April 20th

I was going to start this post with an apology for taking so long to write... but eh. I don't feel like apologizing. paha. SO. Here, without further interruption, is an account of our first and only full day in London.

That Friday morning, Kate and I started the very good habit of waking up at 7 o'clock. Of course, we didn't end up leaving our room for quite a while - we both have the rather bad habit of being slow movers before we've had our coffee. Sometime around 8, we headed upstairs to the dining hall (our room was downstairs from the ground-floor, but we weren't in a basement or anything because we still had a window. Not sure how that worked.). I'd read reviews online about the hotel, which said that the place was nice enough, but the breakfast was to die for. They weren't kidding. Kate and I still dream about that breakfast buffet - and we were lucky enough to have it for TWO mornings. :D We were out the hotel door well before 9 o'clock, and it was only a ten minute walk (or so) to the tube station at Stonebridge Park. About 30 minutes and a few tube lines later, we exited a train at Westminster Station and headed toward the stairs that led to the street. We were talking about something - I forget what, but it was probably a few self-congratulatory comments about how successfully we'd navigated the underground. We reached the top of the stairs, and we both stopped instantly. Because there, right across the street from us, were the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben in all its tall, golden glory. We got out of the way of foot-traffic and stood next to a pillar, staring up at the clock-face for about five minutes without saying a word. Earlier that morning while I was waiting for Kate to wake up, I'd been going over the schedule and the best routes for getting from point to point... but at that moment, when we were actually THERE in the heart of London, I realized that it didn't matter where we went or where we didn't get to go. Because whatever we saw would be pretty darn magic.

We walked across the Thames, taking our time because there was so much to look at. The Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, the Eye of London, a few really cool-looking hotels, fabulous statues, and beautiful bridges are all just THERE and it's hard to know where to look. When we crossed Westminster Bridge and walked along the Thames to get a proper view of all of it, and then we crossed back over Lambeth Bridge to go back and see Westminster Abbey up-close. That was probably the most expensive thing we did during our whole trip - seeing the abbey, that is - but it was so worth it. It was also the only place where I really lamented not having a tour guide. Because there's SO MUCH THERE, but no amount of sign-reading will do the history justice. It was amazing, though, to see the graves of all the kings and queens I've read about in history and seen Shakespearean plays about. Truly incredible. Also, in the main chapel area behind the seating, there are the graves of many incredible people - Chaucer, Lewis Carroll, Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters (all buried together), Neville Chamberlain (ehh), Winston Churchill (okay, we actually didn't find him - but he's THERE, somewhere), Darwin (also there, but also not found by us), Charles Dickens (I found him), Handel, Henry James, Kipling, Longfellow, Dr. Livingstone (I presume), Shakespeare (AHHHHGGG, we didn't find him either!), Oscar Wilde, and T.E. Lawrence (also not found, though not for lack of trying) - just to name a few. A lot of them have shrines that are in the walls or in the wings of the church, but many are just slabs on the ground with names written across them. But in the heavy foot-traffic areas, the names are so worn down that a lot of them are illegible, which is really sad. I wonder if someday they'll put some sort of covering on the floor to preserve them - like glass casing or something. Weird. We were there for 2 hours, but we could have stayed for so much longer. One of the things that I thought was really neat was how much the people at the abbey emphasize the fact that it is, above all, a place of worship. On the hour, someone comes onto the speakers and asks everyone to stand still in silence and bow their heads. They say a prayer over the speakers and however many hundreds of people that are in the church are suddenly praying together. They probably have a few prayers that they repeat on a cycle throughout the day, but the one that was said when Kate and I were there couldn't have been more perfect. It was a prayer for the people that we love, wherever they are in the world - for their protection and comfort. Afterward, an announcement was made about a special prayer service in St. Edward's Chapel (in the heart of the Abbey) and it was open to whoever wanted to go. So we went along to that, with about fifteen or twenty others. After that, we walked around the interior of the church one more time and then - rather regretfully - headed back out to the gray and windy world outside.

There was a slight break in the rain as we walked from Westminster Abbey to the Imperial War Museum, so we stopped in a chapel courtyard near the river to have our lunch (the remains of our bagels, ham and cheese - all sliced with our teaspoons, of course). By the time we finished, the sky was rumbling with thunder - but it didn't start raining for a while yet. We found the Imperial War Museum when the sky was at its darkest gray, and hung out in the front yard for awhile. We didn't go inside, because we were short on time and cash - but Kate wanted to see the piece of the Berlin Wall that is out in front of the museum, and it was worth the pilgrimage. That particular section of the wall is about a 3'x7', and it's covered with a graffiti image of a screaming face with the words "CHANGE YOUR LIFE" written across it. While I walked around the exterior of the museum and examined the huge long-guns and bomb shells in the yard, Kate stood in front of the wall, just staring at it. I'm glad she saw it - I can remember, probably close to ten years ago, how obsessed she was with the Berlin Wall and its art. I think that was what got her into art in the first place - the idea of an oppressed people finding a voice through imagery.

Just after that - or maybe it was just before? - we went to a cathedral along Southwark Street, believing it to be Southwark Cathedral. I'd never heard of it, but Kate wanted to find it because apparently it has beautiful windows and it was where Shakespeare reportedly worshiped. We found a church - and we went in, and spent quite a while walking around inside of it. Although, this is slightly embarrassing - I literally just now discovered that the church we went to wasn't Southwark Cathedral. I have no idea what it was - just some random church, I guess. But I don't think I'll tell that to Kate... I think it would make her sad that we were wrong. It doesn't really matter, though - it wasn't a spectacular church, but it was a nice stop and we got to hear a choir practicing. So that's alright. Just... slightly embarrassing. paha.

HA! Okay, I just discovered that it was Christchurch of Southwark that we saw. Just thought I'd clear that up...

After our stop at the church, it wasn't far to the banks of the Thames. I was looking for the Globe Theater because I knew it was close - what I wasn't expecting to see, however, was the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral across the river. St. Paul's. Oh my goodness. It kind of cast a spell on everything about that day - I'm not sure if that's because of the sheer beauty of the church, or the history of it, or its close association with Mary Poppins... but I loved it. Anyway - before we crossed over to that, we waved hello to the Tate Modern and the GLOBE THEATER. I'm rather thankful, first of all, that we didn't go to the Tate - I like art and all, but modern art isn't really my favorite thing... and if we'd gone in there, I'd never have been able to pull Kate out. Thankfully they were featuring some heinous artist that she hates, so she wasn't particularly moved to go in. (It was Damien Somebody - that guy who made the crystal skull.) Then I saw it - Shakespeare's Globe. Which is nothing like a globe at all - but still. I was so happy to see it. I can't imagine spending an evening out at that theater in its heyday - seeing one of the tragedies, or maybe one of the romances with somebody you love, and then walking along the river afterwards for hours to talk about it. I wonder how many people actually did that...

We crossed over the Millennium Bridge - the one that gets all twisted and broken during the opening scene of one of the Harry Potter movies - and approached St. Paul's. You can see the dome straight ahead of you as you cross the bridge. OH! And you know what else you can see, down the river to your right? The Tower Bridge. It's incredible. We ambled down to St. Paul's and spent an appropriate amount of time staring at it with ridiculous grins on our faces. I think I might have been humming "Feed the Birds" half the time - or maybe I was just thinking about it. I'm not sure. We wanted to walk to the Tower Bridge from there, but we strayed from the river and ended up going in the wrong direction. By that time it started raining really hard... and we weren't clever enough to have an umbrella with us that day. (Or really, any given day of that whole week.) But it didn't really matter that much - we were already wet. We just got a bit more... soaked, is all. Anyway, eventually we wound our way back to the river and began the trek in the correct direction. I had no idea about how the city was laid out before I saw it - GoogleMaps can only offer you so much information - so I was completely surprised when we came to the Tower of London on our way to the Tower Bridge. Well, actually, first we hit London Bridge - which, despite all of its fame, is not really that ornate or interesting. In fact, I don't think I would have noticed anything special about it if it didn't say "LONDON BRIDGE" in big white letters along the side. Kate was more taken with the sign below that, which said something about Fishmonger's Street or Market or Wharf or something. Anyway, London Bridge looked pretty sturdy and didn't seem like it would fall down anytime terribly soon - just in case you were worried. So - the Tower of London. The Tower of London is actually more like a compound of several very small towers. I'd be interested in reading more about the history of that place... I know that a lot of famous people were kept there as prisoners, but I'm not sure how or when or why. We didn't pay to go inside, because that is also outrageously expensive... but we were able to walk around the exterior of the buildings, to a certain extent, and that was cool. On the opposite side of the Tower(s) of London, there are a few small park benches that face the river and the Tower Bridge - which stands, crossing the Thames, just downstream from the Tower. We sat on one of these benches in the rain, staring out at the Bridge, for about a half hour. It wasn't raining too hard, but thunder was rumbling rather incessantly and I saw lightening a few times. Which made us think that perhaps crossing a structure made mostly of metal wasn't a good idea at the moment. So we stayed put, and I'm so glad we did. I memorized the placement of everything I could see - or at least I tried. Even now, it feels close enough to my memory that I can just imagine myself there when I close my eyes. Maybe it'll stay that way, even months or years from now. Sometimes I can still imagine that I'm standing on Charles Bridge in Prague, and I haven't seen it for almost a year.

Anyway, it wasn't even dinner-time by that point, which I think is pretty incredible. There I was, a few days earlier, worried that we wouldn't be able to see everything we'd planned to see - and we had the whole evening before us. Unfortunately, we were both also wanting to cut our feet off because they were hurting so badly. We also hadn't made plans for dinner, and London is an incredibly expensive city to buy anything in... so we decided to wait to have dinner until we got back to our hotel. For the time remaining, however, we hopped on a train bound for Tottenham Court Road Station, and eventually (we were a bit directionally challenged that day) found the British Museum. Of all the places we went that day, that was definitely the most rushed - but you know what, we were exhausted and it's kind of an overwhelming place anyway. We enjoyed what we saw in two hours, but by the time we left the museum, our feet were pretty much ready to fall off. After three or four line changes, we arrived back at Stonebridge Park Station and we survived the ten minute walk back to our hotel. Before going inside, though, we stopped at the next-door Tesco to buy more provisions. I forget what we did for dinner... but I think it's a safe guess to say that we had bagel sandwiches and two more Stella's.

Kate fell asleep soon after 9 o'clock, and I took a shower. It took almost 6 minutes for the water to gain any heat. I honestly don't remember much after that... I must have lost consciousness as soon as my head hit the pillow.

April 19th

Hello! First of all, I'm sorry that I was a lousy writer this week. And by "lousy" I mean basically nonexistent. It took me a few days of queasiness and sleep deprivation to figure out my land and time-zone, and then somehow life just got really busy. The nice thing about that is that I've been keeping active and seeing a lot of my friends. The not so nice thing is that I haven't had a chance to sit down and WRITE. Which is why, on this lovely Saturday evening, I sit in an easy chair with a bowl of pasta and my laptop on the table before me - ready to begin the update.

This first post is a bit of a cheat, really, because I actually wrote this journal entry on our first night in London. So all I'm doing right now is copying my words from page to screen. I will add in the details where I see fit, however, and then rely on my memory for the days which followed that Thursday.

8:55 PM
We made it! Against all odds. I'm sitting next to Kate on our hotel bed (not sure why we booked one double bed instead of two twins?). She is lying rather peacefully, snoring loudly and occasionally sleep-talking about corners. Apparently she didn't sleep last night because she was so worried about us not finding each other today at Heathrow. Which very nearly happened, and which is a tragic novel in itself that I will get to in a moment.

I woke this morning just before my alarm clock went off at 5:30. I was wide-awake immediately, but was still surprised at how pitch-black it was outside. I finished packing and getting ready (and, by the way, I left my adapter and converter in the wall in my room in Dublin... soooo now my appliances are useless. Including my camera, if it dies!), enjoyed breakfast and a cup of tea, and was out the door at 6:45. I walked to the bus stop in Dalkey to catch the air-coach to DUB, and it was such a nice walk. The temperature was just around freezing at that point, but the sun was just coming up over the houses down the street and I was walking towards it the whole way. I was at the stop by 7, on the bus a few minutes later, and then I settled in for the hour drive. I can't remember much about the airport - it feels like ages ago. I do remember that I had a window seat in the very last row of the cabin, next to a nice old British couple who tried to give me tips on how to get from Terminal 1 (where we were landing) to Terminal 5 (where Kate was). The woman seemed to think my mission a brave and impossible one, because as she said, "We tried to get from 1 to 5 last year and got hopelessly lost for hours!" Great. I remember, too, that I was fighting sleep the whole time - and that it was so cloudy and gray outside that I couldn't see anything except during take-off and landing. About the time that the British couple was making me feel a bit panicky about the airport, we landed. I found the Underground easily enough and got to Terminal 5, thinking that the worst was over. Ha.

Suffice it to say, culture differences will be our downfall. Kate and I had arranged that we'd meet at her gate, which is a safe place to find people in American airports. The trouble was, in Europe, you CAN'T meet people at their gates without a boarding pass of your own. Come to think of it, I should have known that after my hectic and harrowing adventures at the Dublin Airport... but I forgot. So Kate, true to our bargain, hung around Gate 17 for an hour while I prayed that she'd find out that she HAD to come out for me to find her. We both apparently spoke to every airport employee in the country. If only ONE person had contacted a fellow employee on the opposite side of the gate, or if they had compared notes in some way, we would have found each other just fine - but nobody thought of that. I knew that Kate would wait at her gate until I found her, because that's what she had promised to do... so I resigned myself to the fact that my first day or two or three in England may very well be spent waiting in the airport for my sister to give up and come out. Anyway - it's all too terrible and stressful and depressing to recall. The main thing is that almost three hours after Kate's plane landed, she came out the gate marked "International Arrivals", where I'd been looking for her in every group that passed by. I ducked under the fence and ran to her. We hugged, we cried, we laughed... we were a whole movie scene all on our own, only better - because our happiness was real.

Even now I can't believe she's here. It's so odd and out of place - and even though, so far, London has been a series of wrong turns, sore feet and cloud-bursts, her presence makes me feel like I am home.

We took the Tube from Heathrow to the city, and took a bus further in. We got off too early, though, and spent the next hour wandering the streets of Northern London in the pouring rain. That, however, is another tragic saga that doesn't need telling. But eventually we found our hotel, and we let our clothes dry for an hour or two while we recuperated in our room. Then we walked to the corner Tesco (I do love that handy place) and bought a bag of plain bagels, a block of white cheddar, ham, and two bottles of Stella Artois - tonight's dinner and tomorrow's lunch. We are so ingenious, by the way. The only instruments for dining we had in our room were two cups, two saucers, and two little teaspoons - so we used the spoons to slice our cheese and bagels. It was lovely, eating our humble (but creative and well-earned) dinner on a bed in a London hotel on a rainy afternoon.

Tomorrow we've got big plans and a crazy itinerary. Hopefully we'll get to see it all... but right now, I'm content to sit here next to one of my very favorite people on earth as she dreams of turning corners.

Begin

See, there's a sun in the sky,
And a moon that will take us til morning.
When are you gonna stand?
Stop and begin this moment.
Hey, let go.
Let go.

Well my friends, this is it. May 2nd is arriving in a half hour, and I will be leaving Dublin at 10. Kate and I said goodbye to Carole and the boys tonight, because we'll be catching our bus long before they wake up. Ray is taking us to the station, so there's one goodbye to go. I've gotten better at leaving, but I'm still horrible at goodbyes. I wish that for once I could say how thankful I am to someone without having to leave a note that I feel says it better. Oh well. I think they know.

Today was a pretty great last day. Kate and I had been thinking of going back into Dublin city, but there was a steady driving rain that lasted ALL day... plus, yesterday was a pretty great and appropriately Dublin-y farewell to the city, we both felt. So we decided to make today a crazy nature day, and spent all afternoon wandering around in the pouring rain. It took me hours to thaw. First we walked up Killiney Hill - which was also an appropriate farewell thing to do, since that's where I went on my first whole day in Ireland. The air was so white and wet that you could barely make out the port, but the hill took on its own charm and beauty in the rain. I think that's one of the really amazing things about Irish landscapes - they're so versatile. Any weather, any season - it's always different, but it's always incredible. And I like that it's different; It makes it impossible to compare something from day to day. There's no point in drawing comparisons between things that are of equal beauty. Anyway, so we went up the hill and ran around for awhile, and then we walked back to the Speers' house to add some more layers to our wet and cold little selves. That done, we walked to the DART station and hopped on a train bound for Blackrock - the station just above the bay where the tide draws back all the way in the afternoons. Every time I go into Dublin, I see a few people waking out on the sand in that bay, and I've always wanted to go - but I never thought ahead enough to buy another ticket. Today, however, Kate and I made it our singular goal to get out there - so we did. We got off the train, crossed the tracks and hopped a wall, and sat on some cement steps overlooking the bay for awhile. We'd bought a coffee cake on the way over, and we demolished it between the two of us there. We then took off running along the wet sand of the empty bay, and stayed for a good long time. It was completely freezing cold and windy down there, but it was beautiful. See? Incomparable.

After we'd had our fill of wet sand, rising tides, and many starfish in puddles, we hopped back on the train and rode it into the village of Dalkey. There we picked up an apple pie from a bakery, and went into a florist shop to create a bouquet for Carole. I'm not exactly sure what the flowers were called that we picked, but it ended up looking GORGEOUS. I know we got some white carnations, and 3 orange gerbera daisies... but we also put some lovely yellow flowers in there, and I'm not sure if they were some kind of small tulip or what, but they were beautiful. The florist arranged them all into one bouquet, complete with a yellow ribbon, and the final product was probably the most cheerful thing I've ever seen. I wish I'd gotten a picture. Actually, I amend the statement: I think that Kate and me, walking down the streets of Dalkey with an apple pie and a spring bouquet is the most cheerful thing. Carole was by the door when we walked up the driveway, so she opened it up for us, and you should have seen your face when we handed her the bouquet and Kate said, "Happy Tuesday."

After a shower, I spent the rest of the afternoon packing - a job which I've only just finished. We had dinner all together, followed by our pie, and then we sat around discussing every subject under the sun. I'm going to miss the dinner conversations in this house. We said goodbye to the boys and they went to bed, and then the 4 of us watched CSI, as is custom on Tuesday nights. And then we said goodbye to Carole... which was much harder than I thought it would be. I finished packing, and even though I'm not really tired anymore (you should've seen me this afternoon, though - I almost fell asleep on the DART), I'm going to try to force myself to get some sleep. Kate's already been out for an hour. What an old lady she's become. Sheesh, I had to think of the jet-lag she'll be suffering from next week... she only just got used to THIS time zone!

I'm waking up in 6 hours. Eesh. It'll be a long day tomorrow, but a good one. Good, because I'll be sitting between a window and one of my favorite people on the planet.

And I'm coming home.

California, I'm coming home!