England and Scotland for Dad's 70th
Day 2 - Friday - England
It's Dad's real birthday.
I wake up to a brightly lit room, 8:40 a.m. and
sunny. After a nice little breakfast of cereal, toast and tea,
we're off to The Tower of London! (my most favoritest thing in
all of London)
We walk to the Sloane Street station to catch the
Underground, and Dad announces "Frank Sinatra's dead."
What? And I look up to see "Frank Sinatra
Dead" written on all of
The Evening Standard signs. Whoa!
In the station, the nice Underground ticket sales
guy says he can't cash our Thomas Cooke Traveller Checques because
they're too big for our sale, but where are we from?
Atlanta. He brightened and said "Where the Olympics were?" and
asked whatever happened to "that man and the bomb."
To The Tower!
We arrive and tag onto a tour that had all ready
begun, and lucked into a very entertaining Yeoman (I think) tour
guide. He told several stories, from James Scot (beheaded after
several swipes from the part-time-butcher/executioner/drunk -- on that
day all three -- and had to have his head sewn back on when the family
realized they never had a portrait made of him) to a love story ("for
the ladies") about a woman who rescued her husband with help from her
ladies-in-waiting and some extra clothes. Eventually we worked
our way to the chapel, where he explained his qualifications for his
most enviable job (22 years in service to the Queen -- not the Navy,
because they're unreliable, since it was full of people kidnapped into
service -- and medals and honors), and how he and his family reside in
The Tower! Private pub and chapel -- and ravens!
Onto the Crown Jewels.
It was a gloriously
low-tourist day, and we got to spend lots of time looking at the jewels
(royal family crowns, the Coronation crown, Queen Victoria's crown) and
talking with a security lady. They changed that whole place since
I'd been there (after I told pal Mark the nice thing about England over
Atlanta is nothing changes) -- while waiting in line, you could watch
videos of the jewels in use so you knew what the family did with them,
and they've installed a moving sidewalk next to the jewels so you don't
have ushers telling you to "Keep moving!" the whole time. More
walking around, the instruments o' torture display was off on tour (due
back 2 months ago), so that was gone. But the best part was still
there...
The ravens!
They were pretty off to themselves, only a couple
seemed to be out playing. Fortunately, they saw me coming and
hopped over to sit on their fence and pose for some pictures. I
lured Dad close to them for a nice shot, which took forever since Dad
was hardly moving when I'd say "move closer to them!"
Then came the next best part, the Tower of London
gift shop!
There was a raven wooden puzzle I could live
without,
I guess, but then there was the coup de gras, the silver raven
charm! And it would be silly to just put that on a credit card,
so I went ahead and got the puzzle (marked down to 3 pounds) and the
Charlie the Raven storybook and some raven post cards. I showed
Dad the puzzle and noted that it was on sale. He said he didn't
really see me leaving without it. So we stepped out of the store,
with my bag of raven loot, and I announced "My shopping is done!"
I wanted to take Dad for a ploughman's lunch at the
Hung, Drawn & Quartered pub across the street, but they stopped
serving lunch at 3 p.m., so we were busted to the Tower of London
McDonald's next door, where we played World Cup scratch & win
trivia games and lost.
The next stop was Dad's primary goal, Westminster
Abbey.
After a lengthy delay at Tower Hill Station
(signaling problem, which forced the train to stop-start a lot and
nearly flung us into the next car), we arrived at the Westminster
station and walked out, looking straight up at Big Ben. More
pictures, Dad in front of Westminster from this angle, from that angle,
trying to get a picture that made sense (it's just too big a place to
fit into the picture!). Then pictures in front of Big Ben
(speaking of things that don't fit) -- us on the corner, Dad by the
gate, me kneeling 4 feet away with the panoramic lens on my camera
turned sideways to fit in Dad and Big Ben, and
groups of people walking between us. I look at a woman also
trying to take a picture and say "This will never fit!" and she laughed
and agreed.
We walked over toward the Abbey, but they wouldn't
let us in -- the Abbey's closed to tourists, only people attending the
service could go in.
"What do you have to do to attend the
service?" Dad asked.
"Say, `I'm going to the service,'" the man
said.
Dad motioned me over, we're going to the service.
So we attended their Choral Evensong, a lovely
service where the leader sings his verses, and the boys choir answer
him, and we sing a little. We all sat in the middle of the Abbey,
some in the choral rows near the choir, we were in chairs next to the
alter. When it was over, Dad said it was THE highlight of his
trip, "If you had told me I'd be spending my 70th birthday attending a
service in Westminster Abbey…"
Heading toward the Underground station, Dad says
we're staying for 8 more minutes, and I realize Big Ben is about the
chime on the hour. Cool.
On our way back, since everything seemed to close in
England at 5 p.m. and we've got hours of light (we're really
north and heading into the longest day of the year), I decide we'll go
to St. James Park and see...
So we're walking through the park,
and I'm saying "Hmmm, we cross the bridge and turn left... we should
see it soon."
"See what?" Dad asked.
"Buckingham Palace, of
course!" I announce, and there it was, in all its
closed-to-the-public glory.
More pictures, more walking around,
Dad noting the area in front of it being brown pebbles instead of
pavement, we see a young woman get in her car and drive away (cool! she
works at Buckingham Palace), we hear Big Ben striking on the quarter
hour, more pictures and we leave.
We get off at the Knightsbridge station, in hopes of
procuring a nice tea at Harrods, and discover to my horror that their
hours are even less inviting than Westminster Abbey. We dine at a
little French bistro across the street, and return to Francesca's to
plan our weekend. I'm still trying to figure out how to cram
extra days into our schedule. Dad says it's been such a perfect
day, if we left tomorrow, he'd be happy. I tell him he hasn't
seen Scotland yet.
England and
Scotland for Dad's 70th
Travel Journals
The
Marilyn Website home
Copyright Marilyn Estes
1997-2004