intjonathan | Jul. 19th, 2006

Where to begin? London's great art in a day is impossible to soak in, much less describe. The whole picture begins late last night.

The central A/C is broken, making for a sleepless night for most of us. It's funny how something like that can color one's impression of a hotel. The place is otherwise very nice, and the staff have been impeccable, barring a few linguistic misunderstandings. One of my roommates lost his key, and upon explaining this to the front desk, promply answered the door to a mantenance guy offering helpfully to fix the phone. He was sent away confused, and the key was soon found. Perhaps he brought some luck with him in his toolkit. Breakfast was described as "continential," but they have a very different impression of what that means than American establisments. Fresh meats, eggs and fruits greeted us, along with tea service and bussed tables.

I missed this breakfast when it was gone. Then I got another plate.

After breakfast we were introduced to the services of the Underground, and how to decode the maps to get from station to station. Riding around on this thing was probably the most actively interesting part of the day. Seeing such a tremendous and glitteringly efficient transportation system at work was humbling, and I don't think I'll be taking any of Seattle's hilariously stone-age attempts seriously anymore.

When Vicki first arrived in London in the 70s, she debarked her train to find a sign that said Way out!. "I'm gonna like this place..." she thought. Turns out "way out" is English for "Exit".

This system is truly the veins of the city, and was the only way we could get from place to place in enough time to see what we did today. It's managed to have both character and consistency in the experience, and though the heat wave here made sitting in them akin to riding a sauna around town, walking into the sunlight to a completely different end of the city after so little time was always a lovely surprise.

The heat wave was a public health issue, especially during rush hour.

Gloucester Road station

We took the tube from Gloucester Road to Charing Cross to see the National Gallery. Vicki likes to take people through the Modernist wing, with lots of lovely impressionist water lilies, etc. Unfortunately most of the wing was closed, so we got Renoir instead, which was an absolute joy. Paintings are so much more fun in person, as they are designed to be viewed at the proper scale, and with the different effects that vision has when you stand close, far away, sideways, etc. They approach the viewer rather than lying on the page. Renoir's Belshazzar's Feast seemed to glow from across the room, like it had a light of its own right on the wall. It was almost frightening.

We had lunch at a Garfunkel's, which was really boring. Nobody comes to London for the food, especially when they're going to Venice the next day, but flying across the Atlantic and fighting jet lag are enough of a hassle that one feels owed something new. Anyway, if you come to London and you want to eat at their Denny's, Garfunkel's is fine. But try and find an indian place first, they're great.

Half the group split off, and the rest of us went to the British Museum, a 2-stop ride north to Tottenham Court. The BM (lol) has been around since the 1700s. Early in life they wrangled the friezes from the Parthenon in Greece, which have formed the core collection of the museum ever since. Also, since the Brits did most of the early Egypt excavations, they have an extensive Egypt collection, with lots of mummies, sarcaphogai, murals, etc. most of it HUGE.

The ever-popular Rosetta stone.

The center of the musem used to be the British Library, but they moved the library and renovated the center. It now has a tremendous glass roof, absolutely lovely and massive.

The BM group then split completely. Vicki, Bill, Cristine and I went south to Mansion house for dinner and our 19:30 Antony and Cleopatra performance at Shakespeare's Globe. We found a Turkish restaurant that was totally awesome, easily the best food I've had here. I'll have to find a Turkish place in Seattle sometime cause I could definitely go for more of that.

We went across the street to the lovely Globe. It's a big theater building, but the inside dimensions are pretty small. The construction is as authentic as was feasible - it even has a thatched roof, the only one in London today - and the dimensions required for authenticity are much smaller than those required by, say, fire codes.

The stage at Shakespeare's Globe

There are very few modern fasteners in the building. Most of it is dowels and soffits, all constructed by hand.

Our seats were kind of torture devices, more of a short shelf you could lean your bum against while your shoulders went on the rail in front. Chalk it up to part of the "experience." I guess people were smaller at the turn of the century. The performances were top-shelf, and aside from some questionable casting decisions for Antony and his court, it was as good as could be expected from one of the best theater cities in the world.

A short tube ride back to the hotel, which still has no a/c, and I'm done, only to leave in another two hours for the flight to Venezia. Yeah, that's right. Our bus leaves the hotel at 3:30. Some people are just not sleeping. I'll try and catch a couple hours, but then I'll have to pack, etc. Talk about screwing up your jet lag. Our guides are more annoyed than we are, they hate mornings too.

Goodnight, London. Maybe I'll live here someday. I got real comfortable here real fast. The city positively buzzes with life, and there's only a minor language barrier. Very exciting stuff.