London: Day One

Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

For a while, it seemed that was the mantra of our trip. For starters, I nearly forgot our passports, we had trouble getting seats together on our various planes, and our hotel reservation was mysteriously placed under someone named “Peter” – though of course “Peter” wasn’t kind enough to pay the bill. Things turned around quickly, though, once we got here. Kate reminded me about the passports, fellow patrons were nice enough to move and accommodate the two of us sitting next to each other, and the trouble with the hotel reservation was sorted out through a quick e-mail and a confirmation number.

The flights were smooth and, remarkably, ahead of schedule. We arrived in Detroit a half hour early, and in London a few minutes early. We both could have used more sleep – it’s about a seven-hour flight from Detroit to London, and they served dinner and breakfast within that time span – but everything worked out well enough.

Just landed - look at those sleepy kids!

Day One’s schedule was extremely ambitious… in fact, too ambitious. We had planned to do St Paul’s Cathedral, St James Park, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, and a tour of Kensington Palace/Gardens. Way too much! Especially with about four hours sleep for Kate and maybe two for me. And with jet lag. So, we decided to make things easier on ourselves. We opted for Kensington, Hyde Park (the two are adjacent), and a play, Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap (the world’s longest running play – now in its sixtieth year!). A much simpler agenda.

Spooky tree in the middle of an otherwise green field

The famous Peter Pan statue

Kensington Palace!

Kensington Garden and Hyde Park were absolutely gorgeous. Lush, green, spacious. Lots of people out with their dogs, joggers, the occasional picnicker. Just beautiful. And Kensington Palace was quite an experience as well – kind of an immersive, experimental museum. There were the typical displays of clothing, jewelry, and drawings, but much more unique in the presentation. There were audio recordings you could listen to if you sat at a windowsill, a kind of “game” you could play to determine if you were important enough to speak with the King, and even animated films to get you inside the minds of some of the historical figures… Very highbrow. I liked it quite a bit; I think Kate thought it was just a little too “out there” for a museum.

Silhouette - represents Prince William's stream of consciousness during his final days

Eighteen gold ribbons, one for each of Queen Anne's failed pregnancies

Fifty boxes represent all of the people who could have inherited the throne after William died

Last, Mousetrap. Our seats were terrible! Talk about the nosebleed section! (Rick, you could not have sat here – too high!) This was the most vertical theater I’ve ever been to; Kate actually said looking at the stage made her a little dizzy. And we weren’t even in the back – we were midway through the upper level. The play seemed pretty nice – a little dated obviously – but unfortunately we just weren’t able to finish. We both nodded off a bit, and Kate even started to fall asleep toward the end. After a while, we just had to leave. Even with our stripped-down agenda, we were just being too rough on ourselves; better to get a good night’s rest and seize the (next) day.

All in all, a good start. A few bumps early on, but it seems like we’ve made it past them by now. It took a little bit to get used to the public transportation system (the “Tube”), but we’ve already become pretty adept at finding our way around. Here’s to tomorrow!

Delicious!

PS… Oh, by the way, yes – we’ve already had fish and chips with beer. Delicious! (And Kate’s right – the beer is better here. Smoother, more refined for some reason. Kind of like putting a top hat on a squirrel.)