multi-pass + oyster + mind the gap

I love London for the things I find when I am not really looking for anything in particular. This goes for any new place to roam, but there is something about London that digs in. My fascination with Elizabeth I absolutely running through me and walking with me every step. As always, the big ones are avoided- I’ve seen them in photographs ad nauseum and one day I will do a world tour of those photo ops, but until then I can see them down the street or in the backdrop. The Colosseum as exception, because duh.

But any place else, it’s everywhere not iconic that I really want to see.

Living in Center City Philadelphia did this. You move to Rittenhouse, Washington Square West, Society Hill, Queen Village- any neighborhood- and you’re moving there from someplace else- and within a month you realize that the city is like a beehive. Each little cell contains its own amount of substance, and you need more than conventional means to determine exactly how that substance relates to the whole. If you can get that. So when I’m elsewhere, I know in advance that I have to walk far and wide to understand what parts comprise the whole. And there are always many.

It’s fall of 2024, and my son is tucked away at an American University. I’ve had a nice first class flight, I like my room, I’m fed, I look cute, and I feel free and good and I’m wandering around. I’ve used the Oyster, so I really have no idea where I am, beyond a name on a map.

By and by, I end up in little neighborhoods I have never heard of, which isn’t difficult because the first time around anyone is blind to the neighborhoods. Which is the point. Discovering a new city or town is best going in the first time with absolutely no reference. Zero. The only thing to know is the streets you need to avoid, beyond the usual. Funny thing is that Croydon is the crossover no-go both stateside and across the ocean- dead, that. I mean there are navigational tools, as understatements, that eventually apply to both- but after a red-eye and the disorientation of finding yourself in a new place, who needs to learn anything by chance, untoward, about a new place? I’ll say this: in the back of my mind is always the hospital. My hometown has one of the best hospitals in the Philadelphia area. And from home base, I could actually run there within 10 minutes if necessary. Anywhere is sus to me when I think of a hospital. I know they are near, but I don’t know them. So Croydon is out, just in case there’s a place I shouldn’t be, a place I don’t know, and I end up getting bonked on my gray head for my Amazon Prime card (expired; I only carry a dummy wallet) and fifty bucks.

One of the great things about being in a city that is so old is that it can still hide things from you. Even with a handheld computer and a brain super good at search phrases, I stop at a little café on Kensington High Street that has only just opened, where I sit outside for a while with a cappuccino and something nice to eat. It is small, comfortable and very much the kind of place where people seem to know each other. Nobody is taking pictures of their food (in spite of the location) or standing around trying to figure out whether they are in the “right” London neighborhood. I like that. I don’t need every experience to be an event. Sometimes I just want to sit somewhere that was accidentally found. Coffee, and out comes the Oyster again. No direction. I just sit for awhile and then decide to get off the Underground.

One of the places discovered is Postman’s Park, tucked away in the City and so easy to miss that I can completely understand why most tourists never see it. There is a memorial there with plaques commemorating people who died trying to save somebody else. I stopped on my first visit to London and read some of them.

Alice Ayres.

She was the daughter of a bricklayer’s laborer, and in April of 1885, she saved three children from a burning house and died doing it. Her plaque actually says that she “by intrepid conduct saved 3 children from a burning house,” something that’s been sitting in my iPhone notes for a few years and that I’ve wanted to use ever since. It is an extraordinary thing to read on a little ceramic plaque in the middle of London. And I did. And when it becomes necessary, my next cat’s name will be Alice. I will try to keep Bella out of my mind. When you know, you know.

I also make sure I have a proper English meal while I am in London for the first time. I have fish and chips, because at some point you have to stop pretending you are too sophisticated for fish and chips. Of course I am not. I’d have fish and chips once a week as I once did if not for genetically high cholesterol. I have afternoon tea because apparently the English decided that drinking tea should require an entire small meal to go along with it. I have the sandwiches, the scones, the jam and the clotted cream, and am happy to participate in the whole thing.

There is something about having such things in England that makes it different from ordering afternoon tea somewhere at home. Maybe it is the surroundings, maybe it is the accent, or maybe I am simply willing to accept that there are some things that don’t need to be improved. The scone does not need to become a deconstructed scone. It doesn’t need to be freaking vegan. It is doing just fine being a scone.

I learn pretty quickly that I cannot just wave down any car that happens to look like a taxi. In London, the black cabs can be hailed from the street when that little taxi light is showing, but ‘minicabs’ have to be booked in advance. It seems like a small distinction until I am standing there looking at cars and trying to figure out which ones I can actually get into.

And later, when I’m in one and there’s a driver who likes to chat, I find out that the black-cab drivers have actually had to learn London. They don’t just turn on a phone and wait for somebody to tell them where to go. They have passed what is called The Knowledge, which requires them to learn an extraordinary number of London’s streets and landmarks. I find that fascinating, although I am also perfectly happy to let somebody else do the navigating while I look out the window. But I’m thinking about storylines that include The Knowledge. How could I not?

yes, ghurka for london + heavy, cumbersome, but american made

The only part of getting to London that is completely sus is getting from the airport into London. There is something about spending seven or eight hours crossing an ocean and then discovering the fu@king Long Walk to baggage, the wait at immigration, and that the last part of the journey involves figuring out which train, platform, ticket, connection or piece of luggage is going to be the thing that may just defeat me.

The Elizabeth line makes getting from Heathrow into London much easier, but I still have that moment of looking at the signs and thinking, Okay. So which way am I supposed to go?

You’d think, my being Virgo this and Virgo that, I would have figured it all out in advance. But I didn’t. And I didn’t on purpose. Because why? An adventure is so hard to have in these modern times. You can figure anything out in advance. All I know is that when my son returns from college, he must come to London with me. He has to see this. Or taste that. There is the experience of a meal in the upper reaches of a big pickle that, when I’m up there with him, I will pretend is my first time. Technically it will be my first time, with him.

Note: he did, we did.

In any case, eventually I got into London, put the airport behind me, and, after a bit of rest and a good meal, I started wandering around. That’s the part I am always there for.

My sort of inside out, back and forth recollection of my first time in London is what it is, but it is the way it plays out in my head. I’ve had the joy of experiencing London twice. I loved it.

And I’m getting ready to go back.

+ thank you eddy spaghetti + for the prada +

i kept my phone in my bag + #truegrit

multi-pass + oyster + mind the gap

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