Lacasarodante's travel blogs:
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Up. up, and away......
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LONDON
We took the day flight to London arriving around 9 p.m. at Heathrow which was near dead at that hour, so we were through customs in no time and on the underground heading for the City within an hour.
What can I say? London is great. We were so happy to be back and regretted that the visit was so short. With only one day there we did not get to do much. We arrived with no particular plans, but on the underground on the way to the hotel we noticed lots of posters advertising visits to Buckingham Palace.
I think we must never have been in London before in July and August because we did not know that in the summer when the Queen is not in residence that visitors can actually go through the State rooms during that time. So the morning after we arrived we walked over to the Palace from our hotel on Grosvenor Square arriving in time to get a ticket for the 3:45 p.m. spot! (Visits are popular and sold out quickly.) Waiting for our turn meant killing several hours in St. James Park before we joined hundreds of other curious commoners, snaking along through 19 rooms of the palace, audio guides on our ears.
The visit was both very touristy and very interesting. From the outside, Buckingham Palace
appears to be BIG above all, but I had never considered it particularly
beautiful. Inside, however, it is spectacular. The rooms were exquisite (they made the period rooms at the Met Museum look positively shabby by comparison). The art collection was to die for (and probably a lot of people did over the centuries.)
For the benefit of us tourists they had set the table in the
state dining room as it would be for a state dinner with knife edge lines of polished crystal, china, and silver set against a red plush backdrop of a room. In conjunction with this display, in an adjacent gallery, the curators had hung life size photos of the Queen with various heads of state that had been taken at state dinners she had hosted. Of course there was one of the Queen with President Bush. Unlike the other photos in the exhibit, where both the Queen and the Guest of Honor were smiling broadly, on this one two unhappier people you could not have imagined, each looking petulantly in a different direction. Were they really that uncomfortable with each other? Or had the curator of the exhibit indulged in a little political editorializing?
Americans in London were conspicuous in their absence. The weak dollar appears to be taking a
toll. We did not encounter any Americans at our hotel (a Marriott) nor were there any waiting in the ticket line at the Palace or enjoying the day in Regents Park. Our fellow tourists seemed to be Brits, other Europeans, or Middle Easterners. The only Americans we met were a couple that shared a van ride to the airport with us the day we left for Stockholm.
On the other hand, we did not encounter any negativity towards us as Americans either. The attitude seemed to be one of sympathy that we still had to endure another 6 months of Bush. I guess, too, that American tourists in such small doses are easier to take.
The Brits are really into global warming and carbon footprints. There were smart cars everywhere and for those who prefer more comfort, Prius's. We were encouraged to reuse our towels at our hotel to save water. There were serious discussions about the efficacy of water heater tanks vs. new systems that heat water on demand. Our limo driver on the way to the airport held forth for quite some time on the topic concluding that the latest government opinion was swinging back to tanks being the better of the two
alternatives. London's congestion pricing was also viewed as helpful environmentally. The city of London had brand new articulated busses on the main streets to accommodate the increased demand for public transportation that came with congestion pricing. (The old double deckers, alas, were not being
replaced as the steep stairs to the upper level were viewed in this safety conscious world we live in as not safe.) Since we are believers in globalwarming we were pleased to be in a country that is taking it seriously!
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