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July 31, 2005
A Walk Around Westminster
The plan is to stay up until about 9:00 PM BST tonight. I’m told it’s the shortest path to whacking your biological clock into synchrony with the local time; don’t sleep on the plane then just stay up until late in the evening. I’ve also heard that it’s a good idea to get a lot of light to help convince your doubtful system that it really is still daytime. Accordingly, to stay awake and get what light there was, I went out very shortly after I arrived to explore the area.
A roughly fifteen minute walk took me down past the Bush House HQ of the BBC, across and across the Waterloo bridge from which I could plainly see nearly all of the landmarks that say “London” to Americans: Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abby and, back the other way, St. Paul’s. I paused in the middle of the span to snap a few photographs (see above) and proceeded to the south bank.
Walking up stream along the The Queen’s Walk I passed the Tate Modern museum and the Jubilee Gardens. After squeezing my way through the scrum milling around the entrance to the London Eye, things became very strange indeed. Between the Eye and Westminster Bridge there appeared a collection of very odd street performers; some commanding an audience, some not, all of them a bit scary.
Crossed back over the Thames via Westminster Bridge; thick with tourists, heard almost no English on my way over, and then turned back downstream along the Victoria Embankment Gardens. These are very nice quiet little alcoves right off of the busy street. A bench was easily found where I could pause and look over my reference map. More signs of recent unpleasantness: I’m not sure if the passing phalanx of assault rifle bearing policemen made me feel safer or more at risk.
The gardens are home to many statues some of whose names they honor I recognize. There’s one to a Napoleonic era minister, whose name I recognized but can not now recall. On my way back up north I passed this statue of Michael Faraday who looks a bit peeved at having become a loo for the local winged rats. One more I run across on my way back to the flat at a church that’s literally an island in The Strand, is in honor of H. C. T Dowding, the RAF commander during the Battle for Britain. He doesn’t actually look all that much like Lawrence Olivier.
One amusing side note to my walk, I had expected to somehow be obviously American and that people would know I’m from the states without having to trouble to ask. Instead, this morning I was asked for directions by somebody taking his nose out of his A-to-Z. "Do you know which way is the Chancery Lane station?" he asked. As it was, just having passed it myself I was able to direct him properly. What’re the odds?
Filed under Life in London.
Posted by eric at July 31, 2005 01:58 PM