London miscelanea

(Having just seen the news about the attack in Westminster just before posting this feels surreal. I'm grateful that over here these attacks seem limited, whether by gun control or other factors, but it's still shocking and awful. I don't have anything profound to say about it. Londoners have recovered from worse, more harrowing attacks, even in recent history - just before I left I was talking to my barber about hearing stories about their carry-on response to the IRA campaign of violence in the seventies. And as a whole, the city's residents tend to be cosmopolitan, thoughtful, energetic people who, as their mayor put it, wouldn't be cowed by terrorism. In any event, below is the post I cobbled together on the Eurostar to Paris, the first of a couple for the first leg of this trip. You know the drill: jump.)

St. Paul's and the city, as a too-slanted and less-than-ideal panoramic shot taken from the neighboring mall's rooftop terrace. PRETTY AND CLOUDY.

Guys, I know nobody forgot this, but London is just great. This may, as I think about it, have been my first time there solo, and boy howdy could I have spent a week quite happily. Some preliminary thoughts after the kickoff of my trip over there...

I lucked out on a half-empty flight over (if not 2/3 empty, actually). While I didn't sleep much, I was able to lie flat across a row of three seats, and had some of the kindest and swellest attendants ever (leaving snacks for me when I slept through meal service? aw guysss). Still, I arrived in London on probably three hours' sleep at most, and left Heathrow before 7 AM. After dropping my bags, I tromped around the city for twelve hours straight.

It was SO EXQUISITELY partly sunny the entire trip, as this photo only slightly makes clear. A great day to tromp around Hyde Park, and many points beyond, completely destroying my feet but getting me exhausted enough that I fell asleep involuntarily - literally against my conscious will - at 8:30 PM. Jetlag: DONE.

London, oddly, put me in mind of Boston this trip, in its rabbit-warren streets and its blessing-and-curse relationship with history, both giving it a tremendous legacy and sometimes leaving things, well, rabbit-warreny. Its centrality to Europe's financial world gives it an energy that feels akin to Boston's law-and-banking-crowded downtown core, and some of the newer skyscrapers going up wouldn't feel out of place around the Prudential Center.

As usual, though, wayyyyy better street art. This hyar from Shoreditch.

But oh, oh, oh is London ever worthy of its global city status. For one thing, it's incredibly resourceful - where Boston's response to its disorganized layout has mostly been to shrug and suggest you move closer to your job, London has an incredible transit system (odds are it'll save you time over a cab). Its sometimes-quite-complicated Tube stations are exquisitely signed, with Underground employees at particularly confusing junctions in the more gargantuan stations. Very much a city that has asked the question "How do people like to get around, and how can we help them make sense of it all?" (See also their bus stops, prominently marked by letter to help you orient yourself).

It's also got in spades what I've recently seen described as "visible life," public spaces designed to keep you in view of people going about their daily routines and public spaces designed to bring people together. (It's not that Boston doesn't have this, of course, but most of the neighborhoods I lived in up until this year definitely did not, where almost every area I went in London did.) It's also a city that is very much a meeting ground - not a crossroads, not a port of call for people who want to be elsewhere. It's delightful to hear the range of accents and ethnicities as you work through the city, and to find its disparate inhabitants bound together through some strain of humor and energy.

It is, I think, a city that knows its worth. With museums free to all comers (which smartly makes it a high value destination even when the pound is expensive and other costs get steeper), the Brits seem to know that culture is its own reward. Arriving a few days after our President's immoral and cruel budget proposal launched, it was interesting to consider how many people were spending money in England exactly because the government was subsidizing its museums and art programs. (So, add "incompetent" to the list above, if you didn't automatically make the addition.)

Cafe at the Victoria & Albert Museum, which has one of the most impressive theatre collections in the English speaking world, and a lot of fascinating artifacts from centuries (millennia?) of British history. It's: PRETTY?

Okay. Countryside is whizzing my my window (the Eurostar is magic and the Tube is double magic and I almost missed the train but didn't because of combined magic) so these general thoughts and preliminary photos will do for now. Later this week, I'll try to cobble together a post running down how I spent my little-over-48-hours in Jolly Old Engel-land, with a video and everything, but we'll see when I get around to it, as (a) I'm still fixin' to get work done on this trip, (b) also Paris, and (c) not very good at blogging on a regular schedule.

My only regret is that I could not fit more stereotypical London images into this photo than I do here (well, that and that I wish the tour bus was just a double-decker public bus, but I have learned to forgive myself these things.)

Until then: have a swell ol' time, and remember that if somebody recommends you visit a cash-only cafe in London where the owner (Marco) remembers your name by the time you leave even as he's dealing with a swarm of customers (50/50 local builders and tourists), you should definitely do it because Marco is the best and sometimes the world is charming in miniature but perceivable ways.