London Calling

We have just returned from another eventful trip to London. The train ride down was, as always, a joy. Just as the Saturday Times is finished, we pulled into King’s Cross. Being veteran London goers, we dived down into the Underground and, having our cash with us, bypassed the exceptionally long lines at the card only ticket machines, and got our tickets for the tube. Our hotel was in Mayfair and we made our way to Oxford Circus and took a stroll along Regent Street and checked out the shops. We had some lunch and investigated Soho and, in particular, Carnaby Street. Carnaby Street is noteworthy for being the birthplace of the Swinging Sixties in England. It’s much more of a shopping mecca now with a number of good looking pubs. Our hotel was on Bond Street which is notable for having a store for every famous jewelry and fashion designer in the world. Both Regent Street and our hotel were welcoming, especially since we could swear we heard a number of Canadian accents. Being away for so long, and suffering on a daily basis with the verbal battering that is the Yorkshire accent, makes us particularly attuned to the sound of the Canadian accent.

We checked in and were shown to our room – the Westbury Mayfair can sure do it up right. After unburdening ourselves, we headed back down to Regent Street and made our way to Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square. Both were still there. Canada House had all the provincial flags outside which was a nice touch. We proceeded to Covent Garden. Covent Garden, for us, will always mean three things: (1) Paul’s Patisserie; (2) the Canada Store; and (3) the Maple Leaf pub.

Paul’s Patisserie serves the best pastries in all of England. This must be the case since half the people in there are French and are clearly missing their daily croissant and chocolat chaud. The Canada Store is a very interesting place. It’s not just the Canada Store, but is also the New Zealand, Australia and South Africa Store. The store is loosely divided into four sections and has products shipped in from the aforementioned countries so ex-pats can buy what they miss from home. In our case, it was Orville Redenbacher’s microwave popcorn, a coffee crisp and Reese’s peanut butter cups (although it should be mentioned that the peanut butter cups can be bought anywhere here, the coffee crisp, however, remains to be purchased only at the Canada Store. It’s also an excellent place to go since there is virtually no chance of a Yorkshire accent beating your ears. The Maple Leaf pub is, well, just what it says it is. It’s where Canadians in London go to watch hockey, eat Canadian food (honey glazed salmon, anyone?) and drink Canadian beer. In our case, we were forced to watch the Wales and Italy rugby match but we were able to enjoy some tall, frosty pints of Sleeman Honey Brown.

So, to this point, the trip has been about avoiding Yorkshire accents and diving into what little Canadian culture there is in London. We had reservations for dinner at the Bank Aldwych and made our way in that direction. To get there we proceeded through the West End theatre district. As we were walking along reading the billboards, we saw a familiar face. Richard Schiff – Toby from the West Wing, for those of you in the know – peered back at us from his billboard. The billboard indicated that he was performing a one man show (the name of which escapes us). We continued along the street and noticed that the face on the billboard was actually underneath a baseball cap and sitting outside at the café next door. A nonchalant triple-take confirmed it. Richard Schiff in the flesh. After a quick phone call by someone to her brother to remark on the Toby sighting and we were off to dinner.

After dinner we attended Spamalot at the Palace Theatre. The Palace is in a great location but it has the least leg room of any theatre I have ever been in. It’s actually barely tolerable. The balcony is also exceptionally steep. So much so, that the lady a few seats down from us couldn’t stay in her seat because of vertigo. Her family did stay to see the remainder of the show.

Spamalot, for those of you who don’t know, is the musical based upon Monty Python’s Holy Grail. Now, I’m no theatre reviewer but I have two eyes, a brain and have seen the original Holy Grail and the musical gives approximately the same sensation as meeting an old friend only to find out they’ve been lobotomized. Nevertheless, the Palace does have a bar and allows you to bring your big glass of Grolsche into the theatre so all was not lost. Stiff upper lip and all that.

The next day, after breakfast at the Mayfair, we headed to the National Gallery. A must see, for art lovers, as its more manageable than the Louvre, there’s no line up and it’s free. The NG has exhibits by Picasso, Van Gogh, Michaelangelo, Da Vinci, and some French guys, among others. Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, in particular, was a stunner. Did he just get a big shipment of Yellow #2 and need to off-load it somehow?

After the NG, we headed out for a big lunch and then for more pastries at Paul and then tried to walk it all off window shopping. It didn’t work and we needed a rest. After putting our feet up in the hotel bar, we headed out to Bodean’s BBQ. My God, what a place. Now a restaurant serving pulled pork, ribs and chicken wings with an average décor and sports on a few TVs likely doesn’t sound very impressive to most of you. But to us, this place was heaven. We haven’t eaten BBQ since last summer – it just isn’t done around here. So we devoured some ribs and coleslaw, we guzzled Moosehead beer and we gazed longingly at the college basketball on the screen. In short, we wanted to stay at Bodean’s BBQ forever! At some point we surfaced and found our way home to the hotel, via O’Neill’s pub (which oddly played lots of Neil Young and had a fellow customer with a TML hat on. Just another hint of Canada).

It had been a great day. We settled in for a nice, relaxing sleep. Sadly, this was interrupted at 2:30 in the morning when our phone rang. The eastern European accented woman on the other end of the line politely asked ‘you wanted escort?’ When asked to repeat herself, she again said, ‘you wanted escort?’ It gives ‘full service hotel’ a whole new meaning. We informed her that in fact we had not requested an escort and that she may have the wrong room. On a related note, when we checked out the next morning we reviewed our hotel bill carefully and found that some extra charges had been added. Not an escort, but £64 of drinks in the hotel bar. We reviewed the bar bill and someone had written our room number and signed on our behalf. I guess there was some confused bloke arranging for call-girls and drinks to a room that wasn’t his. Even in his confusion, sounds like quite a night! Luckily, we didn’t have to pay for the drinks and the escort did not arrive at our room.

After checking out, we wanted to make the most of the few hours we had before our train home so we hopped on the tube and went to Notting Hill. We walked around for a few hours taking in the sights and the Portobello Road Market. It was a beautiful, warm day so we were happy to just stroll. We managed to stroll past the travel bookstore where Hugh Grant worked in the movie Notting Hill. The movie may be very cheesy, but the bookstore is great.

As the weekend drew to a close we realized that there was a theme of Canada underlying all the events – Canada House, Canadian food, the Canada store, Canadian accents, Canadian music and Canadian beer. It is nice to be reminded of these familiar things and it makes it easy to feel really at home in London.