England Day 2 – Thanksgiving (Thursday)

We rolled out of the hotel around 8:30 for the start of what may been our busiest day of touring. We headed to the Meredith-discovered aptly named Jubilee Line of the Tube. This line would allow us to avoid the above-ground (with the 8-story stair climb) transfer of the DLR (Docklands Light Rail) line. As a bonus, the best way to the Jubilee Line was across a spiffy pedestrian bridge, and then through a mall-in-a-basement. This was a good-sized mall, but all below ground. It had several coffee shops, and we settled on one that was not the really ubiquitous Starbucks, Caffe Nero. We ate breakfast there three days in a row. They had good pastries and muffins, and I had a couple of quite good hot chocolates over the three days. It also had the small bonus of being within range of a free wi-fi spot, so I was able to use my Touch to get on the internet to check on things (since my sister was expecting her second child, I wanted to check as often as I could).

The mall was a major people-watching point. Since we were at the cafe just before 9:00, we saw all kinds of business types streaming from the Tube stops, and stopping to buy coffee. The style for the women looked quite good – long black jacket over a skirt that stopped above the knees, with black hose tucked into tall boots. I’m not sure if this style has hit Chicago, but it has not come to Cuyahoga Falls yet. The style did change on the weekend – it became a long coat over jeans tucked into boots. It was pretty surprising what a high percentage of women had this look going.

I’m beginning to wonder if the faster pace of urban living keeps people skinny. When I lived in Chicago, I rarely saw fat people. In the five days of being all over London, we only ever saw one fat person. This may also have to do with age – London seems to have a youthful population. I would say that at least 3/4 of the people we saw were in their 20s or 30s.

Once we had munched on our breakfast pastries (one-and-a-half each), we jumped on the Tube and took it to go see Westminster Abbey. We strolled around a good chunk of the outside of this enormous church before we found the north entrance where you are supposed to enter. The only problem is that the door was closed. It turns out that the Abbey opened late on Thursdays, so Meredith nimbly changed gears and direction (zeugma). We headed off on the three-block walk to the Cabinet War Rooms and Winston Churchill Museum.

The War Rooms are the subterranean rooms in which Churchill and the cabinet met during air raids. It was also staffed with officers charged with keeping intelligence on the war. The rooms have been restored to how they were in 1945 (I think some rooms had been left as they were and some were used for storage). The large room used as quarters for many of the officers stationed there was remodeled to house the excellent Winston Churchill Museum. You enter into the bunker, and tour six rooms before you get to the Churchill Museum. After that, you can continue the tour through the rest of the war rooms (another dozen or so rooms).

One of the surprises of the tour was a special exhibit on, of all things, the British postal service during World War 1. This is a topic I have never even thought of, but in the middle of the bunker was a room set off for this display. It was actually quite interesting. It told the history of how post was organized to get mail to the front lines (usually in two days), and of how men were encouraged to sign up, sometimes in the Post Office Regiment. The shortage of men in the post office led to the hiring of women to help with the duties. It really was quite well done.

The Winston Churchill Museum is only a few years old, and so it makes great use of its limited space. Once side of the room has photos of Churchill in various places, and as you step in front of the photo, you trip a beam and the system plays the speech that Churchill gave in that place. There are interactive displays where  you can explore how Churchill built speeches, and displays on historical events that shaped Churchill. The museum covered pretty much everything from Churchill’s life:  his birth and childhood, his early military career that led to his political career, his exit from politics due to a failed invasion of Turkey for which he was blamed, his re-entry into the military in WW1, his return to politics, his warning about Hitler in the 30s, his rise to becoming Prime Minister and the war years, and his defeat in the PM election at the end of the war. The displays continued with his writing career and his return to being PM again, his staunch anti-communist stand, and finally, his death. The centerpiece of the museum is an interactive screen where you can touch any year in Churchill’s life and get a summary of what went on that year. It really is a very good museum, and Mer and I spent about two hours there.

After the museum, we went back into the War Rooms to finish the tour. The last bit of the bunker was crowded – it consisted of small bedrooms for high-ranking officers, a small kitchen and dining room for Churchill, a small bedroom for Churchill’s wife (which she only used three times), Churchill’s rooms, and the secondary and primary map rooms. The maps were interesting because you can still see the pinholes where pins were inserted to keep track of convoys. These rooms were largely left untouched after the war – the museum people even found rationed sugar cubes in one desk drawer when they opened it in the 70s.

The gift store had lots of 40s stuff in it, and was interesting. My favorite poster was a poster warning the public to keep quiet on the issues of the war so as not to accidentally give information away. The caption of the poster was “Be like Dad – Keep Mum.”

We left the War Rooms behind and headed back in the direction of Westminster. On the way, we ducked into the Wesley Cafe (heaven only knows what Wesley would think of that) in the Methodist Center. We got a water and hot chocolate (for Mer and me), and we rested for a few minutes. Somewhat refreshed, we continued on to the Abbey.

Westminster is huge. It is a bit chaotic feeling to me, though, because there are all kinds of nooks and crannies and little rooms all over the place. Most of these places have dead people in them. Westminster is where famous English people get buried, and you can see the tomb of Edward the Confessor, who died an amazing 1000 years ago (in 1065). All of the English royalty is buried there. There are lots of well-connected people who were buried in the floor, and so you end up walking over the slabs that are in effect the tombstones. My favorite tomb by far was one tucked off in a hallway by itself – it was the grave of the plumber for the Abbey from the 1700s. That made me smile – this plumber with the great figures of England. The coronation chair is kept in the Abbey when not in use, which is most of the time. It is the chair Edward the First used in the 1300s, and it has been used ever since. It is also covered in graffiti, courtesy of the schoolboys of the Westminster school in the eighteenth century – so much for respect of antiquity. It has been used by British monarchs ever since.

We looked at all the royal tombs, and we had to trek over to the Poets’ Corner where many of England’s great writers are buried (but not Shakespeare – there is a statue to him, but he is buried in Stratford). We could not get into the gardens – they were closed for the evening; it turns out that some members of the Abbey live at the church, and so the garden is closed early to give them some privacy. We checked out some of the other outlying areas of the Abbey including a small, old room that used to be a treasury, and a small chapel space that was quite nice (and quiet). There was also a gift shop/small museum that had some of the monarchs’ wax effigies on display. We tried to find the science corner (where Newton is buried), but could not find it, and it was getting late.

The Abbey has Evensong every night of the week, and we decided to stay for it. How often do you get to hear a service in a great church? I overheard someone saying that if you were near the front of the line you could sit with the choir in the quire (the place where the choir sits and sings from). So, I lined up 30 minutes early, and Meredith went off to find a bathroom as directed by the American couple behind us. While she was gone, I got to chatting with the couple. They were from South Carolina, and the man was a lawyer and the woman a teacher. They asked after what Mer and I did, and I told them we were at CVCA. The man was originally from Cleveland, and after some more discussion, we found out that he is the cousin to the woman who does payroll at CVCA. Small world. In a small irony, you had four Evangelical Christians waiting to go to Evensong at Westminster, and we looked down and saw we were standing on Darwin’s grave. We had found the scientists’ corner of the Abbey! Small world indeed. It turns out that the South Carolina couple had had their passports stolen and the American embassy was closed on Thanksgiving. They still seemed to be enjoying their stay, and I hope they were able to get things taken care of on Friday.

The service opened, and we were allowed inside the main part of the church. We did get to sit in the quire, and that was quite exciting for me – it is not often you worship in a great church, let alone be with the choir in one. The choir and ministers came in, and Meredith confessed to me later that when she saw the boys in their robes and frilly collars, her first thought was of the book Lord of the Flies. This thought did not occur to me, although I can certainly see where she was coming from.

The service was lovely, and the acoustics were spine-tingling. I’m only sad that there was no congregational singing – I wanted to casually drop into conversations that I had sung in Westminster and leave it vague. The prayer time was very touching. The minster prayed for America’s Thanksgiving (not celebrated in Britain), for the president and president-elect, and that America would be a leading force for freedom around the world. I was quite touched – I can’t say I have ever heard anyone pray for the Queen or for England on this side of the pond.

We left the Abbey a little after 6:00, and we headed to Victoria Station using our ever-handy Tube passes. We wanted to get a double-decker bus tour of London by night, and those left from the station at 7:30. We did need some food first, so we went to a Chinese place nearby, and had some good and hearty food that was also fairly cheap. I have to confess that after trying to use chopsticks for about one minute, I gave in to using a fork. We finished up our meal and headed back to the station, only to find we had just missed the tour. We had known it was going to be close, so we were not too surprised. We figured we’d catch it the next day, and so we jumped back on the Tube and went back to the Big Ben/Parliament/Westminster area. It was time to stare at the Eye.

The Eye is an attraction that London put up for the Millennium celebration. It is an enormous Ferris Wheel, which is so large the operators call it an “observation wheel.” Regardless, it is the largest in the world. It is the highest observation point in London at 135 meters (443 feet), and it takes a full 30 minutes to go around. The wheel has wire spokes instead of steel beams (like a giant bicycle wheel), and so it gives a very convincing profile of being just a giant rim. Needless to say, Mer wanted to go on this, and we sneaked in just at 8:00 (last “flight” was at 8:00). The room you get in is enclosed on all sides – it is like an oval bubble, and it looked as if it could hold about 30 people comfortably. In fact, the carriage ahead of us was full of suit-clad business people, complete with picnic baskets and champagne glasses.

The Eye is remarkably smooth – there is no sensation of movement at all. In fact, once we got two-thirds of the  way up, I could not tell we were moving at all because the nearby objects had fallen away. For about 5 scared-of-heights minutes, I was convinced we had stopped and were going to be in air longer than 30 minutes. Happily, that was an illusion, and we never stopped moving. For the top one-third of the ride, I needed to stay seated on the bench in the middle of the car, and occasionally had to look at my feet to stop from being scared. Once the nearby objects came back and I could see motion, I was able to stand, but not too closely to the glass. The night scene of London was very pretty, and you could see lights in all directions. I especially liked looking down on the Thames and on Big Ben/Parliament.
 
After we got off the Eye, we wanted dessert, but found that everything in the area was closed. Even the local McDonald’s had closed at 9:00. Who knew? We headed back to Victoria Station, figuring that we would have a good chance of finding things open near a major train station. We were right – most of the food places were open, including a booth that sold cookies. We picked up a dozen cookies to eat back in the hotel room, but then I decided I wanted more. We had been seeing ads for McFlurries, which are McDonald’s version of the Blizzard, and that looked as if it would hit the spot. So, we headed to the adjacent mall, to the food court, where we found an open McDonald’s, and we ordered two McFlurries. The mall food court was hopping (although the stores were closed), and it was a decent place to people watch. I ate my treat, and since Meredith is a slow ice cream eater, I decided it would be better to get another McFlurry than to simply watch her eat hers. Granted, I did not need it, but reason not the need.

Happily queasy, we took our cookies back to the Tube and headed home to the hotel. We got back without incident. We decided to try the television, to see if there was anything on that we could watch while we munched on cookies (and yes, we did eat all 12). I was flipping though the stations, and not having much luck, when I came across the Dallas Cowboys/Seattle Seahawks game. Since England is five hours ahead, I was getting a chance to see American football on Thanksgiving! That would do nicely. We dove into the cookies. We both agreed they were good, but not as good as we make. Mer’s theory is that they did not use brown sugar (something that Europe is lacking in for some reason). They were just less sweet than they should have been.

I got the wonderfully odd experience of having a British half-time show. It had one Brit and two Americans, and the British guy was saying all the right things, but it still sounded really weird. After half-time, we switched channels and watched a few minutes of French TV (which Mer enjoyed), and then switched again and watched a few minutes of a wonderful Italian talk show where all the guests talked over each other all the time. It was wonderfully chaotic.

And with that, we wrapped up our little British Thanksgiving at about 11:00.