days out in london

It's starting to get cold here. It's the kind of weather where stepping inside is not only a relief but a pleasure. That delicious thawing sensation that starts at the tip of my ears and nose thrills me every time I walk through a heated doorway. I always scarf up before heading out. Englishmen keep chuckling and telling me it's not gloves weather yet. 

I have all kinds of real-life things happening (like a job and a maybe-house and a for-realz British bank account) so here's just a brief representation of a day spent exploring home. It's mainly photographic. You're welcome.

It was a Tuesday when I first saw Big Ben up close. The big red buses teetered past against the grey sky backdrop and everything was as British as could be.

 The passenger seats on the Eye look like those liquid capsules for medication, glued to white painted barbeque skewers. It seems flimsy in the distance, but I've decided that one day when I'm a millionaire I'll have a go at rolling in that quiet circle above peasants like now-me on the streets below.

The Monument to the Great Fire of London is basically a set of stairs with a view. If ever you make it to the top of the spiral staircase and back down again, you'll be presented with an A4 certificate stating the fact you did, on which you can fill in your own name. I didn't get one of these for the Eiffel Tower, which had far more stairs and was exposed to the elements, and for that reason I believe the Monument's tourism manager should get a Good Work stamp.

My first British pub lunch included a jacket potato and a huge quantity of condiments arranged in colour order. I don't have a photo of the potato because I was too busy smothering it in condiments.

And here's the grey and blue extravagance of Tower Bridge.

I haven't yet been to Hyde Park but St James's did a good job on a sunny afternoon (the weather changed - I'm starting to accept that happens).

And Southwark Park was the site of my first official British squirrel sighting. A thing I've learnt about squirrels is they are fast. Real fast. See below for photos of things like big trees that stay really still when you look at them.

Stay tuned for more away-from-home fun and if you're bored read Ella's blog.

london town - for starters

I’ve always pictured London as perpetually stuck in the industrial revolution. I can only see the grimy brick warehouses and the rows and rows of blackened chimney stacks. I see street urchins picking the pockets of tailcoats, and shoe makers stores. And roses, two blooms for a penny. Then I think of England in its entirety, and it’s the rolling green hills and spotted cows on misty mornings, and a farmer in wool trousers and a brown hat. These images seem hard to reconcile with catching a gaudy purple coach from the airport to Victoria station.

We drive through the English countryside from the airport – budget travellers get the scenic route, whether or not we please – and I’m pleased to report it’s everything I expected. Trees sit squat in the mist. They’re greener than I’m used to, and everything about them is healthy fat. The sky is British grey.

Here, the strange and the familiar meet and merge. We’re on the left side of the road again, but we travel in miles per hour. The bus driver speaks English, but not the kind I’m used to.

I have an Australian friend who lives in Putney. She shares house with four other Australians, and with us there for the weekend it’s seven. We tag along to a party and meet more Australians, two Kiwis, and a South African. The only British accents I encounter all weekend are behind sales counters and the windscreens of red double-decker buses. My uncontrollable thrill at the big red buses notwithstanding, it’s an underwhelming introduction to the British-ness of the folk in my new home.

Central London is carpeted with people. From third storey windows the pavements look patterned with motion, like the paint that changes colour in the light. We play people games; we play sardines on the tube and we play follow the leader when the streets are too packed for us to walk abreast.

The masses suit my vision of the grotty and overpopulated London town, though there’s a notable lack of top hats and children seem to be in school rather than sooty factories. There are stained chimney stacks and rows of town houses in identical streets. But then there’re great glass offices and glittering shopping malls, and there’s the big blue Eye, watching over it all like the Eye of Sauron. It's London like I imagined, brought forward and assimilated into the twenty-first century.

My big trip is over, but life is beginning. I cleaned three months worth of tickets from my wallet. 

We live temporarily in Finchley with charitable souls and pretty faces. We hang out at the milk bar for free WiFi and cheerful English company.

I already love this place. Even things I hate are given novel charm.

I hate the cold. I’ve always hated it, and I’m convinced I always will. It instils this sinking feeling in my bones, in my very soul, like the world will never be warm again, and nor will I. The only thing that can make cold worse is grey drizzle. And I don't love crowds, or daily bustle, or people breathing on me on public transport.

But I’m in love with the griminess, the history, and the streets lined with theatres. I like shiny wet pavement. I even kind of like walking in great slow funeral marches through the tube stations at peak hour with briefcases bumping my knees and their scarves up my nose.

I think the weather will grow on me.

rome

A post about Rome needs to come with a disclaimer. Here it is:
It is totally impossible to tell you everything, to squish a few thousand years of visible, tangible history into one blog post, or two. The Vatican alone could take one, and I’d happily stretch the colosseum to a two-part series. Then there’s the ancient ruins, medieval structures, renaissance masterpieces, the modern art, and the ancient amphitheatres that have been converted into mansions for Italian cinema stars (as you do). Rome is a wonder.

 In the middle of the Piazza Navona, which is built over the structure of an old Roman amphitheatre like a skin graft, there is a magnificent fountain. It’s called Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi and it's my favourite in Rome or anywhere. The four great rivers -- the Danube, the Nile, the Ganges, and the Rio de la Plata -- are represented by the huge stone figures of men who thrust themselves out from the central obelisque. The Rio de la Plata faces the baroque church on the western edge of the piazza. The figure's hand is raised, as though against attack. Our walking tour guide tells us that apparently this is a joke by Bernini, the sculptor, that the church by his rival, Borromini, is likely to fall. The church hasn’t fallen and isn’t likely to, but Bernini didn’t like Borromini, and that’s it.

In fact, their rivalry is legendary and rich. Once, apparently, Borromini carved a pair of donkey's ears into his building to mock Bernini. Bernini's counterattack was to sculpt a giant penis onto his own roof in the direction of Borromini's current workplace, an erect symbol of his outstanding manliness, strength, and artistic prowess. Boys will be boys.

Rome is filled with stories like this. And some more refined. They’re buried in the layers of accumulated soil and wrapped around the columns that stand throughout the city like ancient sentinels; stories scatter themselves down stone steps and into clear water fountains like pages torn from books. I can view the last two thousand years of roman stories by walking down the street.

Within Rome proper, there’s another world. The Vatican is technically only another state, but there’s something about the place that feels askew with the world outside. It’s a part of Italy but it’s not. The pope, as the key political figure, is the only absolute monarch in Europe. Parents dress their small children in shirts that say I love Papa Francesco, which can be bought at any one of the ten million souvenir stands that skirt St Peter's Square.

Inside the ring of stands and within the scope of the wide sculpted arms that hold the square, a soup of sweaty bodies bubbles in the sun. To visit the museum, we walk a few hundred meters around the corner. Swarms of tour guides (most of whom have very questionable credibility) make it necessary to carry a large stick. Each warns us about the huge and sunny two hour line, and kindly offers a tour to allow us to skip the queue. We shake them off (forgot my stick) and wait about twenty minutes in the line before entering the cool belly of the eight kilometre collection.

There is a definite way-of-visit mentality, and we are swept up and carried along towards the Sistine chapel through the kind of exhibits that remind me of the immensity of human creativity. There are rooms lined floor to ceiling with ancient stone busts. There’s carved stone baths that would hold a dozen men. Frescos by the masters and their students adorn every wall; some of the most incredible rooms are completely empty of anything else. We are hustled over floors tiled with intricate mosaics. I see my first in-the-flesh Dali in the modern art wing.

The Sistine chapel is an exclamation mark on the end of the visit. A sign at every gallery tells visitors that they're going the right way. It’s the final hoo-rah after the museum, and it goes above and beyond its duties. No photography is allowed here, and the enforced reverence is a relief. We put our cameras away and are shepherded by uniformed guards into the centre, to allow others to flow around us while we soak it in. There's so much paint on the walls.

 

We have three full days in Rome, though I'd suggest three weeks would be more appropriate. On the second day it rains, in a discouraging enough way to hamper our plans. I feel like I got only a corner of Rome, a dog-ear on the side of a novel. Our Bnb host agrees with me.

 Colloseo, I say. Pantheon, Vatican museum, cappella Sistina, Piazza Novena, Fontana di Trevi. Piazza di Spagna, and the view from the hill. I mime looking over the city.

Sonia nods. Palatino? La Bocca della Verita? Isola Tiberina? she says.

No. Ella and I shake our heads. We point to our watches and say, No time, even though she doesn't understand the words.

Isola Tiberina, she says again. She looks crushed. Molto bella. Molto molto bella.

She starts speaking in Italian, but our root words knowledge doesn't cut it. She takes the iPad from Ella and types into the translator.

We read: Tonight I put you in my car to Tiber Island. To bring Pepo dog and we buy good gelato. 

This woman is everybody's Italian mamma. She takes us to see things we missed and her teenage son dozes in the passenger seat until she makes him translate something, which he does in a broken and school-learnt way that suits the subject matter. He doesn't get a lot of rest. He groans a lot each time she asks and I can tell what he's saying is, No way I'm attempting to say that. We come home exhausted and grinning at Gabrielle because he's pretending to fall asleep in the lift. He says, I have school tomorrow! It's one of our best nights out. Sonia loves her city, and her passion is catching.

I leave Rome with huge hugs from Sonia, my daily home-baked gluten-free pastry in an Ikea zip-lock baggie (Italian mammas like zip-lock baggies too), new stories, and the intention to return.