12 December - Saturday

You thought yesterday’s entry was long? Here goes:

Got a wake up call at 7:00 (after waking at 2:30, then finally falling back to sleep at 6) and went down to breakfast. Very nice, but small breakfast room in the basement under the lobby. Sausage, ham, corn flakes, beans, canned tomatoes, trays full of eggs - over easy and scrambled, and some kind of yellow, Tang-like juice drink. And bottles of Daddies Favorite brown sauce on the tables – very good. A couple of housekeepers were working the breakfast and one brought me a couple of pieces of toast, marmalade, and a little teapot of coffee – instant, but ok.

Evidently, it drizzled in the early hours – it was still a bit cloudy, but looked like it would break up. I put the news on – they take emails from viewers like PHX channels – they had a news article and interviews about how some people hate self checkout at grocery stores. I guess fluff news programs are everywhere. And the look of the morning news shows seem to be identical to Good Morning America. No Sarah Palin, but Tiger Woods’ infidelity was also on the news constantly… Only 5 channels on the tv in the hotel - Saturday morning cartoons and kids’ programs on a couple of channels, just like the US. And one channel was showing reruns of Friends.

Completed yesterday’s journal, transferred photos from the camera, foldered and named them, and updated the blog. Visited with the Italian/British woman working the desk – all of the desk staff speaks Italian and the chain of 4 or 5 hotels is owned by an Italian family. I showered and started out on the day’s activities. Even though the sun was out and it looked warm, it was colder than it looked, so I went back to the hotel and put the liner in my jacket. After another false start (I had left my credit card on my desk in the room after I ordered a ticket for a free jazz concert on the 17th), I got started back out.

Stopped at Pret a Manger near Russell Square and grabbed a brie, cranberry, pistachio, and lettuce sandwich and a triple layer chocolate mousse. (Pret is a nice sandwich/ soup chain throughout the city – I’ve already passed several as I have been walking. Very reasonable prices and interesting looking selection. Wish we had fast food like it.) Stuffed the mousse container into my coat pocket and ate half of the sandwich as I walked along, then stopped at the Russell Square park fountain and sat on a bench to finish.

Foot traffic started to pick up and soon I was in the West End - incredibly crowded with tourists, especially when compared to the smaller, more local crowds around Camden. Walked to Leicester Square to look for the half price theatre ticket booth and was almost there when it started to drizzle. I ducked under an awning with the rest of the crowd and it turned out to be the ticket booth (and the theatre was right across the street). Got in line, but found out that for An Inspector Calls they only release unsold tickets on the day of the show. They had gotten some for tonight, so he figured that they would get some next Saturday as well. They were showing clips from some of the shows on the video displays and I saw one for War Horse. The girl in line behind me said she’d like to see it, but it will probably be real expensive due to its popularity. The clip looked stunning – puppeteers operate several large horse figures. I’m glad I thought it would be too expensive, because it would have been too wrenching for me to sit through – I get choked up thinking of the video and photos. From the brochure: “At the outbreak of WWI, Joey, young Albert’s beloved horse, is sold to the cavalry and shipped to France. He’s soon caught up in enemy fire, and fate takes him on an extraordinary odyssey, serving on both sides before finding himself in no man’s land. But Albert cannot forget Joey and, still not old enough to enlist, he embarks on a treacherous mission to find him and bring him home”.

I started out back to the Museum and was about a block away when it started to rain again. I hadn’t put the hood on the jacket, since it is hot hanging down on my upper back and it didn’t even look cloudy when I started out, so I looked for a shop to duck into. I noticed a gallery with a show called I Spy With My Little Eye – it was a new show by Willard Wigan, who does the tiny sculptures in eyes of needles that were going around the internet a couple of years ago (google him if you want to be blown away). He was even in the shop for the afternoon signing copies of his new book. I was amazed at my luck, because I had been fascinated with the pieces when I saw them on the internet. It turns out that, like the Grand Canyon on a vastly different scale, photographs cannot convey the wonder of his art. An amazing exhibit – each sculpture was set up in its own special case to be viewed under the attached microscope. Some of the “larger” pieces – and by large, I mean they were constructed on heads of pins! – only needed high-powered magnifying glasses to be seen. There was even a piece by his brother – 3 poems about Willard’s art (in miniature print, with a magnifying glass provided for reading – the poems looked like plain lines on a piece of paper until magnified, at which point you could make out the letters and words). Wigan even uses pieces of spider web in his pieces, sometimes to suspend an object within the eye of the needle, sometimes woven into ropes. I ended up buying a copy of the book and visiting with him for a bit – very nice, interesting man – we talked about the parallels in macro and micro scale in the universe. He told me he likes Los Angeles and is planning to move there soon. I told him to come to AZ and see the Canyon – the detail is on such a different, immense scale, but related. He said maybe he would do a microscopic Grand Canyon.

Got to the Museum and spent a lot of time just wandering around the central Great Court - the largest covered public square in Europe. This totem pole will give an idea of the scale:



It is a two-acre display and restaurant space enclosed by a glass roof. The canopy was designed by computer and was constructed out of 3,312 panes of glass, no two of which are the same. A view of the dome:



Some of the sculptures in the Great Court took my breath away.



Among other things, I also saw exhibits of Etruscan mirrors and tombs like we saw in Tarquinia, Italy; the Rosetta Stone; a display on Ancient Levant (the area of the eastern Mediterranean beginning around 7500 BC – ceramic human figure statuary from 5000 BC were on display); and the Parthenon Sculptures (formerly called the Elgin Marbles, they are the sculptures that were “stolen” from Greece by Lord Elgin).

I headed back to the hotel, then up to Islington on foot – only about a 15 minute walk from the hotel. Found the O2 Academy, where the concert was to take place. I had looked at the entire route from home using google street view, so I knew exactly how to get to the location, but couldn’t see the entrance, box office, or anything that looked like an 800 seat concert venue. It turned out to be within a large 3 story open air shopping pavillion and couldn’t be seen from the google van. It wasn’t obvious even when I got there – I had to ask at the Marriott next door to the mall. There were already 3 people waiting who had queued up 3 ½ hours before the doors were to open, including a guy from Iran with whom I visited for a bit.

Finally, I took off to find something to eat, but first had to find something more important - Paul A. Young Chocolates (http://www.paulayoung.co.uk/). I had read an article during my advance planning that reviewed the best hot chocolate in London and this was one of the top rated places. Bought a cup of hot chocolate - made with a blend of 70% dark chocolate, 100% cocoa powder, organic unrefined muscovado sugar and water (to avoid the additional flavoring introduced by milk), then simmered for a long time. I wanted to use my Visa card, but they would only allow it for purchases over 5 pounds, so I had to buy a couple of truffles, too. I decided on two of their Christmas collection: Sea-salted roast hazelnut and sage/chestnut. They were actually very mildly flavored, but good. It was tough forcing myself to eat all that chocolate, but I suffered through it.

I figured I had better eat something real, so I asked the clerk at Paul Young for a recommendation for a vegetarian restaurant nearby and she told me about VEG, an Asian buffet, so that’s where I headed next. Pretty good, but a lot of imitation meat-type seitan and tofu dishes. I would just prefer creatively prepared vegetable recipes that don’t try to imitate meat.

Headed down to the IQ concert and got in the queue. Standing next to me was a guy from Switzerland and we had a good conversation about music while waiting. The doors opened right at 7 and the band came on promptly at 7:30, as promised (the tickets said “10:00 curfew”, evidently so the place can have their own “club night” after the concert). There was no seating and I was early enough to get about four layers of people away from the front of the stage- right behind a couple of Spaniards and next to a German. Very international fan base. The concert was quite good, but, like any show in a bar, marred by rude drunks pushing their way to the stage, spilling their beers on anyone in the way. And singing along, usually out of tune, at the top of their inebriated lungs. The band played for 2 hours straight, then came back out for 15 minutes of an encore. The first 4 band members who came back out had all put on Santa hats, but the guitarist didn’t come out with them. Finally, he came out, and had changed from his jeans and black T-Rex Electric Warrior t-shirt into white levis and t-shirt with big white angel wings strapped to his back (something that he did at last year’s holiday bash).
Very good, tight show. If you want to get an idea of what IQ’s music is like, check out their MySpace page (http://www.myspace.com/iquk) and listen to the excerpt from the song Sacred Sound – the other songs are from their very early albums from the 80’s – pretty dated and not very representative of their current sound.

Back in the room I downloaded photos from the camera and foldered and labeled them, and worked a bit plotting out tomorrow’s activities. Ran across the street to St. Pancras International to purchase or at least check on where to get tix for the brand new high speed train to Canterbury, also mentioned in the Guardian. But the guy at the info desk (at the complete opposite end of the station from the hotel) told me that train runs from the King’s Cross station. When I got over to Kings Cross (it is right across the street, but St. Pancras is huge, so it took a while) there were no service counters open and the only access to tickets was via kiosks, so I decided to wait and talk to a human the following day. My humor moment for the day: walking through the station, I overheard a drunken woman, stumbling off the tube elevator, announcing to someone on the other end of her cell phone (but also to the entire surrounding crowd) that she was at St. “Pancreas”.

Stopped at Boots the Chemist (as ubiquitous in UK as Walgreen’s) to pick up an assortment of British snacks: Walkers Paprika Flavour Potato Crisps (tasted ok – like our barbecue chips), an Eat Natural bar (with cranberries, macadamias, and dark chocolate – very good), KitKat Chunky and Senses bars (don’t know what they are, yet), Shapers chocolate mint nougat bar, and Cadbury WispaGold bar (“the Wispa you love with a cheeky caramel layer” – Wispa bars are aerated chocolate bars like you can get from World Market). Hey - it’s research – I want the local experience – but really I want to also have something to nibble on while I’m on my walks without having to stop and track something down or pay ridiculous prices for something at a tourist trap or expensive local shop. And last night I woke up hungry in the night and don’t want to repeat it tonight.

Back to the room to work on my journal a bit, then edit it down for the blog. I don’t want to bore people with every little thing – and yes, there’s a lot more in m version! I just know that I have such a bad long-term memory, and this is a good way to supplement it. I tried the paprika crisps and Natural bar, drink an Airborne out of my new, red IQ coffee mug, then to bed shortly before 1:30. I wanted to go down to the lobby and try to chat with AJ – it was 6:30 in AZ), but I was exhausted. I ended up waking up about 4:30 and couldn’t really get back to sleep at all. This is a pattern I remember from our cruise – I’m thinking too much about has happened during the day and trying to anticipate and plan for what is to come. Well, better this than thinking about what I have to do at work, which is my usual pattern at home when I wake in the middle of the night.