Christmas in London
My coworkers—and, it seemed, most of Dublin—disappeared as Christmas approached, so I found the bus ride to the airport on Christmas Eve, and the airport itself, to be incredibly quiet. I had some extra time, so I checked out the bookstore, where all the top sellers were about the financial crisis in Ireland—how bankers and politicians conspired to rip off the little man.
I flew to London City Airport, a single runway close to the center of London used mostly by business travelers on small jets. But it turns out the cheapest and latest evening service between London and Dublin is on Air France, so that’s what I took. It was my first Air France flight, and I have to say that the experience fulfilled a remarkable number of stereotypes. The in-flight magazine had English, but I found it harder to find the English text than I have in other bilingual in-flight magazines. The stories were nearly all about art and food. The beverage service included champagne, wine, water, coffee, and tea. No juice. Not sure about soft drinks.
I arrived at a remarkably crowded London Central Hostel, with the kids at the front desk in Santa Claus hats and all. (As the hostel employees who didn’t have family in London, those at the desk were on a marathon work shift through Boxing Day, the day after Christmas.) Really nice environment there, but the room I was put in smelled like a locker room. I think it’s cause one guy there (a middle-aged man from Nottingham in London doing geneology research) never changed his clothes as far as I could tell, including sleeping in them.
On Christmas morning I met a girl from Australia at breakfast, and she joined me on my planned trip to St. Paul’s Cathedral (for the 11 a.m. sung eucharist) and then on a walking tour of London from London Walks. She’s a detective who lives near Sydney, and she took a many-month-long unpaid leave of absence as soon as she was eligible to do so to travel the world. She had come from India and had a few days in London before Edinburgh, Dublin, and then the Dominican Republic (if I recall correctly).
I was afraid there would be no place open to eat in London on Christmas, but there were enough choices that I didn’t go hungry. I think every tourist in London turned out at 2 p.m. on Trafalgar Square to join the walking tours. After all, there wasn’t really anything else to do, especially by evening. So I watched Christmas Vacation on TV with another Australian. (The city’s crawling with them.) That movie never gets old!
On Boxing Day you could go shopping but not visit any tourist sites. So I went on two more walking tours. In the evening I saw Me and Orson Welles in a movie theater. Good story and characters. Love the music.
On December 27th I checked out of the hostel and stopped by the V&A on the way to the airport since I had time to kill and had never been. Certainly worth a visit, even if you aren’t usually a museum person. I also saw Decode: Digital Design Sensations, a special exhibit, but found it underwhelming.
Then I flew to Morocco! More on that to come…