The voyage was long and arduous, but after many hours at 38,000 feet we made it to London! I believe that the novelty and intrigue of being in a new place was the only thing keeping me on my feet during the stretch of time between getting off of the plane and getting to the hotel. I nearly fell asleep in the lobby waiting for my room to be ready! I slept almost as soon as I hit the bed, and woke up at about 8:00PM local time. I did manage to do a bit of adventuring that first day though. Namely, finding a nearby Korean chicken place and a convenience store before returning to the hotel and falling asleep again.
The next day had much more going on, with a panoramic coach tour of London slated for the morning and a walking tour lined up after that. Our tour guide, Molly, enlightened me to all sorts of new knowledge. Some of the most interesting examples are as follows:
- There are actually two cities in the larger structure of London. There is the city of London, which is one square mile where the vast majority of finances are handled (banks, insurance companies, etc.), and there is the city of Westminster, which consists of most everything else. The larger city has 32 boroughs, and, in total, it makes up around 700 square miles!The Great Ormond Street Hospital is a premier children’s hospital, and the author of Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie, donated his royalties from the book to better the location.Fleet Street is named that because of the river that once ran along it. That river is now underground, but you can see it draining under the Blackfriars Bridge at low tide.London, due to its long history, is a city with many layers- like a spongecake, as our tour guide eloquently put it. There are structures and remains from the Romans, and then the Saxons, and then the Normans, and so on, and they all pile on top of each other underneath the present-day surfaces of the city.The Court of Common Counsel for the city of London can change any legislation within a single meeting of the committee, but this is, in part, due to them only holding sway over the one square mile city of London.The river Thames has a drastic swell based on the tides, falling and rising as much as 40 feet.Parliament cannot open without the Queen present, so they cannot technically achieve anything without her, despite her status as a figurehead monarch.
The walking tour was much less organized than the bus tour, or at least it seemed that way. We walked about Piccadilly Circus at around lunch time, and scattered to find restaurants that intrigued our individual interests nearby. On my part, I followed Taylor and Hailey, who were already set on a Malaysian restaurant that one of Taylor’s friends had recommended to her. The place was nice, and the food was great, but in the future, I should make sure I’m genuinely hungry before I buy lunch so I don’t leave any food behind.
To get to and from Piccadilly Circus, and to get to the next portion of the walking tour from King’s Cross back to the hotel, we got our first introduction to the London underground rail system, colloquially known as “the tubes.” Between the maps and different lines overlapping and keeping track of which direction you are supposed to be going in, it all seems very complicated and difficult to decipher to me. And the fact that our group was separated at our very first stop because of a lack of clarity regarding when we should get on the tubes versus wait for the next one did very little to uproot that idea. I’m sure that I’ll get a handle on it with time and practice, but I won’t be surprised if I get lost a few times in the process.
The evening of our second day in London, our group made our way to the Bridge Theatre to see Straight Line Crazy by David Hare. The presence of Ralph Fiennes as the lead had been emphasized to us in earlier discussion of our itinerary, so I was expecting a truly fantastic show of dramatic storytelling. The play was performed on a semi-thrust stage, as I call it, with the 2/3rds of the playing area downstage being a thrust that goes out into the audience and the other 1/3rd of the playing area upstage being wider and more like a proscenium. After watching it, I must say that I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t quite what I expected it to be. In the first act, all of the speaking characters felt larger than life. Robert Moses and the Governor in particular felt like caricatures in their big, blustering behaviors, and I cannot decide whether that works in the show’s favor or against it. On one hand, it amplifies the content being discussed, which might otherwise fail to intrigue an audience that likely consists of very few architects and landscape planners. On the other, it makes the characters a but harder to take seriously, or to relate to what their goals and given circumstances are. The second act felt much more believable than the first, though that might have been a consequence of becoming used to the characters over the first half.
All in all, these first two days were a struggle, though certainly a meaningful one. And that’s without mentioning my lost debit card and the hoops I had to jump through to cancel it and get a new one set up on my phone! I know things will get easier, and I can’t wait to see what London has in store for me!
Theatre in London U of A 
Andrew, I enjoyed reading your first impressions of London and our first play!
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