Although I didn’t have as much on my list to do today, I still needed to make sure I was up and ready to get going reasonably early. I stayed in bed a little longer this morning and savored not being on my feet, but by 8:30 I was dressed and ready to roam. However, my touring companion for the day was not, and my explorations were delayed until 9:30. Before he joined me, I checked out of the hotel and put my bags in his room. Then I sat in the lobby reading an e-book for a couple of minutes.
We left the hotel headed for Buckingham Palace. After a couple of train stops and a walk through the same park I got lost in yesterday, we made it to the Royal Residence. By this time it was about 10:15, and we got in line to buy our tickets. There was a nice little Palace employee asking everyone if they wanted to see “Changing of the Guard,” which we did of course. Changing of the Guard happens only every other day, so I was surprised enough that we managed to be there on the right day for it anyway. You can’t buy your tickets and then wait around for the Changing though, so we got out of line and headed for the front. They do timed entry tours, so if we’d bought a ticket then we were guaranteed to go in immediately and miss the Changing. After hanging out for about 15 minutes, we decided that it wasn’t worth the time waiting for it. First of all, I’d read that it was very overrated, and second, the crowd in front of the gates ensured that any view we’d have of the Change would suck, so we decided to skip it and go take the tour immediately.
The Queen has a nice house. It’s big; it’s imposing; it’s filled to the top with priceless art. We didn’t get a tour of the royal living quarters, of course, but we got a nice long tour of the State Rooms. Visiting statesmen get quite a sight when they come to visit the Queen. She’s got one hell of an art collection and some damn fine looking tableware. That’s not even mentioning the table itself or the room that holds it. Everything is on this grandiose sort of scale. Everything is designed to impress. Her Royal Majesty’s chair, however, is nothing to really be impressed by, other than the fact that it’s her throne. It doesn’t look much like a throne though, not the way I imagine them to be at any rate. Queen Victoria’s chair is pretty impressive, but no one ever sits in it. That’s the way of thrones, I was told. When the old monarch dies and the new one is crowned, the old chair is moved off to the side and never sat in again. I’m sure they do something with the older ones – the thrones of only the current and two previous monarchs are in the throne room, but I have this idle fantasy that the rest are sitting in a storage room somewhere just to keep anyone else from sitting on them.
We finally finished the tour, and by that time we were ready for lunch. I’ve heard that Harrod’s has about 18 different restaurants inside it, and I wanted to go there anyway, so we caught a train down another couple of stops to take a look. Harrod’s is the most imposing department store I’ve ever been in. Yes, it has a lot of restaurants on the first floor, but more impressive are the five levels of shopping. It was also a pretty crowded place, so I didn’t spend a whole lot of time looking around. Besides, I can get almost anything there at Willow Bend Mall except for the souvenir Christmas tree ornament I bought. I saw enough to recognize that you can go a long way towards wiping out a bank account in there. I also saw the memorial to Princess Diana and Dodi. It’s a nice little monument on the bottom floor with lots of flowers, a fountain, and a wine glass that they were using at dinner that night. There was a huge crowd around it though, so it was hard to get a good picture.
I was ready to get back to York after Harrod’s, but it was only 4:00 and my train didn’t leave until 8:00, so we wandered over to Covent Garden looking for some t-shirts. I still don’t have any cash, and all the stalls took cash, so no England t-shirts for anyone. I certainly wasn’t going to pay 20 pounds at the department store for them. That translates to around $40. Everything is notationally the same here, but you have to multiply it all by two to get the American money equivalent. I did see a street performer there. He was throwing knives and telling jokes. Truth to tell, he never actually threw any knives at people, although as part of his act he convinced a guy that he was. I thought he was funny; my exploring companion for the day said he had seen much better. Of course, he’s had more time to hang out there than I have.
We left Covent Garden to go to Picadilly Circus again and look for this giant toy store I’d been told about, a place called Hamley’s. It was indeed giant and probably one of the best toy stores I’ve ever been in. It reminded me a lot of FAO Schwartz in New York. I saw FAO S at Christmastime though, so the decorations there were probably a little better. They’ve got a serious Leggo thing going on. There was a life size Leggo Hagrid and Harry Potter, and when I say life size I really mean it. The Leggo Hagrid was about 7 feet tall. They also had a Leggo Boba Fett that was about 5’6”. Very nice.
I went to dinner with our department vice president that night, but it wasn’t all that exciting. We were sort of in a rush to find a place because he recognized that I had a train to catch. I did the dine and dash thing and still missed my train by ten minutes, so I had to catch the 9:00 to York. It was delayed for half an hour, so I ended up spending an hour and a half in King’s Cross station waiting for it. If I’d known it was going to be so easy to find a seat on the train, I wouldn’t have stood in line for that whole time. I would have gone to find Platforms 9 and 10, but I didn’t. Probably for the best. First of all, it’s kind of stupid, and second, my feet were killing me and all I wanted to do was sit down. Walking was the last thing I wanted to do. I was pretty sure I was going to get enough of that in York when I got there anyway.
The train ride was nice and quiet except for these two pre-teens that kept running up and down the aisle messing with things in the “Quiet Car.” I wanted to trip them every time they passed, but I restrained myself. I spent most of the trip reading and trying to figure out what I would do to get to the hotel once I arrived. In the end, I just ended up walking. It’s only a mile or a mile and a half from the train station to the hotel. I didn’t have any cab fare, so I wasn’t going to be able to do that. I thought I might be able to catch a bus, but none ever showed up at the train station. I’d already resigned myself to the walk, so I probably didn’t wait around long enough. It wasn’t too bad of a walk, but I wouldn’t want to do it again, certainly not after all the walking I’d already done over the weekend anyway.
My room this week is nice. I got a suite. I wonder if it’s because I was so late checking in. There are two distinct and separate rooms, a hallway, and a king size bed. I’m living in luxury this week.
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