London, Saturday, November 9, 2024
Our plan was to make it to the Horse Guards in order to see the Inspection of the troop. Thing got a bit more complicated when we went downstairs to find a marching band playing in the hotel restaurant.
Among the onlookers were lots of people in odd costumes. It turned out it was the day of the investiture of the Lord Mayor of London. Like many things in Jolly Old England, this can be a bit confusing. The Lord Mayor of London presides only over the City of London, that famous square mile around the Bank and St. Paul’s. The current Lord Mayor, Alistair King, is an international ambassador for the UK’s financial and professional services sector with its base in the City. The mayor of greater London is Sadiq Khan.
At any rate, we found ourselves in the middle of the annual Lord Mayor’s Show, a procession from the City to the Royal Courts of Justice, where the Lord Mayor swears allegiance to the crown. It is thought to have begun in 1215. We didn’t stay around for the parade, which this year included over 7,000 people, 250 horses, and 150 floats–although we did see a number of carriages on their way to the parade.
We were affected by the coming parade, though: Sue and I had to walk about a half mile out of our way to cross to St. Paul’s because the bobbies wouldn’t let us cross the barriers erected for the parade–although it wouldn’t start for 2 1/2 hours! We did finally join the girls at Paul for breakfast.
We took the tube from Temple to Embankment and walked up to Whitehall, emerging right across from Horse Guards.
We had done so well on time that the inspection wouldn’t take place for 45 minutes, so we opted to walk through Horse Guards Parade and St. James Park to Buckingham Palace and to decide there whether to come back.
On the way I encountered a new level of bird love.
And while we’re on the subject of birds, I’ve heard of getting your ducks in a row…but pigeons?
We were soon weaving our way through the crowds at Buckingham Palace. Sarah remarked several times on how crowded central London felt; she had spent academic year 2002-2003 at University College London, and she felt that the city was much busier that it had been twenty years previously. Here, at any rate, is the partially happy crew in front of Chuck and Camilla’s digs.
The bright lights of Oxford Street had beckoned to our junior shoppers, and they were perhaps not the most patient fellow tourists at this moment!
We walked down the Mall and passed by the side of St. James Palace on our way to our next stop, Berry Bros. & Rudd, which opened in 1698 (as a coffee and tea merchant–they switched to wine and spirits in the 18th century). Here’s the storefront looking back to St. James Palace. Note the sign in the upper left: a coffee grinder, not a wine bottle! I mourn the days when I could buy a bottle of whisky and toss it in my carry-on!
We were headed for Bond Street, where we hoped to meet Dan’s brother Josh, who had flown over from the Netherlands. Josh is the above-mentioned prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague and an all around good guy. First, though, we showed the girls a proto-shopping mall from the 19th century, the Burlington Arcade. The arcades, glass-roofed passages between buildings that were lined with luxury shops, had sprung up all over Western Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. This one had opened in 1819.
Not all the shoppers are clutching their Paddington’s, just ours.
We did pop into a couple of the luxury boutiques on Bond Street, but we were soon at Oxford Street.
After the girls did a preliminary reconnaissance of Zara, we struck out in search of a bit of lunch. The pubs north of Oxford street were either nasty or crowded, so we ended up at the ever-reliable Pret. We then split up: four girls to Oxford Street for shopping and Mike to the nearby Leica gallery for some viewing and shoptalk. Were the girls happy with Oxford Street? You be the judge.
We had considered three options for our last afternoon: the museums in Kensington (V&A, Science, and Natural History), the Tower of London, and the British Museum. Given the latish hour and the proximity of Bloomsbury to our dinner reservation in Islington, we opted for the British Museum. The crowds were frighteningly large outside, but this huge hulk of imperial plunder can absorb many, many gawkers like us.
Viv is studying Mesopotamia in school, so we started there.
The museum has a remarkable collection, focusing on the development of writing, the systematization of knowledge in libraries, and the emergence of a centralized state that depended on inscription and records.
The artifacts gathered from Babylon are particularly striking. This tile mosaic is from the famous Ishtar Gate (now reconstructed in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin).
The girls, though, were on their latest legs after four very active days (we reckoned that we walked about 40 miles in four days), and we opted to show them the Parthenon marbles and call it a day. Looking at these magnificent things cannot help but be accompanied by mixed feelings: remorse that they aren’t in Athens, joy that one can see them here.
And then there’s the young and the very old.
It wasn’t just the girls whose legs were aching! We retreated to a very nice, funky wine bar called Amelie’s Wine House for a drop (and some bread and olives for the girls). We had the first of three really outstanding wines of the evening, a 2020 Chianti Classico from Fontodi. Rich, perfumed, deep, really lovely. By the way, Amelie also supplies pretty classy crossing guards.
A longish bus ride took us to the Angel stop in Islington, from where it is a five minute walk to our gastropub, The Pig and the Butcher. I had been here before with one of my former doctoral advisees, and had loved it. And it lived up to my hopes!
We started with scotch eggs and halibut croquettes for the table; Sarah and Ingrid had gnocchi, Sue Hake, and Dan and I split a 45-day aged cote de boeuf with cottage fries and beef dripping gravy.
We had a mouthful of Picpoul with the appetizers, but got serious with the mains: a 2017 Cornas Granit 60 from Vincent Paris and a 2018 Hermitage Selection by J.L. Chave. The Cornas was inkier and brawnier, lovely for its depth and energy; the Hermitage, as I had hoped by springing for something from one of the great winemakers, more elegant, nuanced, but still a powerhouse of a wine. We finished with the best Sticky Toffee Pudding ever!
Back in our neighborhood, we gather for one last nighttime shot, illuminated by a remarkable set of magic lights that Ingrid had mastered with astonishing speed.
