We’re in the final day of our too brief visit to London. It has been too short but most sweet.

So what have we done in our three full days here? Not much. Just visited the Tower of London, the British Museum (twice for Bill), got a chance to see our daughter’s dormitory and “campus,” rode the Tube, saw two shows, ate at several fabulous restaurants, had a beer in countless pubs, went to the Apple store, shopped and hung out. It’s been a most pleasant visit. So much so that we’ve discussed the possibility of perhaps occasionally beginning our Italy trips with a few days in London and then flying directly to Perugia. Even if it means flying on RyanAir.

There are eight in our group here in London. Moving a group this size around London is a challenge. It’s kind of like captaining a cruise ship. You have to plan your stops, starts and turns well in advance. And in practice we often resemble the Costa Concordia more than the QEII. But for the most part we’ve managed to stay off the rocks and in navigable waters, riding the airport buses, the Tube, double deckers and taxis, as well as just hoofing it.

The Tube is a tourist attraction in itself. It is fast, efficient and pretty cheap, especially if you buy a daily pass and travel a lot. The stations were definitely built in a different era, though, one in which the objective seems to have been to reach the center of the earth. Some of these stations are so deep that when I finally get to the platform I get nervous and look for passengers with pitchforks. We made the mistake a couple of evenings ago of foregoing the escalator to reach the platform at the Covent Garden station, walking down a vast spiral staircase instead. 193 steps. The equivalent of a 15 story building. We arrived on the platform not just tired, but dizzy. Maybe it was just the ale.

The double decker buses are neat. You really see the world from a different perspective as you fight through traffic. From the upper level you really are above it all.

London taxis are the best. They’re roomy, comfortable and attractive and best of all they’re driven by London taxi drivers. London cabbies really seem to know their city and they seem to like it as well. It’s nice to converse with someone who is intelligent, articulate and positive. On our arrival in London (after the airport bus ride from Hell on EasyBus, driven by an Eastern European immigrant lacking in driving skills and in need of anger management training) we were driven to our apartment (called a flat in “English” but actually quite tall) on Cromwell Place. Unfortunately, not being fluent in “English” our cabbie misunderstood us and deposited us on Cromwell Road, quite a distance from our actual address. After ringing up the apartment (which was not really ours) and realizing our (his) mistake, we asked a passing woman whether Cromwell Place was walkable. She looked it up on her phone and told us we’d need a cab, and as if by magic, our cabbie reappeared, his window rolled down, leaning out and saying, “I think I delivered you to the wrong street. Hop back in. Terribly sorry.” What a great way to start our London visit.

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London theatre is rightly famous, along with Broadway. And there seem to be a number of excellent shows in London right now. We saw two of them.

I really can’t say enough about how great Matilda was. I already wrote about in my previous post, but several days later I am still grinning when I think about the performances. A little less grinning when I think back to Sweeney Todd, but because of the subject matter, not the production value. I am more than a little nervous that one of my to do list items when we get back to Rome tomorrow is to get a haircut and a shave.

* * *

In London we have been tourists, just like the rest of hordes that can’t speak the language here. And as such we had to see a few tourist sights. One of them was the Tower of London, the ancient castle/fortress that also served as the royal treasury and sometimes prison. The prison part of it is the most interesting aspect of the visit and the tourism authorities definitely play up that angle, complete with an exhibition of “Torture at the Tower,” a display of infamous torture devices including the rack (works the kinks out of your back for sure) and a metal band that forces the victim to squat in a most uncomfortable trifold position for hours. Please don’t show this one to RyanAir. They could probably double the number of passengers they could fit in their planes, perhaps even getting double duty out of the overhead bins. Our group was pretty interested in these devices, as was the older gentleman in front of us, who looked an awful lot like Dick Cheney.

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We made a brief visit to the British Museum, curated by our daughter Lindsey. The museum in in her neighborhood and she has visited it with her class. It essentially is a giant closet with enormous stuff that Brits have collected (some would say stolen but we’re not going there) over the years. But unlike your or my closet, everything has a little sign on it telling you what it is and where it was taken from. Our favorite, other than the Rosetta Stone (which looks nothing like the computer CD) were the Elgin Marbles, the collection of sculptures originally on the Parthenon in Athens. We are going to be visiting Athens later in this trip, so we thought to check in and see what the Parthenon used to look like.

Our other too brief museum stop was to the John Soane museum, which was Sir John’s residence during his lifetime. Soane was an architect in the late 1700s and a voracious collector of antiquities. His house is literally crammed full of his collectibles, statues and casts of famous works from throughout the ancient world. When you collect enough of this stuff you are considered an academic and a collector. If you live in a trailer and amass snow globes and figurines they do reality shows about your life and call you a hoarder. Sir John was no hoarder, though, and you could literally spend a week wandering around this house-museum. We were fortunate enough to arrive when the guards were displaying some additional works that were hung on panels behind the main walls in the study. The guard unhooked the fastners that connected the panels and held them in place, swung them into the room, revealing behind a series of additional panels with additional paintings. She repeated this several times until the wall opened up into a courtyard, revealing a series of columns and sculptures. Sir John designed these “extra” walls to hold his collection but most of the time the works are hidden behind the main walls. What a treat it was to see this.

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No visit to London, or any place for that matter, would be complete without eating a lot. And we did. London has great Indian food, which we enjoyed our first night. Vietnamese after the theatre was also fabulous, even if we were the only table in the joint. But last night, to celebrate our daughter’s birthday we wanted some place special, and in Roast, we found it.

I had been looking for a traditional British restaurant, something along the lines of Simpson’s on the Strand, a place where you can get thick slabs of roast beef served to you tableside from a silver cart. We had been to Simpsons a few years back, a return engagement from decades earlier, and while it did not disappoint, it seemed to have become a touristy parody of itself. We wanted something traditional yet a bit more edgy. We rolled the dice on Roast, a “modern British” restaurant with good reviews on the web. It was home run (or a “sixer” in cricket).

Perched above the Borough Market near London Bridge, Roast features, what else? Roasted meats. But that is not all. Apparently the market is London’s most famous fresh food market (note to self: visit Borough Market next trip) and this fact apparently has wafted upstairs to the restaurant. Everything we had, everything we saw and everything we smelled was top drawer. Yesterday’s special was roast suckling pig, but after two weeks in Umbria we opted instead for beef dishes, with Suzy and Lindsey enjoying perfectly cooked rib steak served on a cutting board. I had the roast beef, and although it was not served from a silver cart it conjured images of elegance and perfection, of days gone by. Paired with a Bordeaux it was a pretty special evening. I think it was for Lindsey as well.

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So our London trip comes to an end, and just as we were getting fluent in the language. Later today we will return to Rome, which will be our home for a few days. Along the way we will visit some sights, see some old friends, take a culinary walking tour and celebrate three more birthdays. It’s like a homecoming of sorts for us but we’ll miss London.

Ci vediamo (cheers)!
Bill and Suzy