Montreal, February 2003
We
discovered London in the winter several years ago.
Perhaps
“discover” is not quite accurate; London had been settled and well known for a very long time
before we came along. Nevertheless, Barry was invited to present at a conference
in Brighton, England, in 1996, and we decided to book an additional week in
London as a vacation. We discovered that London is a pleasant place to be in
the winter. We have been going back almost every winter since then ... except
for February 1998, when we decided to spend winter break in Punta Cana, Dominican
Republic.
Now,
London is by no means a tropical winter destination,
although western extremities of nearby Scotland and Ireland, warmed by the Gulf Stream, boast palm trees in some areas. The average late-February temperature
in London is above 10oC, and seems outright balmy
compared to Montreal’s sub-zero clime. The average in Punta Cana is 30oC
and you need high SPF sunscreen all of the time.
There
is a cherry tree growing in front of a house on Portobello Road, on the walk from the Tube station to the
world-famous antique market. This tree is always in flower when we visit
London. Barry has mused whether it may be an artificial tree, but then
remembers that we visit this road in the same week every year. The cherry tree
stands as a beacon of early spring and delights to come.
Departure
We leave
Montreal in the second-coldest winter on record. The daily
maximum temperature is -17oC, with an unmentionable wind chill
factor. Our flight is about one-third booked; however, an Air France pilots’
strike results in some last minute scurrying on the part of Air Canada to
accommodate additional passengers on their Paris and London flights. Indeed,
there are only two check-in agents for two full airplanes, ultimately delaying
out takeoff by a full hour. As it happens, we arrive at Heathrow’s arrivals
hall well past all the other trans-Atlantic flights, and once on the ground, we
are admitted into the UK in mere minutes.
The
internet has been a rich source of information for us. We learned that the A1
Airbus service will bring us to our Kensington hotel. We have used the A2 to Bloomsbury on several previous occasions. We discover at the airport that the A1 service
was discontinued 4 years ago. However, to our pleasant surprise, the London
subway (the “Tube”) provides simple, swift, and reasonable transportation to a
short block from our hotel. (A shuttle bus took us from our cramped Air Transat
flight to our Punta Cana hotel. Fortunately, the bus was air-conditioned, as
the exterior temperature was close to 30oC).
Hotel
We had
used the internet to reserve a hotel room. We decided on a Kensington location
near the Tube and short walks to restaurants and the Victoria and Albert Museum
(“the V&A”). Our 3½-star hotel sounded promising enough. Barry unfortunately
stumbles on a few patently negative reviews of the hotel on the internet a few
hours before leaving (words like “dump” and “crummy”), but decides there is
little we could do at that point. As it happened, Denise’s employer has been
leasing an apartment in London,
and there is always the outside chance of its availability at the last minute
in case of catastrophe.
We
arrive at the hotel, and find it to be clean and moderately comfortable, worthy
of a London three-star rating. It is not luxurious, but we recall
checking into the 4-star Millennium hotel on a previous trip and requesting new
rooms twice until we found a clean one. So much for star ratings – and the
internet, which, as with on-line medical advice, gourmet recipes, and other
nuggets of information, has to be taken with a grain of salt. (Our 4-star hotel
in Punta Cana was modern and clean, with towels thinner than those in London.)
London walks
We
walk – from Kensington to Knightsbridge to Chelsea and back. And that is on the
day we land. Oxford Street. Regent Street. Mayfair. Portobello Road. South Bank. And the Piccadilly Circus – Leicester Square – Covent
Garden axis, which is our
entertainment central.
Shops
sell every sort of merchandise, and shoppers of every nationality abound. Venturing
into Sotheby’s, we see displays of Henry VIII’s household papers soon to be on
sale. Someone kept his authorized shopping and laundry lists for all these
years. The print and used book sellers line the lanes off Charing Cross Road.
One paranoid vendor carries 18th century and later prints – “hold
them by the corners”, “stack them this way”, don’t disturb the order”, “use two
hands”, the rules are endless. Barry wonders why she bothers to display her wares
outside at all and what would happen if he tripped the display stand …
Old Bond Street, once home to fine English tailoring, is now a multi-national
circus of names like Chanel, Ferragamo, and Lauren, catering to the wealthy,
with many tourists flocking into the shops. Barry is more impressed with Jermyn Street for shirts and Savile Row for suits, and buys a tie
on Jermyn Street. We pass Helen Mirren on the street, in her blue
jeans and raincoat and carrying a shopping bag, and are also impressed. In Punta
Cana, we walked to the beach and we walked to the pool and we walked back to
our room. At the hotel complex, there are some handicrafts available from
vendors on the beach. There are duty free shops at the hotel as well as a small
grocery store where we buy bottled water. We were well advised to bring our own
Immodium, though, for the inevitable turista
(diarrhea).
The markets
At 4:00 AM on Fridays, about 100 antique dealers set up in an
open square in Bermondsey, about a 15 minute walk south of the Tower Bridge. We arrive mid morning and there is a buzz in the air
today. The dealers have been advised that about half of the market area will be
returned to green space. Bermondsey is a growing area – several apartment
buildings are under construction, and many of the old working class dwellings
so close to central London are being renovated. One dealer tells us that an
antique market is supposed to be in scruffy surroundings and it will lose its
charm once gentrified. Nevertheless, we
take the opportunity to browse among the old pottery and books and prints and
tools and utensils, picking up a few odds and ends for our collections.
Bermondsey
is a little cousin to Portobello Road Market, one of the largest collections of
antique dealers we have ever seen. Portobello Road, in the trendy Notting Hill area of London, is a magnet for tourists and locals alike. Stalls
line both sides of six blocks of the street. Most stores are antique shops as
well, and a large number of these house many dealers deep into the bowels of
buildings behind them. It is more than an antique fair – browsing through the
stalls and shops is like a trip through British decorative arts of the last two
centuries.
For
real flea market finds, we visit Jubilee Market, at Covent Garden. The junk and bric-a-brac sellers set up alongside
true antique dealers at Jubilee, turning this little corner of Covent Garden into a browser’s delight. We peruse the old jewellery
and prints and pottery. Old, rusted hinges and other implements fascinate, providing
windows into lifestyles long gone. A block away, The Gap seems very much out of
place.
For
the real treasures, we go to the V&A to see Britain’s premier collection of decorative arts, where the
permanent exhibit is now organized as a trip through the centuries. We visit
the Tate Britain for a chronological trip through British painting. But you
cannot take any of this stuff home. That is why we go to the markets.
The food
Eating
in London is challenging for the budget-conscious. Excellent
food is available at prices to severely challenge the average travel budget.
The cuisines are as varied as the members of the former Empire – India, Thailand – and their neighbours – Italy, France, China – as well as the ubiquitous pub with their roast beef
and fish and chips. A hot-and-sour soup and egg rolls for two persons sets us
back $25 CDN. Coffee chains have opened shops everywhere in the City, with
Starbucks running neck-and-neck with many others. We prefer Café Nero for coffee and biscotti,
and Pret à Manger for affordable cafeteria-style fancy lunchtime sandwiches. We
have our favourite pubs, too, for fish and chips.
One
night we decide to have Indian food – we always have one Indian meal in London. As the BAFTA (British Academy Awards) celebration
are underway and Leicester Square is crawling with celebrities and tourists, we
decide to stay near home, and settle on a small side street Tandoori restaurant
opposite the South Kensington Tube station. We feast on an enjoyable mix of
Tandoori and curry, papadams and rice. A white General Bilimoria Sauvignon
Blanc, named after a general of the Indian army who selected it for its
affinity with Indian food, is a delightful accompaniment to the meal. The wine
intrigues us because it is produced in Lézignan, barely 5 kilometers from the
house we rented in Languedoc last year. (Its site is www.generalbillys.com.) Denise tries to
pull off the label and catches the attention of one of the gentlemen at the
next table with her antics.
There
are two fellows, probably is their 60s, dressed in fine English tweed jackets,
seated there. We had overheard bits and pieces of their conversations and could
not help hearing name dropping ranging from Nina Simone to Van Morrison. It turns
out that one of them lived in California for a while. He introduces himself as
Andrew Wickham and says he has a penchant for country music and once worked for
Warner Brothers. He is proud to claim having discovered Joni Mitchell. (As he
tells it, he had been captivated by the song “Circle Game” by a J. Mitchell on
an Ian and Sylvia album, and when he spotted her in a New York club, signed her to Warner Brothers immediately.)
Subsequent internet searches for his name gave minimal results, but we discover
that Andy Wickham, ex VP of Warner Brothers, signed Phil Ochs and Buck Owens as
well as discovering Mitchell. We are both impressed. We never would have gotten
closer to celebrity that night, even at Leicester Square. And certainly not at
the Bavaro Beach Hotel complex in Punta Cana.
But
we were talking of food. The Bavaro Beach complex in Punta Cana serves uniformly beige food. We
were never certain whether we were eating chicken, fish, or goat. The one
exception was the filet mignon, at the upscale restaurant on the site. This was
dark and tough. The waitress did not bother to ask if anything was wrong when
she picked up the supper, untouched, about twenty minutes after bringing it to
the table. Salads were widely available, but, we suspect, washed in tap water,
which brought on the dreaded turista.
The Immodium did not go to waste.
London entertainment
This
is birthplace of English theatre. We cover a range of offerings – indeed, 4
plays in 6 days takes us on an emotional roller coaster ride.
Mamma
Mia!, a marriage of 80s nostalgia, tongue-in-cheek humour, and upbeat staging, is
pure in-your-face entertainment for every generation. Overheard in the lobby --
“I’m probably the only one here who still has all those ABBA albums” – we
imagine a majority of the people there are thinking the same thing. Abba rules,
killing any cultural snobbism we have until… we enter the Art Deco splendour of
the Savoy Theatre for the D'Oyly Carte Company’s HMS Pinafore. Months later, we
find ourselves still humming those ditties. There is nary an Abba fan in sight.
Olivier-winner (think UK Tony) “Stones in his Pockets” delights with its story
of a small Irish town overtaken by a Hollywood crew. It
is told by two actors playing 15 roles. And Dawn French’s one woman “My Brilliant
Divorce” is a solid showcase of this actress’s comic prowess (PBS Saturday
night fans know her as the Vicar of Dibley). Maggie Smith and Judi Dench
together on the same stage – we missed that one for lack of seats. We recall
past shows – “My Secret Garden” and “Blood Brothers” both of which blew the New York productions away; “Oliver” dragging us into the
historical depths of the city we were visiting; “The Importance of Being
Ernest” with Patricia Routledge doing what Patricia Routledge does best; Vanessa
and Michael Redgrave in Noel Coward’s “Song at Twilight”, the list goes on. There
is little to say about Punta Cana here.
Headline news
London, February 20, 2003: The BBC news announcer says: “People across America were focused on their television sets yesterday”. WTC
redux? It turns out that the news item that captivated a nation was the daring
rescue of a dog from some winter ice. Pretty tame stuff, indeed. We switch
channels. As vitriolic as ever, Ann Robinson (host of “The Weakest Link”)
continues to insult, which sent Americans offstage in tears, but barely ruffles
a British feather. On another station, a cooking contest. Then some German
music videos. Whew! What are these people on, anyway? But we have little time
for television; there are many corners of London beckoning us. We walk some more.
Home again
Alas,
though, our week’s break is over and we leave for home, a bit tired, but
culturally recharged. There was little sun, and no sand. Barry recalls 1998, warming
up on the Dominican Republic beach amidst South American and European tourists,
the Las Vegas-style evening shows, the diarrhea, the morning beer and rum
punches, the poverty outside the hotel gates. This could have been in any of a
large number of places, though, and it would have been similar. There is very
little else to say about Punta Cana -- the warmth and the memories faded
quickly into the Montreal winter. Mamma Mia!