Accidental London

The sound felt like it was shaking me up inside, vibrating around inside my vital organs. I looked at Andrew and he smiled with a look that said, “This is so cool!” 

Earlier that day we’d been on our way to the Victoria & Albert Museum and Museum of Natural History but had walked there a little quicker than we’d anticipated and had 15 or 20 minutes to kill before either building opened for the day. Being in the world’s most exciting city, we thought we’d wander a bit and soon found ourselves wandering north to the Royal Albert Hall. 

“I wonder if there’s anything going on,” Andrew had said and we walked up to the security guard at the entrance.

“Hello,” Andrew said, putting on his Friendly American Face. The guard responded in excellent cockney, “Hello!” which seemed to suggest, “Yea, I got nothing better to do than talk.”

So Andrew took that as license to open conversation and began to give this innocent man our life story, finishing with a “So, is there anything going on this week?” 

The guard gave him a you’ve got to be kidding me look. 

“It’s Proms,” he said. 

“Proms?” We both said, thinking of teen girls with big hair, tiaras, and corsages.

“BBC Proms--they happen every year and this is the last week.”

This still didn’t answer our question but he clearly was less enthusiastic about conversation with anyone who wasn’t aware of this apparently super-famous (not famous) tradition. His explanation was a little vague but it indicated that they have a week of concerts where people used to stroll (i.e. “promenading”) around the concert hall, mingling and showing off their fashions while enjoying music. Why wandering was necessary for enjoyment was unclear, but it all led to the present day where “Promenade” had been downsized to “Proms” and while you could purchase seated tickets, tradition dictated that those in for the full experience had to stand as groundlings in front of the orchestra, pretending that that was so much more comfortable and experiential than having a seat like everyone else.

We’d looked up the evening’s program and quickly bought tickets at $17 a piece--I think the privilege of standing was extra--and had come back that evening to hear an organ recital which included Philip Glass’s piece “Mad Rush.”

It had started out as a new-agey thing, tripping back and forth in a passively meditative way reminiscent of the doppler effect, before unexpectedly breaking out of the atmosphere and tearing free of earth’s gravity until Royal Albert Hall shook to its royal rafters. Victoria would not have been amused but we thought it was completely and totally awesome!

I am a planner, and when I pick a place to go I spend the next few months eagerly planning and preparing every detail of the experience. This includes Spreadsheets of Great Size, which gives you an idea of the I’m-not-kidding-around focus I have and it gives me great joy. Great joy. Nearly as much as the actual vacation. I make lists of attractions, museums, parks, forms of transportation, foods to experience, places for hot chocolate (because my travel always includes hot chocolate), souvenirs to look for, places to collect sand, local minerals and rocks, festivals and celebrations, sports, archaeological interests, and anything else I can possibly include.

And generally speaking, we really enjoy these things I find and plan for, but it’s odd that the things that really stick with us, the things that are always at the top of the conversation when we ask each other, “What was your favorite . . . ?” are the things that we find by accident, the things that find us.

I’d scheduled time for us to visit Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, the Serpentine, and Kensington Palace. Once we were there, staring at the big statue of Queen Victoria seated on her throne with scepter in hand, Andrew decided he wanted to go inside–something not on the schedule, but why not? My job was to get us half way, the rest was up to fate. So we bought extravagantly expensive tickets for something like $25 apiece (I was not anticipating an “E Ticket” experience) and we wandered the halls where Victoria had grown up, looking out the window at the same views of the same gardens she would have seen for 18 years before becoming Queen of the World.

But the real treat was in the basement. There in a 25-foot glass case was Diana Spencer’s wedding gown. I’d seen it on television so many times, had seen her wearing it to the point that it had come to define a royal wedding and then, just like that, there it was. I’m not royal watcher per se, but something about seeing it in the flesh (or at least on a dress form) with all the intricacies of lace that the television cameras blurred and the luster of the silk taffeta that the photographs lost, was fun. Not life changing, not a spiritual experience, but really, really impressive. And more impressive than it would have been had I known it was there and had planned the pilgrimage. A most tidy treat.

We spent Sunday afternoon strolling around Westminster and wanted to visit the Abbey. It was closed to tourists (bad news) but open for worship (even better! It was, after all, the Lord’s day was it not?)  So we waited outside the gate to be let in at 3pm for Evensong, where the choir sings the liturgy and the bishop gives a short sermon in the place where the kings and queens of England have been crowned and have worshiped for a thousand years. 

Now I’ll admit that I nearly fell asleep several times, there’s no escaping jet lag, but regardless of the flesh being weak, the spirit was thrilled to sit under the central tower, just east of the choir stalls, and hear the organ and singers praising and singing. The acoustics were so different from what I was used to back home in our little carpeted chapel, and the gothic arches and flying buttresses soaring overhead made you feel small and humble. The sermon was oddly political–also a divergence from our home-grown lay clergy–being full of admonitions to stop global warming but I didn’t care, it was all part of the experience, and something I couldn’t have expected.

I wanted to visit the museums, but I have this special-ops way of visiting museums when we travel. I pick out one thing ahead of time and then search for only that, and it always leads to interesting discoveries along the way, making each visit into a treasure hunt. We went to the Museum of Natural History to find Mary Anning’s ichthyosaurus skeleton and along the way stumbled into a case with 1000 hummingbirds, two stuffed dodos and a giant sloth skeleton.

I entered the British Museum to see the Moai of Easter Island and found myself face to face with the Viking hoard of Sutton Hoo. While searching for Holbein’s “The Ambassadors” at the National Portrait Gallery we accidentally saw a room of VanGoghs including one of the sunflowers paintings and one of two little crabs that was even more charming than the world-famous flowers.

Then there was the food. That same Sunday afternoon after Evensong we found ourselves facing starvation in St. James’ Square and stumbled into The Blue Boar, what appeared to be an empty upscale pub waiting to serve Sunday roasts and Yorkshire puddings. We’d come just before the typical hour and sat down with a menu, wondering what to try when I saw “Mushroom Sausage Roll with Pickled Walnut Ketchup.” 

Now I’m all about mushrooms and sausages, and rolling them up in a pastry just makes me giddy. The whole “pickled walnut ketchup” looked ominous, but condiments aren’t a deal-breaker. I decided to give it a go and top it off with “Medlar Sticky Toffee Pudding with Buttermilk Ice Cream,” sticky toffee pudding being a classic that was on my list of things to try (only later did I realize that medlars are a date-substitute fruit). Andrew went for “Cream of Sweet Corn Soup.” 

I spent the rest of our time in the UK looking for a sticky toffee pudding that was as good as what I experienced that day. I only got half the serving since Andrew fought me for the other half. Occasionally one of us will get a far away look and sigh, and the other will know that they’ve gone back to the Blue Boar and are tasting sticky toffee pudding in their soul, quietly living out the memory with great happiness.

For breakfast I decided to go out on a limb and try something that I’d seen around the internet–breakfast at Duck & Waffle. Forty floors above downtown London in the Heron Tower is the restaurant that elevates breakfast to a royal experience. We showed up in the lobby and were directed by a tuxedoed waiter to the private, non-stop glass elevator that shot us into the sky where we stepped out to a 360-degree view of London. 

We’re not the kind of people who usually get seated at the best tables, maybe we reek of cheap, but they sat us at a table for two next to the window, looking out over northern London and we had a very hard time tearing our gaze away long enough to look at the menu. After coming back twice to see if we were ready (it was a very hard choice) I settled on what was basically eggs benedict on a waffle with smoked salmon. It was delightful. Andrew, in a move that seemed destined to bring shame upon us, ordered the “Full-on Elvis.” I shook my head in disgust at the thought of a waffle topped with peanut butter, jam, caramelized bananas, and chantilly cream. Really? Really?

But after thoroughly enjoying every single bite on my plate (hard to do when your jaw is constantly dropping over the view) and while Andrew tried to finish his mountain of food, it was suggested that I stop being a complete snob and give the Elvis waffle a try. I declined. Twice. But on the third time, and thinking it was better to comply and be done with the nagging, I took a sample bite. To say it was good is ridiculous, it was so much more. The crunchiness of the caramel shell on the perfectly ripe banana, the smoothy/crunchy nuttiness of the peanut butter balanced by the jam and perfected by the topping of cream that was not too sweet just made me want to go around shaking hands with every patron at that restaurant. Who knew? 

You can plan and plan for years–two years as it turns out given COVID issues–but it’s only in those unexpected happy twists of fate that the vacation is made. Which is why I leave plenty of room for gaps and mistakes. You never know when an accident will mean everything.