Strolling in London

For the first few days of our new little adventure, we had decided to stay in a nice B&B. Katherine spend a good deal of time researching, and came up with 30 King Henry’s Road. This turned out to be an absolutely brilliant find, as the B&B, a beautiful four-storey mansionesque house with heaps of character, was located in one of London’s most desirable suburbs, Primrose Hill, just a couple minutes walk from Primrose Hill itself and a few more minutes from the amazing Regent’s Park. What’s more, it was just a couple minutes from Chalk Farm tube station, so getting around was a piece of cake. A side note: The London public transport system’s ‘Oyster’ card thing is just brilliant — no mucking about with coins, trying to figure out zones and time limits, just ‘touch in’ at the station, and touch out at the end, charging up the card every now and then. Nice.

Carol and Ted, the owners, were just lovely and kept us company over our quite spectacular breakfasts (exciting-looking fruit salad, hot croissants, toasted home-made bread, tea and coffee), and made us feel instantly welcome.

I seemed to have developed an amusing case of swine flu-related hypochondria after all the attention paid to it on the flight over (our home state of Victoria is on the UK’s ‘do not visit’ list due to risk of infection! It’s just the same old flu thing that happens every year, c’mon!), and kept catching myself checking for symptoms I didn’t have. This has got to stop!

We had a lovely first day strolling through Regent’s Park, an immense expanse of beautiful gardens, lakes and wooded areas, although we got quite sunburned in the process, and ended up with very sore feet. We were amused to come across a rowdy game of Aussie rules footy, and excited to see our first squirrel and fuzzy bumblebee. I was struck by how green everything smelt — Katherine commented that it smelt a bit like Belgrave, the beautiful forested suburb where I grew up, and where Katherine and I lived for a few months last year, but there was definitely a unique Englishness about it. The ambient bird noises are all different too, of course – they seem more musical.

That night we met up with Tiff at the London Eye (which actually works, unlike the Melbourne eye – it turns out, putting cretins in charge isn’t always the best way to do things, Australia), and took a self-guided night walk through London that took us past the main sights – Big Ben, Downing Street, Trafalgar Square, through Soho, etc. By the end, our feet were just bloodied stumps, and we were very glad to get into bed that night. By that time, my throat was quite sore from London’s particular variety of air with extra goodies – ouch.

The following morning — throat still a bit sore, and hypochondria still in place (oh no! Is the sore throat swine flu??) — we headed out to Camden market (“I bought some really nice trousers from Camden, they is well hardcore with all pockets and shit“), the goods at which gave Katherine her ‘love/anguish’ face:

We set ourselves up with 3 mobile, which gave me much satisfaction and comfort — omniscient again, with the Internets back in my iPhone — and had rather disappointing Indian for lunch (d’oh).

Next was a ‘Inspiration behind Harry Potter’ walking tour that was a present for Katherine’s birthday from Tiff, which the three of us did — quite busy, and a little ‘kiddie’, but the company was good and there were pyrotechnics. Everybody likes pyrotechnics. By that time the feet were absolutely crippled again, so we limped home.

I was greeted the next day by a full-blown cold, so, not so much the hypochondria. A cold! The nerve. Anyway, I stocked up on tissues, and we caught the tube to Trafalgar Square and spent an hour or two at the National Gallery looking at exquisitely rendered goodies from the 12-to-something’th centuries (Da Vinci’s Madonna on the rocks was on holiday, boo). Some of those dudes could draw a mean photorealistic flowing robe. Also, amused by the insanely disproportionate number of paintings with topless or naked women. Those painter guys loved the boobies.

On a recommendation from Carol, we caught a bright red double-decker bus — we sat on the top, of course — to Hampstead Heath (is that not the most brilliant British name??), a very picturesque town with a large wooded park. I found that there was a moment of adjustment required before I could fully appreciate the beauty of the woods — growing up in the Dandenong Ranges, I’m conditioned to see ivy and blackberries (brambles, I mean) as disgusting weeds. Anyway, with that adjustment out of the way, it was fantastic — the green was almost overwhelming in its intensity

Finally, it was time to leave, load ourselves up with all our earthly belongings and catch the bus to Tiff’s place in Islington. Tussling with our bags on a relatively crowded bus was an interesting exercise in geometry, especially with pure brine pouring out of my burning nasal passages, but we made it in one piece without offending anyone too much (following our progress on Maps on my iPhone to give us warning for when we had to get off), and had a satisfyingly frugal dinner of baked beans on toast with Tiff. Sleeping in the best room in the house — unlike the other sweltering rooms, a nice cool breeze coming through the lounge room window keeps the temperature down.