Episode Nine: In which our heroine lives it up in London

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Including her adventures...
Strolling through Hyde Park
Checking out the "bargains" at Harrods
Lunching in Leicester Square
Hitting the markets on Portobello Road
Coming incredibly close to seeing Ewan McGregor
Watching the Changing of the Guards
& seeing some of London's history
... among others

I arrived in London in the early evening of December 9th and made my way to Dean's Court Hostel, where I was given a room with two other Australian girls, both working in London and living at the hostel long-term. The entire place was full of Aussies, and when I say full, I mean that not a single person from another country was there, including the workers. There was one old English guy hanging about the place who would sit down next to people at breakfast and make random comments like "Mmm, steak and kidney pie, eh?" when we were eating eggs on toast. I found out the full story on him later - he was living there rent free due to the "right of the squatter," having been there long enough before the current owners purchased the building to have some claim to it. Because of the time difference between Tokyo and London, it felt like 4:30 in the morning at only 7pm. I forced myself to stay awake until 8:30, until I couldn't hold my eyes open and fell asleep.

After waking up for a couple of hours at 2am, I was awake for good at 8 and had a nice cooked breakfast of toast, eggs and spaghetti-Os. I then set out to wander the streets of London for a while. The hostel is in Bayswater, about two blocks from Kensington Park, and it was a gorgeous morning. It was freezing cold, but the day was bright, and there was a mist hanging over the tops of the trees and around the lake. I spent a few hours wandering through Kensington and Hyde Parks, stopping to look at various statues and monuments, and watching people walking their dogs or jogging. I went to an exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Park, where an installation work by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov had been set up, called The House of Dreams. It consisted of a white space with separate curtained areas (also white), with white beds inside them, looking through windows out onto the park. The idea was to lie on a bed and contemplate being a part of the space, both looking out on the world as though in a dream and having the world watch you dream as they walked by. It was quite interesting, although I found it difficult to get used to the idea of lying on a bed where everyone walking by outside could watch me. I'm not sure if it was worth what it would have cost to set up though, because I didn't really get any new insights into life out of it.

In Hyde Park, I was joined by yet another annoying male, who kept trying to use the fact that I was wearing soft, fluffy gloves as an excuse to hold my hand. After my past experiences with annoying guys, I was quite firm with him, and managed to shake him off before making my way towards Harrods for a spot of shopping. I'll now take a moment to stop and say how much I love London. Being my first time in Europe, or indeed anywhere with an extended history, it was amazing to walk through a city where every street is filled with gorgeous buildings, rather than just a couple of "good" streets surrounded by roads with regular, modern houses. I spent ages staring at the details of the architecture, and thinking about how great everything looked. Added to the gorgeous trees just starting to lose their autumn colours, the street names straight off of a Monopoly board, the red telephone boxes everywhere and the double decker buses passing by, it was a pretty incredible walk. Harrods was a fantastic shopping experience too. It had everything from clothes to food to jewellery, all in a huge building filled with artistic rooms in all different styles. They even had live ice skaters on a rink in the window as part of their Christmas display, which I thought was pretty incredible.

After Harrods, I went back to the hostel to meet my cousin Laura, who is currently working in Eton. We headed to Leicester Square to have a look around and pick up some tickets for the theatre that night. The original plan was to go and see Mary Poppins, but we realised when looking through my London Guide for December that Ewan McGregor would be appearing in Guys and Dolls, and changed our plans. Spending a little more than we had planned on the tickets due to the star quality attached to the show, we spent the rest of the day in excited anticipation of our brush with fame.

Leicester Square was great. They had a fairground set up in the middle with rides and sideshows, and lots of little cafes and pubs in the surrounding area. We ate some lunch at a cosy little restaurant before making our way towards Notting Hill for a spot of shopping at the Portobello Road markets.

I really felt like I was at home in London, despite never having been there before. Apart from recognising many of the street names and train stations from Monopoly, I knew a lot of the places from the number of movies I've seen that had been shot there. Everywhere I went, I kept thinking "That's the train station from Harry Potter," or "The girl went there in Love, Actually." Portobello Road market for me was straight out of Notting Hill, and despite not recognising much from watching the movie years earlier, it was amazing. The colours and people everywhere made the market really lively, and there were lots of interesting and unique things for sale. I bought an unusual ring I love, made of colourful beads and twisted copper wire, and if the exchange rate between the Australan dollar and the pound wasn't so bad, I would have spent a lot more. After spending a while wandering through the throngs of people, we went to a couple of Laura's favourite London stores on the way to the Piccadilly Theatre.

It was quite an exciting experience to be watching a musical in London. Our seats were towards the back of the theatre, but we had a good view because the rows were steep and quite close together. We settled back and had a look around, sneaking peeks at the program the people in front of us were reading, before realising that Ewan McGregor didn't appear to be in any of the photos. Thinking we may have just missed him, we watched as another man went through his program, and still no Ewan. Just before the show started, I went to ask the usher what was happening, to be told that Ewan had left the show on the previous Saturday, and someone else I'd never heard of would be playing his role. Apparently his presence until the 3rd of December had made advertising him as the star on full page ads in the December issue of every London Guide quite legitimate. So we were fairly disappointed, but sat back to watch the performance anyway. I'd heard of Guys and Dolls before but never knew what it was about, so it was good to finally see it, and I really enjoyed it, despite Laura and I lamenting over how much better some of the songs would have been if Ewan had been singing them. My jet lag started to catch up on me after the interval, and after struggling to keep my eyes open during the second half of the performance, I realised that I needed some sleep, so we headed back to the hostel.

The following day we were treated to pancakes for breakfast. Having a hot breakfast cooked for me was definitely one of the highlights of staying at Dean's Court, as well as being right next to the park. Laura and I set out after breakfast and decided to do some walking, passing by Kensington Palace and wandering through Hyde Park on our way to see some of the sights of London. It was another gorgeous morning in the park, and despite the freezing weather and the need to warm up with cups of hot chocolate, it was a really nice walk. We saw quite a few cute little dogs out for their morning exercise, and even a tiny kid who didn't look old enough to walk zooming along on his scooter, which was quite impressive.

We arrived at Buckingham Palace to see crowds of people around, and realised that we had unexpectedly made it right in time for the Changing of the Guards. We elbowed our way into a fairly good position ready for the show. The ceremony was quite interesting, complete with the guards' own band, a ceremonial opening of the gates and a march through the streets.

We spent the rest of the morning and the early afternoon wandering around London, seeing various famous sights. We chatted to the Australian doorman at the Ritz hotel, ate a great bowl of olives while waiting for the pizza that our Australian waitress served at a restaurant, and saw such sights as 10 Downing Street, Trafalgar Square and Big Ben. It wasn't too hard to imagine that half of the people in London were Australian, and I later was told that a fortieth of the Australian population live there, which wouldn't be too much of a stretch.

Late in the afternoon, we collected our bags from the hostel and picked up some of Laura's things from her friend's place before heading to station to catch a train to Eton for the night.

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Photos

Telephone Box
Laura and me

Tree
Kensington Park

Waterloo
Finally facing my Waterloo

For Lindsay
The Park Guards drive Mitsubishis

Comments

[Rhys]

New proposal
I hear that they're actually considering opening an 'English' themed pub in London now. Apparently people are starting to get a bit confused by the fact that every singly pub inside the M25 is managed by and staffed with Australians. Even the Kings, on Parliament Square!

[Jon and Jenny]

Glad that you liked London. We ran into lots of Poms in India and Sri Lanka, where their British pound can buy a meal and a pint of lager. No wonder they've left Britain to the Aussies!