London and beyond

I've been here 11 days now and it's time I wrote down exactly what I've been up to, before it all becomes a blur. It's already happening: as I go through the photos on my digital camera (1 gigabyte card, holds 550 photos and I'm up to 150 now) I'll draw a blank of what something is -- thankfully they are all in chronological order, so that helps!

The first few days after I arrived were spent in East Anglia, specifically Suffolk county, which is the area my grandparents grew up in. The town itself, Ipswich, is quite sizable by Canadian standards, around 200,000 people, but seems a lot smaller because like most English cities it has extremely narrow streets and packed together houses. Not until you head out to the suburban countryside do you see any large houses or even any driveways. And still nothing on the order of a typical north-of-Toronto million dollar ranch-style home, the land is just too expensive. The houses themselves tend to be "closed-concept" on the inside; every room has a door and many times the doors are closed to conserve heat. Houses go up rather than across, and the more densely populated the area, the taller and narrower the houses. In fact, the place I'm staying in Brighton right now is about 550 square feet over three storeys with a very steep spiral staircase leading from one level to the next -- not the thing you want to try and navigate in the dark when you've had a few drinks! But I digress.

While in Suffolk, I saw a few local historical places like Lavenham (a once-booming wool trade city of the 1500s) and Kelsey (where almost every house has a thatched roof -- I will post pictures of these marvels later). Also, we visited Cambridge with the wonderful King's College Cathedral, ancient Queen's college square and punters on the River Cam. Unfortunately, it was quite a rainy day when we were there, so we didn't try punting -- best saved for good weather, judging by the people in the boats cowering under their umbrellas.

Last Monday, I left Suffolk for London, where I stayed for several nights. London is amazing, for anyone who hasn't been there -- it's intimidating and intimate all at once. Since it's August and school is still out, I got a fairly cheap room in a University of London dorm for £25 a night including breakfast, which would normally be a steal by London standards. The bombings that took place in July have really hurt the tourist economy, however, so there were better deals to be had in bed-and-breakfast type places. Since I was only spending about eight hours a day in my room, I figured I'd stay where I was. Later after walking by a memoriam to the bombing victims a block from my dorm, I realised that the bus bomb had exploded quite close to where I was staying, and the Tube bomb that had gone off in the middle of the tunnel between stations happened to be between the two stations closest to my street -- Russell Square and King's Cross. In fact, in my room I could hear the distant rumbling of the Tube as it went by underground. Weird.

As crude as it sounds, the tourists staying away from London in droves really worked in my favour as all the major attractions I went to were very quiet -- no lineups ("queues" as the Brits would say) and lots of time and space to enjoy myself without being driven out by some annoying American tourist family. The only place that really struck me as overly touristy was Buckingham Palace and the changing of the guard, which was insanely busy. Cops on horseback yelling at the crowd, adults sitting on other adults' shoulders, a few thousand digital cameras being held up high above the heads of the crowd as people tried to get the smallest glimpse of the men in red with the funny hats. Note: get there two hours early if you want to get a good spot to see! But otherwise, places like the Tower, St. Paul's, Westminster Abbey and the museums were fairly quiet.

While in London I had great weather, so I spent much of my time walking, walking, walking. I walked both sides of the Thames from Westminster to the Tower Bridge, saw all of Oxford Street and the Strand, did much of the London Wall walk (following the markers that point out the old Roman wall built in the first century AD, or at least what's left of it) and just generally was on foot everywhere I went. When it did rain, I headed indoors to see the Museum of London and some of the indoor markets (Covent Garden being the most popular), and saw a show at the Old Vic, "The Philadelphia Story" with Kevin Spacey. The tickets were cheap and like much of London this summer, easy to get. A side note about the show: one of the major players was a guy I had met working on that terrible TV show "Zoe Busiek: Wild Card" last fall, he had been a guest star for an episode. Just goes to show that theatre really doesn't pay that well!

Once I figured I had well overspent my budget in London, I decided to move on and down to the city of Brighton, in county Sussex on the south coast about an hour from London. I arrived here yesterday afternoon to brilliant sunshine and many, many people frolicking on the beach (though not that many in the cold Atlantic Ocean) since this weekend is a "Bank Holiday", England's version of Labour Day weekend. The long weekend meant that quite a few Londoners were down for a mini vacation of their own, but luckily I have a cousin who lives here permanently (and who is proving to be a goldmine of information about leaving Canada abruptly and moving to Europe, as he did 12 years ago exactly what I'm doing now). He was kind enough to offer me his girlfriend's house, as she is out of town until the middle of next week.

So here I am in the most interesting house I've ever stayed in: tall and narrow as I've described, but with the front door opening onto a lane about three feet wide. It took me about three trips to the house yesterday with Wayne to be able to remember where exactly it is, it's so well-hidden from the main streets. Not that the main streets in Brighton are much bigger, but this house is really tucked away. This is good and bad -- last night the revellers from the local pubs walking down the lane forced me to pull out my earplugs from my backpack in order to get a good night's sleep. On the good side, there are about five pubs within a two-minute walk of this house, two of which are seventy feet down the lane and flank the opening on either side! The English pub culture is something I've become attached to already, as evidenced by the many beers I had last night.

The weather has remained bright and sunny (maybe that's how Brighton got its name?), so after a giant English breakfast this morning, I mainly hung around, walked the streets and checked out some stores, then spent some time shopping for food to last me a couple of days. I plan to go for a run along the beachfront in the evening and enjoy the setting sun and the crowds of people clogging up Brighton's version of a midway, the pier that juts out into the ocean. Thankfully, it's not entirely Atlantic City as there's no casino. Being about the latitude of Edmonton, southern England has gloriously long twilights and tonight will be perfect for walking around and soaking up the atmosphere.

M.