laced with ivy and lined with flowerboxes, and Alice sipped a cappuccino while I had a pot of lemon ginger tea, and quietly looked down on the market below. Our waiter even brought us a pot of mint tea on the house. We still don't totally know why, but it was very tasty with a robust flavour nonetheless.


After our afternoon tea, we made our way over to what might be one of the best-known locations in Notting Hill: The Travel Bookshop. And yes, it existed before the film Notting Hill came out and was really where they filmed the portions of the film set there. I bought a travel book about London (now that I think about it, I probably couldn't have done a more touristy thing if I'd tried) - but it's a book about the random and quirky things to see and do in London, like London's first drinking fountain and an Anglo-Saxon cemetary, rather than things like the Tower of London and the Changing of the Guard. I've already flagged a few places I hope to visit in the coming months. Then, of course, to cap off my cheesy touristy moment, Alice took a photo of me reading my book on the bench outside the shop.


Purchases in hand, we then made our way back in the direction of Holland Park, which is a gorgeous and supremely serene park. There were a few peacocks roaming about, and squirrels that were so tame that Alice actually petted one and it didn't run away (personally, I have this phobia of petting rodents, so I refrained, but I have to admit that it was pretty cute). As we sat near a very flower-adorned pond of sorts, it occurred to us that we were a Canadian and a Swiss sitting in Kyoto Garden of Holland Park in London. Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. But truly, it was very beautiful.


After leaving the park, we made our way back to the West End, where we saw Chicago. Alice hadn't seen either the musical or the film before, so over supper I explained the gist of the story so it would be easier to keep up (English is not her first language and it's difficult to understand plot when it's sung). We got to the theatre, and, of course, having bought the cheapest tickets available were directed up, up, and up to the third row from the back. Luckily, because the show was far from sold out, a few minutes before curtain, an usher relocated us to a much closer row, so we could see a lot better. Having seen the film already, I knew the music, and I was definitely not disappointed. The performance was similar to the film in lots of ways, but different enough that I wasn't bored. It was funny to hear the whole thing performed in an American accent, though - the accents were so thick and overstated! It was a truly fabulous evening, though, and we both had a really good time. At long last, we made our way back home, arriving a little before midnight.

Even though it's only been a week, a great deal has happened since my last post. I'm still enchanted with England, though the reality that I won't be back home for quite some time has started to sink in and the monster of homesickness has made its bed next to mine. Having experienced such a thing before, though, I know it will be only a few days until I'm back in the full swing of things and I send Mr. Homesickness Monster packing!

Also, I am completely and utterly unapologetic about the terrible puns in the title of this particular post.