London, day 3
Jun. 17th, 2007 07:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasSo, we left Boston at about 7 pm on Thursday night, arriving in London at about 7 am Friday morning. On about a six-and-a-half hour flight. The numbers do not add up due to rounding. And me forgetting exactly when the plane took off and landed.
I probably got about an hour of sleep on the plane, but we knew that we weren't going to sleep until bedtime London time. As annoying as it is, Lis assured me that the best way to beat jetlag is to just deal with it as an all-but-allnighter the day before, and try to keep to your intended schedule as best you can.
I hate travel, as I've mentioned before, and my skin was crawling by the morning. It took us about an hour to clear customs. And then Lis found a luxury spa thingy in the airport, and we paid £12 (see? British keyboards have a £ key. And a $ key. Hunh. What symbol is missing? @ is somewhere I didn't expect. . . oh, I see. There's an extra key over here by the left shift, which has \ and |) for a shower, which may seem like a lot, but was worth every penny. After I took a long, hot shower, brushed my teeth, and changed my clothes, I felt human, and ready to deal with London. We went to the Tube with our luggage (we travelled all carry-on, largely so that we could get around the city easily before we dropped off our luggage), and got into London about ten or so.
The weather was BEAUTIFUL. I mean, GORGEOUS. About 20, 21 degrees centigrade, 68 or 70 farenheit, blue skies, gentle wind -- I mean, you cannot design weather that I would like better.
We knew we'd get to the hotel eventually -- Lis did lots of research and made entire booklets for where everything was, as well as the hours of all of the attractions we were interested in -- so we sort of wandered around, approximately toward the hotel, but not worrying too much about heading there TOO directly. Even so, it didn't take us at all long to get to the hotel and check our bags. We then headed out again, and started seeing the sights.
Our hotel is pretty darn near the Tower of London -- the closest Tube/bus stops are Tower Hill and Aldgate East -- so we started wandering in that direction, then headed south to Saint Paul, and across the Millenium Bridge, and wandered around all those areas. We made it to Burrough Market, which is where, when London was a walled city and everything around it WASN'T London, farmers would set up to sell their produce and animals. It was outside the city walls, meaning that you didn't have to pay taxes to bring your goods in -- or out. So, if you WEREN'T a Londoner, you could come to Burrough Market, and buy without paying city taxes. And if you WERE a Londoner, it was still convenient to where you were. Dunno if you would be required to pay taxes on your own purchases, but, in general, it worked out better for everyone.
So, yeah. It USED to be that people would come there to sell their fresh fish, fresh meat, smoked meats, sausages, cheeses, produce, and probably some other things like sweets and stuff. However, today, people go there to sell their fresh fish, fresh meat, smoked meats, sausages, cheeses, produce, sweets, and stuff like that. So you can see that it's TOTALLY different.
It's a farmers' market. Obviously, there's not much agricultural land right near London, but there are folks there from organic farms as far away as Scotland. And closer, of course. We're tourists, so we couldn't buy much, but we had fun chatting with the farmers and cheesemakers and sausagemakers and fisherfolk and bakers and brewers and everyone, and some folks DO sell snacks and stuff you can eat and drink right there. I learned a few things, and had a few things confirmed for me. For one, I gained yet more evidence that cheddar made in traditional methods from unpasturized milk from organically-raised cows is REALLY REALLY REALLY good.
I learned something else -- Turkish Delight made fresh by hand (by actual Turkish people, even) is actually good. I thought I hated Turkish Delight. Turns out that I actually hate stale, mass-produced, really BAD Turkish Delight.
I noticed something else, that Lis had commented to me after her first trip to London, a couple years back. Prices in London look about the same as prices in Boston. The problem is that £1 is about $2. So, sure, a candy bar might cost, like, £0.75, and, back home, a candy bar might cost, like, $0.75. But that means that the candy bar costs twice as much.
A big basket of chips (really good french fries, like steak fries) at a pub might be £2.65, which looks a lot like the $2.65 I'd expect to pay back home.
There's one exception, though. A good beer, back home, would be about $4 or $6 back home. I MIGHT be able to get a $2 pint of Pabst Blue Ribbon, but for GOOD beer, I'd expect $4 or more. But I can get a £2 pint of any of DOZENS of AMAZING beers on tap.
And -- the pints are 20 ounces, not 16.
So, everything costs twice as much, except for beer, which is cheaper.
You know, I can live with that.
(Sadly, though, this includes real estate. Prices for apartments, rents, and houses all look like what I'd expect to see in Boston, and Boston is hugely expensive. So London is twice as much.)
(I was wondering what the minimum wage was in Britain, and what a living wage was considered to be. I mean, if a day-laborer is making £10/hour here, and $10/hour at home, then the fact that prices are twice as much here than back home washes out.)
Anyway, pub food is also really good. I had bangers and mash, Lis had a steak-and-ale pie. Both were amazingly good.
Yesterday, we were going to go to Bevis Marks synogogue for services, but we didn't wake up in time. However, we DID get a look through on Friday afternoon, so we have, at least, seen it, even if we didn't daven in the oldest shul in London. It is, in fact, every bit as beautiful as we've heard.
We went back to the Southwick area, and went to the Globe Theater, where we paid £5, walked in, rested our elbows on the stage, and watched The Merchant of Venice. One of us may go on and write up a review at some point, but, in general, it was wonderful, but hearing people diss on Jews is still hard for me, even expecting it. But it was a fantastic play. And I think everyone should finish off their plays with a jig.
We also saw a young punk catch a pidgeon. We were impressed. He'd been trying for like, twenty minutes, leading bread crumbs to his hand and then trying to grab one. . .
Today, we went to Hyde Park, and went to Speakers' Corner. I thought of starting a rant and seeing if I could gather a crowd, but all my rants are American -- I don't think this crowd needed to hear why torture is a bad idea. It was fun, though -- if any of you remember going down to the Pit in Harvard Square to watch the punks making fun of the streetcorner preacher, that's what it is, except with FOUR streetcorner preachers, TWO socialist ranters, a little old woman spouting anti-immigrant invective, all with random goths and punks jeering and making fun of them -- it was GREAT. It was just like back home, only more so.
Then we went to the Victoria and Albert Museum, and then we came here to an Internet place which is £1 for 1 hour, and I have 6 minutes left, so I think I'm going to finish it here, even though I've left out lots of details.
In short -- I still hate travel, but I love London, because I love the weather, and I haven't met a Londoner yet that I haven't liked.
Oh, it was the Queen's birthday celebration yesterday, too, so we got to see RAF flyovers.
I probably got about an hour of sleep on the plane, but we knew that we weren't going to sleep until bedtime London time. As annoying as it is, Lis assured me that the best way to beat jetlag is to just deal with it as an all-but-allnighter the day before, and try to keep to your intended schedule as best you can.
I hate travel, as I've mentioned before, and my skin was crawling by the morning. It took us about an hour to clear customs. And then Lis found a luxury spa thingy in the airport, and we paid £12 (see? British keyboards have a £ key. And a $ key. Hunh. What symbol is missing? @ is somewhere I didn't expect. . . oh, I see. There's an extra key over here by the left shift, which has \ and |) for a shower, which may seem like a lot, but was worth every penny. After I took a long, hot shower, brushed my teeth, and changed my clothes, I felt human, and ready to deal with London. We went to the Tube with our luggage (we travelled all carry-on, largely so that we could get around the city easily before we dropped off our luggage), and got into London about ten or so.
The weather was BEAUTIFUL. I mean, GORGEOUS. About 20, 21 degrees centigrade, 68 or 70 farenheit, blue skies, gentle wind -- I mean, you cannot design weather that I would like better.
We knew we'd get to the hotel eventually -- Lis did lots of research and made entire booklets for where everything was, as well as the hours of all of the attractions we were interested in -- so we sort of wandered around, approximately toward the hotel, but not worrying too much about heading there TOO directly. Even so, it didn't take us at all long to get to the hotel and check our bags. We then headed out again, and started seeing the sights.
Our hotel is pretty darn near the Tower of London -- the closest Tube/bus stops are Tower Hill and Aldgate East -- so we started wandering in that direction, then headed south to Saint Paul, and across the Millenium Bridge, and wandered around all those areas. We made it to Burrough Market, which is where, when London was a walled city and everything around it WASN'T London, farmers would set up to sell their produce and animals. It was outside the city walls, meaning that you didn't have to pay taxes to bring your goods in -- or out. So, if you WEREN'T a Londoner, you could come to Burrough Market, and buy without paying city taxes. And if you WERE a Londoner, it was still convenient to where you were. Dunno if you would be required to pay taxes on your own purchases, but, in general, it worked out better for everyone.
So, yeah. It USED to be that people would come there to sell their fresh fish, fresh meat, smoked meats, sausages, cheeses, produce, and probably some other things like sweets and stuff. However, today, people go there to sell their fresh fish, fresh meat, smoked meats, sausages, cheeses, produce, sweets, and stuff like that. So you can see that it's TOTALLY different.
It's a farmers' market. Obviously, there's not much agricultural land right near London, but there are folks there from organic farms as far away as Scotland. And closer, of course. We're tourists, so we couldn't buy much, but we had fun chatting with the farmers and cheesemakers and sausagemakers and fisherfolk and bakers and brewers and everyone, and some folks DO sell snacks and stuff you can eat and drink right there. I learned a few things, and had a few things confirmed for me. For one, I gained yet more evidence that cheddar made in traditional methods from unpasturized milk from organically-raised cows is REALLY REALLY REALLY good.
I learned something else -- Turkish Delight made fresh by hand (by actual Turkish people, even) is actually good. I thought I hated Turkish Delight. Turns out that I actually hate stale, mass-produced, really BAD Turkish Delight.
I noticed something else, that Lis had commented to me after her first trip to London, a couple years back. Prices in London look about the same as prices in Boston. The problem is that £1 is about $2. So, sure, a candy bar might cost, like, £0.75, and, back home, a candy bar might cost, like, $0.75. But that means that the candy bar costs twice as much.
A big basket of chips (really good french fries, like steak fries) at a pub might be £2.65, which looks a lot like the $2.65 I'd expect to pay back home.
There's one exception, though. A good beer, back home, would be about $4 or $6 back home. I MIGHT be able to get a $2 pint of Pabst Blue Ribbon, but for GOOD beer, I'd expect $4 or more. But I can get a £2 pint of any of DOZENS of AMAZING beers on tap.
And -- the pints are 20 ounces, not 16.
So, everything costs twice as much, except for beer, which is cheaper.
You know, I can live with that.
(Sadly, though, this includes real estate. Prices for apartments, rents, and houses all look like what I'd expect to see in Boston, and Boston is hugely expensive. So London is twice as much.)
(I was wondering what the minimum wage was in Britain, and what a living wage was considered to be. I mean, if a day-laborer is making £10/hour here, and $10/hour at home, then the fact that prices are twice as much here than back home washes out.)
Anyway, pub food is also really good. I had bangers and mash, Lis had a steak-and-ale pie. Both were amazingly good.
Yesterday, we were going to go to Bevis Marks synogogue for services, but we didn't wake up in time. However, we DID get a look through on Friday afternoon, so we have, at least, seen it, even if we didn't daven in the oldest shul in London. It is, in fact, every bit as beautiful as we've heard.
We went back to the Southwick area, and went to the Globe Theater, where we paid £5, walked in, rested our elbows on the stage, and watched The Merchant of Venice. One of us may go on and write up a review at some point, but, in general, it was wonderful, but hearing people diss on Jews is still hard for me, even expecting it. But it was a fantastic play. And I think everyone should finish off their plays with a jig.
We also saw a young punk catch a pidgeon. We were impressed. He'd been trying for like, twenty minutes, leading bread crumbs to his hand and then trying to grab one. . .
Today, we went to Hyde Park, and went to Speakers' Corner. I thought of starting a rant and seeing if I could gather a crowd, but all my rants are American -- I don't think this crowd needed to hear why torture is a bad idea. It was fun, though -- if any of you remember going down to the Pit in Harvard Square to watch the punks making fun of the streetcorner preacher, that's what it is, except with FOUR streetcorner preachers, TWO socialist ranters, a little old woman spouting anti-immigrant invective, all with random goths and punks jeering and making fun of them -- it was GREAT. It was just like back home, only more so.
Then we went to the Victoria and Albert Museum, and then we came here to an Internet place which is £1 for 1 hour, and I have 6 minutes left, so I think I'm going to finish it here, even though I've left out lots of details.
In short -- I still hate travel, but I love London, because I love the weather, and I haven't met a Londoner yet that I haven't liked.
Oh, it was the Queen's birthday celebration yesterday, too, so we got to see RAF flyovers.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-17 06:55 pm (UTC)And their minimum wage is GBP 5.35/hr, although obviously minimum wage isn't the best standard to be going by because that can be moved around arbitrarily. (But I was able to find it pretty quickly.)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-17 11:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-18 03:33 pm (UTC)I always wondered what that was called.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-18 04:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-17 11:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-17 07:10 pm (UTC)Sounds like a wonderful trip so far. Hope you have good weather all the way!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-17 08:49 pm (UTC)Minimum wage in Britian - depends on how old you are. I think up until 18 it's something like £4.90 an hour, and after 18 it goes up to about £5.20 an hour. It's around that area. But I don't know the exact numbers.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-17 09:44 pm (UTC)But yup, everything's expensive over here (and more so in London). Except, as you say, the beer. What I can't work out - given that all the base ingredients and overheads are cheaper Stateside, as already established - is why beer's so comparatively expensive over there?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-17 10:24 pm (UTC)I love London <3
Can't wait to hear about Italy!!!
N.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-17 11:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-17 11:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-17 11:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-18 08:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-18 11:32 pm (UTC)Oh well. Enjoy stuff anyway!
(I haven't done any busking for ages due to physical health crapness, but I hope to get back to it someday...)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-18 01:54 am (UTC)I thought that one of the nicest places to live was in the newer Thameside area, near the Docklands (and the Canada Water tube station.)
Hope you manage to catch a play or a musical while you're there.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-18 02:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-18 03:38 pm (UTC)Also, they don't have health care costs.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-18 08:38 pm (UTC)Just check out maybe 60% of my friends list for examples.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-18 11:36 pm (UTC)Although, in my experience, adequate health care is becoming more expensive. I know many people who have had to go private to get treatment or even diagnosis of medical conditions, myself included. Medical insurance is starting to look like a good idea... except that with the various pre-existing problems I have, costs would be prohibitive, so at the moment I'm going for 'good management and preventive care' as much as I can.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-18 05:39 pm (UTC)Ahem. Not to bring you down. I'm glad you're enjoying it. :)
Don't stop in Bucine Wed?
Date: 2007-06-18 08:28 pm (UTC)Duzzy