Is there such a thing as too relaxed? Even my sleep-resistant wife awoke suddenly at 9AM.
We decided to start the day with a little granddaughter shopping. And where else to search for the finest for our finest, Viv and Iggles? Harrod’s of course! We didn’t wait long for our first bus of the day…but some beginnings are deceptive. We were soon dodging our way past the solitary but oh so well heeled shoppers at the Knightsbridge glitter emporium. The store has almost as little signage as Princeton used to (if you have to ask, you don’t belong), but here the intent is different: you are supposed to be adrift among the gleaming jewelry and alluringly ticking watches. We finally found our way to the children’s floor. We were of course tempted by the £2000 jumpsuits for the little princesses, but we finally succumbed to some rather special toys for the girls. Toys, by the way, sure to turn their parents’ hair prematurely gray. Stay tuned.
After so much consumer culture, we desperately needed the antidote, some culture culture. We again didn’t wait long for our bus, but then the reality hit us, as the traffic was not just snarled but utterly resistant to any movement. TUBE STRIKE! The effects of a tube strike on London traffic are not for the faint of heart. Hordes of people who would normally have sailed along underground were now sitting in their cars in central London…for hours on end! Riding the red buses is a joy when one isn’t in a hurry and has no real destination; as actual transportation, they’re treacly. Without the tube, London becomes a quagmire. Our first bus crawled slowly toward Hyde Park Corner and then came to a very long stop as traffic was halted for two carriages (one carrying what looked like the Saudi Ambassador) emerged from Buckingham Palace Gardens. Once “underway,” it halted prematurely at Piccadilly Circus…for no announced reason. So we hoofed it down to Trafalgar to get the next bus toward the Tate Modern. The wait was interminable, but, after ten weeks in the damned orthopedic boot, my knees are a mess, and the walk didn’t appeal. It finally took us 90 minutes to go from Knightsbridge to St. Paul’s!
The walk across the Millennium Bridge is always a highlight, even on a gray day like today.
We were soon having a warming bite in the Tate Modern cafe. And then it was on to something remarkable: a huge Cezanne show. We’ve seen a lot of Cezanne’s, but this one, that assembled virtually every major work from around the world, taught us an enormous amount. One of the features of the show was Cezanne’s importance for other artists, and the paintings belonging to other artists (from Picasso to Jasper Johns) were all noted. What a privilege to see so many great pictures together, and organized so coherently. Some of you might remember that this painting of a boy was once the first thing you saw when you entered the permanent collection at MOMA.
All too soon it was time to face the horrors of the return journey. The first bus wasn’t too late and didn’t move too slowly, but the second bus, from Waterloo, took forever to arrive and then was halted, according to the driver, for “security reasons.” We finally made it back to the hotel…in one piece.
We had reservations at a well-regarded gastropub, The Baring, in Islington. And we started out gamely, though we feared the worst. A cab was out of the question. We hadn’t seen a single black cab with its light on all day, and the concierge at our hotel told us that a colleague had waited in Piccadilly Circus, normally awash in cabs, for almost an hour to no avail. So we walked up Charing Cross Road, hoping to take the bus to the pub. But the buses were so late and so full that they just sailed by our stop…with the result that we had to cancel our reservation. The gentleman at the pub was understanding…he feared that this would be the order of the day.
We decided to retreat to one of the bars at the hotel to rethink our options. I had already had a chat with one of the concierges, a very nice chap from Bruges. I asked him for a recommendation, and he pointed us to an Italian in St. James; we had a glass of Kentish bubbly in one of the hotel lounges while he got us a table. That took a lot of the sting out of our gastropub disappointment!
It turned out that the restaurant, O’ver St. James, was very close, but across Haymarket in St. James, and thus a good bit more sedate than the throbbing scene around Leicester Square. It proved to be a terrific recommendation: the food was delicious (we shared a selection of Naples street food accompanied by the best focaccia I’ve ever had; Sue had a Sicilian ravioli dish while I had squash blossom risotto; all washed down with a lovely Etna Rosso), the staff warm and accommodating (our captain’s family was from near Lucca in Tuscany, but he was born in London). I derive a silly pleasure from a well-run restaurant, and this was definitely that.
To cap off the night, we dove into the Christmas market in Leicester Square.
The tradition of the Christmas market has spread out from Germany to the rest of Europe, but this one, at least, has little to do with Christmas or its spirit. It is in essence a colossal space for selling alcohol and fried food. But, even here, we encountered culture.
Although the show playing at “The Paradiso,” “La Clique,” may seem like just another girlie show (the billboard reads in part “Fire-Nudity-Flashing Lights-Body Contortion) it is a holdover from the nineteenth century circus, which included sideshows like this one. Seurat captured one in a famous painting, Parade de cirque.
And now, dear reader, having survived the one-day tube strike, I’m blogging for you.